2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/126218Starting from a commensurate triangular thin solid strip, confined within two hard structureless walls, a stretch along its length introduces a rectangular distortion. Beyond a critical strain the solid fails through nucleation of "smectic"-like bands. We show using computer simulations and simple density functional based arguments, how a solid-smectic transition mediates the failure. Further, we show that the critical strain introducing failure is {\em inversely} proportional to the channel width i.e. thinner strips are stronger!6 pages, 7 figures, to be published in Indian Journal of Physics (in press) as a Conference proceeding of CMDAYS-04Soft Condensed MatterStatistical Mechanicstext