Solution: Jetty Creatures
Answer: ZOOLOGISTS
Written by Jonathan
The first thing to do is to find the names of the animals, which is fairly straightforward. However, as hinted by the title, we should find another commonality between these animals, that is, they are also creatures for whom certain jets are named after! After determining a few jet model numbers, we find that the images are ordered alphanumerically (numbers 0 through 9 taking precedence, and then letters A through Z). This should help disambiguate between some model numbers (for example, Cougar F9 and Cougar GA7).
| Animal | Jet model number |
|---|---|
| Dolphin | 5F1 |
| Ecureuil | AS350 |
| Fennec | AS550 |
| Dove | DH104 |
| Heron | DH114 |
| Raven | EF111A |
| Tiger | F11 |
| Tomcat | F14 |
| Condor | FW200 |
| Cougar | GA7 |
| Duck | J2F |
| Grasshopper | L3 |
| Owl | O52 |
| Goshawk | T45 |
Once this is done, the grid can be filled out. The easiest parts to get started with are the sequences of 5 cells, which force a unique ordering by themselves.
| J | 2 | F | |||||||||
| W | |||||||||||
| 2 | |||||||||||
| O | 0 | ||||||||||
| A | S | 5 | 5 | 0 | |||||||
| S | 2 | ||||||||||
| L | 3 | ||||||||||
| 5 | |||||||||||
| D | H | 1 | 0 | 4 | |||||||
| H | |||||||||||
| 1 | G | ||||||||||
| E | F | 1 | 1 | 1 | A | ||||||
| 1 | 4 | 7 | |||||||||
| 5 | F | 1 | |||||||||
| 1 | |||||||||||
| T | 4 | 5 |
Extract the yellow cells in row-major order to obtain the string 2O0L0G15T5, which gives the answer, ZOOLOGISTS.
Author's Notes
The biggest issue that I had when constructing this puzzle was that I needed to use a grid fill, and with highlighted cells for extraction at that. It would have been nicer to make the model numbers be written horizontally and alphabetically with a central column highlighted, but a G was needed after an L and I could not find any suitable plane codes that fit the constraints. Many planes were not related in any way to animals either, and so the working set size I had to play with in general was already very small, and most codes are between 3-5 letters/numbers only, making a grid fill even harder. I liked the idea of a fill with numbers mixed with letters, as well as the overall pun on the title to keep the overall idea.
[aki's comments:] The idea of using the pun on the name “Jetty Creatures” was mine, but I really disliked all my drafts, so I passed it on to Jonathan.