Today's NYT Strands made me very happy, because it's a topic I'm familiar with and have a lot of experience with. As soon as I saw 'Part of the equation' in the theme, I knew exactly what word to look for, and to my delight it was Spangram.

Finding the Spangram in today’s Strands will make the puzzle even clearer. My hint is that the theme is literally about mathematical equations and their components, and not an indirect reference to anything else as we’ve seen in recent challenges, so don’t look too far. The science that studies numbers and their relationships is the main, yellow word you need to look for today.

The spangram for "Part of the Equation" is MATHEMATICS, running from the "M" in the left column to the "S" in the right column. I think I found it easy, not because I'm some kind of math genius, but because it starts with the letter in the upper left corner of the board, which is usually the first letter I check when looking for answers in Strands. Since I was also convinced that this puzzle was literally about equations, I was right.

Remember that equations are mathematical expressions that show relationships between different numbers, such as 1 + 2 = 3. A good tip is to think of how operations are an important part of each equation, and then you'll be close to solving it. The names of these elements and actions are what you'll be looking for to find each word in today's Strands, and they're very similar to the names of their symbols.