Mad March Hare-brained Photo Puzzle

[gentle lemur]

Mad March Hare-brained Photo Puzzle

• gentle lemur
• 1 Mar 2023
• 2
• what are these?

24 puzzle images

There is a long-running radio panel game that penalises contestants for deviation, hesitation or repetition. I think that these qualities usually deserve to be cherished and encouraged. I certainly used them in compiling this puzzle and so I suspect that they may be required to solve it too.

As you can see, there are 25 pictures here (including a pair in No 12) and they are in random order. Two are from the Public Domain: No 9 is cropped from a large graphic and No 18 shows a glamorous lady who nearly scored a century. The others are my own photos. The final part is a verbal question – what may be found in all mammal mothers? There are connections between all these answers.

Your task is to identify them and then to put them into the most appropriate order.

Some of the connections are fairly obvious, but as I mentioned, I hesitated over some of the choices and I deviated by avoiding a few obvious possibilities and choosing harder ones. I think one or two are quite cryptic, so I recommend a little creative intelligence, fuzzy logic or lateral thinking to solve this puzzle. In other words a hare-brained approach might be needed

Please send me a PM if you have a question, but not post any answers in this thread until noon UST on Wednesday 8th March, so everyone has a fair chance of answering.

 

[gentle lemur]

This thread is now open for solutions to the puzzle. I have not had any feedback yet, so I am wondering whether to provide a hint to help people get started.

 

[Mo Hassan]

I've identified everything and got some sort of theme, but I don't have much more than that.

1. Barbary sheep
2. Gorilla gorilla (gorilla)
3. Double yellow-headed amazon
4. Roulroul
5. Histrionicus histrionicus
6. Quelea quelea
7. Kakariki
8. Pipa pipa
9. Sharp-Shinned hawk
10. Aardvark
11. Titi
12. green Jay
13. lemur frog (?)
14. FileFish
15. DikDik
16. Anguilla anguilla
17. Mus musculus
18. Zsa-Zsa Gabor
19. Aye-aye
20. Nene
21. Orcinus orca
22. Hoopoe
23. White-winged wood duck
24. Viviparous lizard

Everything has some sort of repetition in the name, either a tautological binomial or two similar sounds next to each other. All I can think of for the verbal question is "boobies" but I'm not sure if that's the angle you're looking for.

 

[PossumRoach]

13. lemur frog (?)

I think for the puzzle they go by Lemur Leaf frog

 

[Tetzoo Quizzer]

And the female mammal answer will be XX (Chromosomes)

 

[Tetzoo Quizzer]

Presumably the sequence is alphabetical
Aye-aye, Barbary Sheep etc..., finishing with Zsa-Zsa Gabor.

 

[Mo Hassan]

Presumably the sequence is alphabetical
Aye-aye, Barbary Sheep etc..., finishing with Zsa-Zsa Gabor.

I was thinking that but there was aardvark and aye-aye (although aye-aye could be I). Your "XX" makes perfect sense though!

 

[Tetzoo Quizzer]

And is the eel for E?

 

[Tetzoo Quizzer]

Hoopoe U (Upupa)?

 

[Mo Hassan]

So, putting all that together:

Aardvark
Barbary sheep
C
DikDik
Eel
FileFish
Gorilla gorilla (gorilla)
Histrionicus histrionicus
Aye-aye
green Jay
Kakariki
lemur leaf frog
Mus musculus
Nene
Orcinus orca
Pipa pipa
Quelea quelea
Roulroul
Sharp-Shinned hawk
Titi
Upupa
Viviparous lizard
White-winged wood duck
XX
Double yellow-headed amazon
Zsa-Zsa Gabor

We're missing C though

 

[PossumRoach]

I am confused about number 12. I don’t even know if that is a green jay.

 

[Tetzoo Quizzer]

Don’t think it is; haven’t got access to my key references until this evening...

 

[Mo Hassan]

I identified it without looking it up but looking at it closer, it might not be. The lower one at least looks like it could be a green/Inca jay.

 

[PossumRoach]

I don’t know if any Cyanocorax are sexually dimorphic, but I believe the two jays are distinct species, and for this puzzle they go as x Jay y Jay or Jay Jay.

 

[Tetzoo Quizzer]

Or could they supply a C answer and a J answer?

 

[gentle lemur]

Good work from the whole committee with special commendation to @Mo Hassan who did so much of the heavy lifting.
But there is something wrong with the maths. There are 24 images and a verbal answer, so how did I work in the 26th letter? Everyone has missed the C (and it's not Cyanocorax, although that might be a pretty good answer, that is just there to provide the other J for Jay Jay). One creature is not identified fully and if you look really hard, so may be able to spot that another is slightly wrong as well.
Can anyone give the final touches?

 

[Mo Hassan]

Hmm... is the eel misidentified as a conger, so would provide both Conger conger (C) and eel (E)? Fish are not my strongpoint.

 

[PossumRoach]

I just can’t help but think that the name of this puzzle (March Madness) is a part of the puzzle. I might be over speculating of course

 

[gentle lemur]

Hmm... is the eel misidentified as a conger, so would provide both Conger conger (C) and eel (E)? Fish are not my strongpoint.

That's it! Well done
I always include at least one fish, amphibian and reptile in each quiz. When I realised that the conger eel would kill two birds with one stone (so to speak) I made a special trip to the National Marine Aquarium to get a decent photo. I did consider that an alternative would be the Picasso trigger fish, which has the Hawaiian name of humuhumu-nukunuku-a-puaʻa so it would cover both H and N, but I thought that I would spare you that.

 

[gentle lemur]

I just can’t help but think that the name of this puzzle (March Madness) is a part of the puzzle. I might be over speculating of course

I did compose a Mad March puzzle during lockdown. But I could not resist the opportunity to add the Hare-Brained tag this time (as a sort of health warning). Actually M is a good letter for this puzzle, as matamata and motmot would fit nicely too.