Need some help with today's NYT Strands? Today's theme, “Shape and Baking,” is fairly straightforward in content, but you may still have trouble finding the hidden answers.

Below are some helpful hints for Strands #284 and the answers when you need them. First, a few hints will help you find the complete answer to Strand #284.

WARNING: There are spoilers for Strand #284.

The official theme for NYT Strands #284 is... Shape and Bake.”

And here's an unofficial hint from me: “Decorated Candy.”

If you're still in the dark, here are some useful words that will give you valuable hint tokens:

Still struggling? Spangram gives you a hint on conjunctive words. Today, it starts with a 'C' and ends with an 'R'.

Scroll down to see what it is.

It's a coochie cutter.

Now, what's the answer to today's Strand game #284?

Drumroll, please.

... Spangram was the coochie cutter.

Strands #284

“Shape and bake”

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Hello Strands fans! I have a nice and easy one for you today.

It helped me to quickly find BUNNY in the upper left corner and check the theme. Below that I saw the word “cookie” and instantly realized that this was part of the spangram, so I followed it and circled it to spell out “COOKIECUTTER.”

All that remained was to recall the popular cookie shape. Before tackling the two in the center of the spangram, I first looked at the FLOWER in the lower left: ANGEL and HEART.

DIAMOND was the last remaining long word, in the upper right. Since each had four letters, this was a bit of a problem, but we eventually worked it out: BELL and STAR.

Are you reading this in a slow time zone? The full article on the solution to yesterday's game #283 on the Strand can be found here.