Solution: Interlude: Sociology
Answer: SCHOOL BULLIES
Written by Mike Sylvia
In this interlude, solvers are prompted to write a social media “post” (string of characters). Doing so may result in one or more anonymous reacts from the thirteen online animal friends.
Each animal is looking out for a particular letter, and if they see it anywhere in the post, they will react with their species’s collective noun. For example, a react of “:murder:” will appear if and only if Crow sees an H. The collective nouns and letters are:
| Animal | Collective noun | Letter |
|---|---|---|
| Ape | shrewdness | S |
| Bear | sleuth | C |
| Crow | murder | H |
| Dove | piteousness | O |
| Eagle | convocation | O |
| Flamingo | flamboyance | L |
| Jellyfish | bloom | B |
| Kinkajou | convergence | U |
| Lion | pride | L |
| Mongoose | delegation | L |
| Nightingale | watch | I |
| Owl | parliament | E |
| Peacock | ostentation | S |
This reveals the monsters facing the Sociology department: fish are being threatened by SCHOOL BULLIES.
Author’s Notes
I like to imagine that some weird hermit centuries ago locked themselves away with a dictionary and a list of every animal they could think of, came out a week later, announced that every animal had its own abstract concept assigned to it as a collective noun now, and everyone just rolled with it. The hermit apparently was in an especially odd mood when they were working through the bird section of the list, which is why birds are so overrepresented in this puzzle.