Krillion Recorded answers
395 recorded answers
How to approach it
Work the alphabet rather than memory alone. Build a mental list of animal groups with a large inventory of short compound names, then test each candidate against the spelling rule before asking whether it is a genuine animal at all. A useful second pass is to take common prefixes and suffixes from natural history writing and recombine them, since many accepted names are built from a colour or a body part plus a plain second element. Keep a tally as you go so you do not circle back to the same few obvious creatures, and deliberately visit the specialist vocabulary of angling, falconry, entomology and livestock breeding, where the oddest single-word names survive.
Get a hint
Start with the broad families where short, punchy names dominate: birds, fish, insects and small mammals supply far more candidates than large land animals do.
A little more
Many of these names are compound words, so combine a colour, body part or habitat word with a second element and check whether the joined form is a recognised animal name.
One step further
Push past the obvious everyday creatures into regional, dialect and specialist names: game birds, food fish, dog breeds and invertebrates reward a deep vocabulary more than common pets do.
Reveal answers 395
- BullockRare60points
- ChickadeeRare60points
- ChickenhawkRare60points
- CockapooRare60points
- CockerRare60points
- CockerelRare60points
- CockleRare60points
- DickybirdRare60points
- DuckbillRare60points
- FlickerRare60points
- GamecockRare60points
- GeoduckRare60points
- GrackleRare60points
- HaddockRare60points
- HumpbackRare60points
- JackRare60points
- MackerelRare60points
- MockingbirdRare60points
- PackratRare60points
- PollockRare60points
- RockfishRare60points
- SilverbackRare60points
- SuckerfishRare60points
- WalkingstickRare60points
- WoodcockRare60points
- YellowjacketRare60points
- BlackbirdSchooler30points
- BuckSchooler30points
- ChickSchooler30points
- CockSchooler30points
- CockatielSchooler30points
- CockatooSchooler30points
- CockroachSchooler30points
- CricketSchooler30points
- CuckooSchooler30points
- DucklingSchooler30points
- GeckoSchooler30points
- JackalSchooler30points
- JackrabbitSchooler30points
- TickSchooler30points
- WoodchuckSchooler30points
- WoodpeckerSchooler30points
- ChickenPlankton10points
- DuckPlankton10points
- PeacockPlankton10points
Why these answers count
Scoring followed rarity rather than familiarity. The single hundred-point entry, Dickcissel, is a name most solvers never reach, so it stands alone at the top. The large band at eighty-five points is where the puzzle really lives: Ackie, Antpecker, Berrypecker, Blacksmith, Buckeye and Canvasback all sit there, and what unites them is that they are recognisable single words but not the first creatures anyone lists. Names like these are specific enough to be verifiable yet uncommon enough to feel like a discovery, which is exactly the profile the scoring rewards. The lower band at sixty points, forty-eight answers in total, is presumably reserved for the household names that every solver writes down in the first minute. The pattern is clear: the more obscure the corner of the animal kingdom, the more the answer pays, provided the spelling rule is satisfied and the name is genuinely one word.