Your post appears to be a solid breakdown and covers the basics quite well. However, if I was trying to explain the them to someone completely scientifically illiterate, I'd probably elaborate more on condition 2.
The notion of "explaining things better" may seem a tad arbitrary to a newcomer unfamiliar with scientific rigor. The
strawberry hypothesis will be obviously inferior to the other theories because it is completely non sequitur. The mistake I see people making most often, is crediting a hypothesis due to its
descriptive power (
explanations made after the relevant observations). Any hypothesis with descriptive power would still be far inferior to models with
predictive power (falsifiable explanations offered in advance of new empirical observations).
The strawberry example has neither descriptive
nor predictive power so it may not prepare people for noticing the shortcomings of retroactive explanations, when they are looking for a "better explanation".
I'd also remark that theories are made even stronger by their applicable scope. Ex. If you've seen "A Beautiful Mind", John Nash won his Nobel Prize for the Nash Equilibrium, because his game theory approach worked in so many different disciplines besides economics. It created insights in topics he had never considered like sociology, politics, insurance, conflict analysis, fiances, etc. I recently watched a
numberphile video in which squared squares' network graphs gained insights from electrical models of circuits with various amps.
Even under a smaller less-abstracted scope, we can also use consistency checks against other working theories tangential to your current hypothesis. It's like sculpting the shape of a puzzle piece
and then testing how it fits with its neighbors in the puzzle. Ex. Successful biology theories suggest that the nano fireflies hypothesis would require an oxygen mixed atmosphere in the flashlight for them to breathe and to fuel their bioluminescent reactions. In contrast, our models of electrochemical reactions suggest an incandescent filament would rapidly burn out in the presence of oxygen.
Consequently, we can make a prediction about the construction of the flashlight
prior to investigation. This means we can ascertain the accuracy of an explanatory model, by measuring its predictive success. If sealed part of the flashlight houses a vacuum (or at least the absence of an oxidizer; noble gasses work because they are inert), the incandescent filament hypothesis is credited. If oxygen
is present, the nano-fireflies bioluminescence hypothesis would be credited.
...I suspect you essentially knew all of these things, but I took this thread as an invitation to try to collaboratively narrow down the definitions and criteria.
Ultimately this thread seems to dissect the tenets of rational investigation, but I'll try not to hijack your thread and ramble about
why Occams Razor is valid, or how a phenomenon could be mysterious
to some particular person, but there could be no phenomena mysterious of themselves. ("Mysterious answer" is a contradiction in terms, and worshiping a sacred mystery is just to worship your own ignorance.)
tl;dr
In disciplines other than mathematics, the term "theory" denotes the highest possible status an explanatory model can ever attain by rigorously proving itself.