New Delhi, June 18 -- Thursday's NYT Strands puzzle trades dry land for open water. Puzzle #837, published June 18, 2026, sends solvers wading into a theme built entirely around what lives beneath the waves, and the grid rewards anyone who has ever snorkeled past a reef or flipped through a marine biology textbook. If the board has you circling the same letters without much to show for it, here is the complete breakdown of today's theme, spangram, and every answer, along with a short refresher on how Strands hints actually work.

"Beneath the Waves"

The theme for puzzle #837 is Beneath the Waves, and it does exactly what it promises. Every hidden word belongs to the same underwater neighborhood, the kind of ecosystem built around a coral...