Regarding yesterday's Strands, I was using hints to come up with stuff, then finally gave up and just looked up the answer. The difficulty of that one really came out of nowhere.
I found one word, but it made no sense with the clue - until I ran across a long word I knew from my study of Biblical languages. That turned out to be the Spangram. Then it all made sense. But I'm rusty on the various types so had to look them up. For me it was brutal. For anyone who didn't get linguistics exposure in college - which is most people since WWII - forget it.