Have you ever noticed a crossbreed between two terrestrial animals to produce superior species? I love biology and the concept of hybrid fruits and animals always fascinated me. Today’s NYT Mini Crossword clue is “Hybrid equine animal with stripes,” which challenges your knowledge of hybrid animals.
If today’s NYT Mini Crossword clues give you a hard time, you can use our hints and answers to help you easily solve the word game.
‘Hybrid equine animal with stripes’ NYT Oct. 31 Mini Crossword hints and answer
- Hint 1: The answer is a species that does not occur naturally in the wild.
- Hint 2: The five-letter solution is the name for the offspring of a zebra and a horse.
- Hint 3: It starts with the letter “Z.”
- Hint 4: The solution has a zebra’s natural hardiness and disease resistance, making them harder to tame as well.
Let’s jump in and reveal the answer.
The answer to one across in the Oct. 31 New York Times Mini Crossword is “ZORSE.” The Zorse is a cross-bred between a zebra and a horse. They are deliberately bred by humans, mainly for specific purposes like experimentation or exhibitions. The clue refers to an equine animal which refers to the members of the horse family and the stripes refer to the zebra.
Like most hybrids, zorses are generally sterile and they cannot reproduce. This is due to the mismatch in chromosome numbers between zebras and horses.
‘Hybrid equine animal with stripes’ NYT Mini Crossword difficulty rating
Even though I am pretty good with my Biology knowledge, it took me a little while to understand that the clue refers to Zorse. The popular Hybrid animals are Mules, Zonkey, Liger and more so it might be quite difficult for people to understand the answer.
If you did understand that the clue talks about a horse and a zebra, chances are you would be very close to solving the clue without needing any help by combining the animals together. So, I’d give it a five out of five for difficulty.
NYT Mini Crossword (Oct. 31) answers
Across
- 1A Hybrid equine animal with stripes — ZORSE
- 6A “Fingers crossed!” — I HOPE
- 7A Record company — LABEL
- 8A Shoe that can be decorated with pieces called Jibbitz — CROC
- 9A Wearing many ___ (versatile at work) — HATS
Down
- 1D Zippo, nada, nothin’ — ZILCH
- 2D Catherine of “Beetlejuice” — OHARA
- 3D Halloween costume with a cardboard box and aluminum foil — ROBOT
- 4D Tech product details — SPECS
- 5D Sushi fish served cooked — EEL
How to play other word games like the NYT Mini Crossword
When the NYT Mini Crossword word games feel like a hard challenge, you can play the LA Times and Washington Post crosswords to level up your word games. However, if you’re done with traditional crosswords, you can try Strands and Spelling Bee to increase your stock of words.
