Week 1: The Elephant in the Room

Visual clue. Savanna animals with big, bold shapes: an elephant, a giraffe, a zebra and a lion.

The hook. All four are iconic species of sub-Saharan Africa.

Here's the trap we set. The African Elephant is one of two elephants in the puzzle. Group it with the Indian Elephant and you lose a guess: the puzzle sorts by continent, not by species.

Visual clue. Jungle animals: a smaller-eared elephant, a striped tiger, an armoured rhino and a fanned peacock.

The hook. All four are native to the Indian subcontinent. The peacock is the national bird of India; the tiger is its national animal.

Here's the trap we set. The Indian Elephant is the second elephant. The Indian Rhinoceros looks like it could join the African group; the rhino here has one horn, not two.

Visual clue. Look at the mouths: every animal here has long, protruding teeth.

The hook. Walrus, wild boar, narwhal and warthog all grow tusks. So do elephants, which is exactly why the elephants are the trap.

Here's the trap we set. The elephants have tusks too. If you reached for "tusks" first you had six candidates and no way to choose. The warthog is the near-miss: it is African, but it lives here.

Visual clue. Farm and caravan animals, often shown with people, carts or loads.

The hook. Oxen, horses, camels and donkeys have carried, pulled and ploughed for humans for thousands of years.

Here's the trap we set. The camel looks like it belongs with the African animals, and the ox looks like it belongs with the Asian ones. Neither does. This group only snaps into place once the other three are gone.