NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #296 (Tuesday, December 24 2024)

Need some assistance with NYT Strands today? Today’s theme — “Pass the eggnog” — is pretty clearly Christmas themed, but how?

Below, we’ve compiled some useful hints for Strands #296, as well as the answers, should it come to that. We’ll start off with some clues, before building up to the full answer for Strands #296, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #296.

Today’s NYT Strands answer — Today’s theme and hints

The official theme for NYT Strands #296 is… “Who on earth…?”

And here’s an unofficial hint from me: “And you are?”

If you’re still in the dark, here are some useful words to give you those valuable clue tokens:

• CULL
• RULE
• MALES
• TOLL
• WANE
• CULT
• BILL

Still struggling? The spangram will give you a hint about the connection word. Today, it starts with N and ends with S.

Scroll down to find out what it is…

It’s NATURENAMES.

Today’s Strands answers

So, what are today’s Strands answers for game #296?

Drumroll, please…

• HOLLY
• BROOK
• RIVER
• LAUREL
• WILLOW
• CLEMENTINE

…and the spangram was NATURENAMES.

Strands #296

“Who on earth …?”

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Hi Strands fans. This was a toughie! “Who on earth…?” is a clever theme, but I’m afraid I didn’t figure out how clever until my penultimate move.

I actually stumbled across a few answers without knowing what I was looking for. I found HOLLY in the top-right corner, followed by BROOK in the bottom right. I then found RIVER on the left.

But despite being three answers down, I still had no idea what the connection between the three words was, so I used a clue. Then another one.

These revealed LAUREL in the bottom left and WILLOW on the right-hand side. It was then that I finally made the connection when I stumbled across the “nature” part of the spangram: NATURENAMES. These are all words that can both describe something from the natural world and be a person’s name!

With that in mind, getting the last one was trivial. I connected CLEMENTINE in the top-left corner, and completed the puzzle.

Yesterday’s Strands answers

Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday’s Strands answers for game #295 right here.