Snake (Solution)
by Palmer Mebane
For each of the eight answers, there is a unique snake (one cell wide, does not touch itself) which starts at the first letter and eats the letters of the answer in order. The image above provides small numbers 1-8 in the corners of each cell of each snake; all spaces with a 1 in them are part of the same snake spelling answer 1 (snakes for different answers can overlap), and similarly for the other numbers 2-8.
Each snake also eats some different-looking gray letters, so each of the eight snakes gives a small string of 3-4 letters, which can be put together to form the answer string.
(1) TOTAL ECLIPSE gives DRJ![]() |
(2) STRAVINSKY gives ENLA![]() |
(3) CARL SAGAN gives NDI![]() |
(4) GUNPOWDER gives ACKS![]() |
(5) SVALBARD gives ONS![]() |
(6) PITCHER gives NGP![]() |
(7) FINALE gives ADS![]() |
(8) RIOT gives ALI![]() |
These can be reordered to form DRJACKSONSALIENLANDINGPADS. Dr. Daniel Jackson, an archaeologist from the movie and TV show Stargate, had a theory that the pyramids were landing pads for alien spaceships. The final answer is PYRAMIDS.