I've recently run into this limitation, and am reminded that wide tables aren't always the result of poor design. Sometimes we have to ingest source/vendor/external data files that are huge .... The one I am dealing with now is >290 columns. Even though I will be transforming this data in subsequent steps, there are still early/initial raw upload steps where a wide table is helpful to use.
Of course I solved for this by convincing the client to use SQL Server, and simply not using Access in any scenario where it needed to represent >255 columns in a Table, Linked Table, Query, etc.
Fortunately, in my client's case, the end-goal is to produce a file (for upload to another vendor) which has about 100 columns on it.
However, this is another example of a potential legitimate requirement that does not suggest poor design: A vendor might require a file (and thus, a query) with >255 columns. Again, the solution would be to limit Access's involvement, and use other tools ...
Sometimes these things come up when dealing with external sources or destinations and cannot simply be wished away.