"Small Animals" November 3, 2023

[Bonnibel]

Never have i been so sure about an answer that was wrong!

I did see ASS but dismissed it as a more ancient word in this context, since nowadays the word is rarely used for donkey.

So... taking the final grid answer UPEND as a strong clue leading me to the beginning of each grid answer hiding a 3 letter animal, I found:

kaYAKs
CATher
uBOAts
boonDOGgle
sCOW

Those first letters, in grid order:

S
C
U
B
S

The small animal hidden there is CUB. A 3 letter animal that is also small in terms of size as a baby animal.

Once I saw this, I was certain this was the contest answer! It checks all the boxes so I looked no further, ignoring the fact that the term CUB can be used for multiple species.

Also, I would never have associated CAT with HOMBRE! Of course if I was going that route I would have googled synonyms for each animal.

(sigh)

Congrats to all the successful solvers!

[C=64]

Apparently they have a hit song “Back in Black”

[Nlobb]

Well, I looked at 72a upend.
Since words in that spot are sometimes clues, I thought maybe there was an animal upended in the grid.
Lookin directly above upend I saw rat, a 3 letter animal, ending on 40, and sent it in…
A lucky solve! But it worked (this time anyway).
Of course I didn’t have the fun of looking for the answer all weekend.

[Nycerjohnnie]

It sounds like EEL was the second most popular? “Nit” apparently means the egg of the lice, not the animal itself.

[muggleunity]

I saw lots on animals, along with the word "TAME" in the middle of the puzzle. I've seen all these animals as pets, and especially the most prominate animal words-- CAT and DOG. So I submitted PET, feeling pretty unsure about it, but not really seeing anything else that made any sense.

Congrats to all who solved!

[bigtuna]

Under the category of “I’d rather be lucky than good”, I found the three letter animals but noticed that rat was in the grid twice as was yak. Since a rat is smaller than a yak, I went with it as a pure stab. Also the answer to 73 across is “upend” so I thought the two rat entries appearing from bottom to top was another tip off.

[DBMiller]

Can someone please explain hombre/cat?

[krf]

Never was a fan of AC/DC, but that didn't prevent me from getting caught in the EEL trap.

Heavy sigh! Eelpout!

[boharr]

@The XWord Rabbit has its work cut-out for it this week...

oof

He will deserve a mug of his own.

[Notbitter]

I submitted the right answer but my logic was completely wrong. I saw three three-letter words that were duplicated in longer words: REI > REID; AVA > LAVA; TAR > STARR. The first letter of those words spells “RAT.” Piece of cake, LOL.

[zach]

On Thursday night I identified and jotted down the six animals that would lead to the meta, which I ultimately solved last night. Soon after doing this on Thursday, I became obsessed with the clue for SUDOKU: "Fun with nine 9s." It's not exactly how I'd describe a sudoku, and the use of a multiple of 3 - the number of letters needed for the meta - seemed suspect. Lo and behold, there are nine clues/answers with a 9: 19A, 29A, 39A, 59A, 69A, 9D, 29D, 49D and 59D. I can't remember a time that I spent so much time on the wrong path. This felt like too much of a coincidence, but it turned out to be a giant rabbit.

[woozy]

A CAT is a military vehicle like a HUMVEE and HUMVEE is located in the further in the grid than CHAT. So that's how I backsolved. When pointed out that HOMBRE was possible I saw that that was a lot better (for one thing it's across and not down).

[FatJack]

I found all the three letter animals. Plus connected SCARF & BOA and DOG with TORMENT, and even read a lot of down answers in reverse due to UPEND, but somehow never pulled it all together. Probably because I got fixated on OMOEBAS (very small animals!). Good puzzle! I guess I shouldn't try to solve while watching the hopeless NY Giants on Sundays (it's like a car wreck, you shouldn't look, but you do.)

[woozy]

What's all this talk about "rat" being in the grid?

I saw that COW was in the grid at least three times (INTIMIDATE, Far Side Organism, and sCOW) so COW was my 8% hail mary.

My rule of thumb is avoid boggle like errors (three letter words are too short for letter substitution, paths that bend can't work unless the go at least three in every direction, anagrams as a final step need ordering mechanism) we should be able to explain to the third part what the rules of the mechanism is and a third part should be able to mechanically derive the answer solely by following directions.

Three cows when there were three (much weaker but still there) pigs [ScOW, SnOW, PORK BARREL], two cats and a dog and an ass (if anyone still uses that term) maybe a bug also, so that made my hail mary COW certainly not correct.

[mattythewsjpuzzler]

Can someone please explain hombre/cat?

A cat is an old-fashioned term for Dude....like hey check out that cat. I am 60 so only slightly old fashioned for me.

[batfella]

I also submitted EEL. I took the title literally and LOOKED UP from above the last letter of three small animals--yielding

CAT S
ROO E
DOG A

I thought seeing ASEA in the final across row was confirmation of looking for a small sea animal. Obviously not.

[ky-mike]

What's all this talk about "rat" being in the grid?

42D was TAR. Some took the last across entry of UPEND to mean to look up (backwards for a down entry) and got RAT.

[Joe Ross]

What's all this talk about "rat" being in the grid?

42D was TAR. Some took the last across entry of UPEND to mean to look up (backwards for a down entry) and got RAT.

It was also intended, per the official WSJ solution:

In grid order, the first letters of
those answers spell SNITCH, suggesting the
contest answer (hiding sneakily upwards at
42-Down).

[BarbaraK]

What's all this talk about "rat" being in the grid?

42D was TAR. Some took the last across entry of UPEND to mean to look up (backwards for a down entry) and got RAT.

It was also intended, per the official WSJ solution:

In grid order, the first letters of
those answers spell SNITCH, suggesting the
contest answer (hiding sneakily upwards at
42-Down).

That surprised me. I hadn't noticed it, and when someone pointed it out, I guessed that it was coincidence. Sneaky Matt!

[moron]

Did eventually reach the answer but had a very wack theory based on what if ANIMALS was a more correct answer for the Far Side organisms clue. Between Ameobas and Animals, the "a,m,a,s" are shared with "EOB" and "NIL" being the differing letters.
From there, I see: ARNO.
Let's remove the N and replace it with a B and rearrange to make BOAR, an animal. I remove the N and B from the pool leaving EO and IL.
From there, I see: REID.
Let's remove the I and replace it with an E and rearrange to make DEER, an animal. I remove the I and E from the pool leaving O and L.
This is where this breaks down. There is nothing in the puzzle where I can replace an L with an O to get an animal. Well, truthfully...

From there, I see: ALIGN
Let's remove the L and replace it with an O and rearrange to make GONIA, an animal (referring to flies generally).
As one can see, taking the first letters here of BOAR DEER GONIA results in BDG and no other interpretations of the previous steps results in 3 letters that mean anything of value. Obviously this GONIA step is somewhat sketchy, so I should just use B and D and look for 3 letter animals I think. There exists no 3 letter animals with B and D. I definitely put a little too much stake in ANIMALS being more representative of the Far Side than ameobas. Whoops. Did come across rat in upending the puzzle, but didn't make the rest of the connections until later.