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The effect of butterflies on Nobakov
Answers for Globle, Metazooa, Elemingle and more from Sep 8 - Sep 14
Abe Train
September 15, 2025
Coming to your inbox every Monday with a brand new fun-fact and all the answers to Trainwreck Labs games from the past week.
This week, we have…
A fun fact inspired by Chronogram
Metazooa: Live was incredible!
Answers to last week's games
Reader survey
Metazooa: Live… was amazing!
This weekend Trainwreck Labs brought Metazooa: Live to Berkeley, California. At the inaugural Metagame conference, an eclectic group of gaming enthusiasts, puzzle designers, and brilliant problem solvers collectively identified over 450 unique species of plants, animals, and fungus. Keep an eye on the Trainwreck Labs website for upcoming live events in a city near you!
Congratulations to the Purple Team for finding the most unique species at Metagame!
Do you want Metazooa: Live to come to one of your local parks? Let me know!
The effect of butterflies on Nobakov
Originally all of the characters of Lolita were butterflies, but Nobakov’s editor thought that would make the book inappropriate.
If you think a bestselling novelist would spend all his time buried in books, think again. Vladimir Nabokov (Chronogram guest #891 and author of Lolita) was as much a butterfly enthusiast as he was a literary genius. In fact, Nabokov was a world-class lepidopterist (a.k.a. butterfly scientist), having published more than a dozen scientific papers and identifying several new species during his lifetime.
Nabokov’s fascination with butterflies began in childhood, and he carried it with him across Russia, Europe, and the United States. While teaching literature at Wellesley and Harvard, he also worked as the unofficial curator of lepidoptera at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. There, Nabokov proposed a controversial theory: that the Polyommatus blues butterflies migrated to the Americas from Asia in five separate waves. At the time, most scientists dismissed his ideas as fanciful, but in 2011, DNA analysis confirmed that Nabokov’s intricate theory was spot-on. His butterfly work was so advanced that some consider his scientific legacy nearly as significant as his literary one.
If you look closely, you’ll spot butterflies fluttering through Nabokov’s novels and poems, acting as secret symbols and personal signatures. Next time you pick up a Nabokov book, remember: the man behind the pen was also the man with the net, chasing butterflies across continents and through the pages of science.
Learn more: Cornell
Trivia
Why did Nobakov flee Russia in 1917? |
Answers to last week's games
Monday, September 8 to Sunday, September 14.
Globle
| Globle: Capitals
|
Chronogram
| Fictogram
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Metazooa
| Metaflora
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Linxicon
The following are the shortest paths from last week:
#573 boss → job → truth → false
#574 ill → sick → dead → extinct → species
#575 cholesterol → fat → large → full → anyway
#576 clearly → understand → remember → recall
#577 snow → frozen → waiting → ready
#578 feed → food → wealth → estate
#579 slice → cut → remove → prove
#580 Play now!
Elemingle
#229 Rubidium
#230 Lithium
#231 Thorium
#232 Hassium
#233 Ruthenium
#234 Radon
#235 Titanium
#236 Play now!
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!
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