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CISRA Puzzle Competition 2012 - Solutions

5D. Animals

The first step is to identify the animals. This is aided by observing that they all begin with the letters "N", "S", "W", or "E", and that they are arranged around the grid according to the compass directions (with SWan, SWallow, and SEal at the diagonals). This is a clue that the animals must be entered into the grid with the words reading in the direction specified. As a helpful starting point, all the "direction" letters have been already entered into the grid for you. The observation that the animals are in alphabetical order along each side may help sort out any ambiguities, particularly amongst the bird identities.

The animals are:

  • North: narwhal, nautilus, nightingale.
  • East: eagle, earwig, echidna, eel, elephant, elk, emu, ermine, ewe
  • South-east: seal
  • South: scallop, scorpion, shark, sheep, shrew, shrew, skunk, slug, slug, snail, snake, spaniel, spider, squirrel, stag
  • South-west: swallow, swan
  • West: wallaby, walrus, warthog, wasp, wasp, weasel, whale, whippet, wildebeest, wobbegong, wolf, wolverine, wombat, woodchuck, woodpecker, wren

There are two "wasp"s, "slug"s and "shrew"s, and the same sheep image is used for "sheep" and "ewe". The grid can be filled with these words, writing them in the indicated directions, only as follows:

Filling the grid relies on the observation that some squares can only be filled by a word coming from one direction, putting constraints on the word lengths.

With the grid filled, the red outlined squares spell out "sorong" and (presuming the same direction scheme is followed) "weipa". Weipa is a town in far north Queensland, Australia, and Sorong is in West Papua, Indonesia. Following one of the themes of the puzzle suggests Sorong is associated with the direction south, while Weipa is associated with the direction west.

Proceeding south from Sorong and west from Weipa, the two paths intersect at Darwin, a city named for Charles Darwin, the great naturalist and discoverer of the principle of evolution by natural selection, which is appropriate for the second puzzle theme of animals. DARWIN is the answer.