Can I help you with today's NYT strand? Today's theme, “Who on earth?” is quite esoteric and took me a while to figure out as well.

Below are some helpful hints for Strands #296 and answers when you need help. First, a few tips will lead you to the complete answer to Strands #296.

WARNING: There are spoilers for Strands #296.

The official theme of NYT Strands #296 is... “Who the hell...?

And here's an unofficial hint from me: “Who are you?

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

Still having trouble? Spangram gives you a hint on conjunctive words. Today's word starts with N and ends with S.

NATURENAMES.

Now, what's the answer to today's game #296 strand?

Drumroll please.

... Spangram was NATURENAMES.

Strand #296

“Who on earth is ......?”

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Hello, Strand fans! This was a tough one! “Who in the world is ......?” is a clever theme, but I'm afraid I didn't realize how clever it was until I made the final move.

Actually, I came across some answers without knowing what I was looking for. I found HOLLY in the upper right corner and BROOK in the lower right corner. Then I found RIVER on the left.

But even though the answer was three down, I still didn't know how the three words were connected, so I used a clue. Then another one.

These revealed that LAUREL is on the bottom left and WILLOW on the right. I finally realized the connection when I stumbled upon the “nature” part of the spangram: NATURENAMES, all of which are words that describe something in nature and can also be a person's name!

With that in mind, getting the last one was the easy part. I connected the CLEMENTINE in the upper left corner to complete the puzzle.

Are you reading this later in the day than this? The full article of Strand's solution to yesterday's game #295 can be found here.