Polygon
All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
A polygon has at least three sides and three angles
and cannot have any curved sides. A square is a polygon, and so is a star. The
polygon I am thinking of is a regular polygon word puzzle in ‘The Times’. Tuesday’s polygon was
a hexagon consisting of six four-sided polygons or Isosceles trapezoids
enclosing a hexagon.
Today’s polygon is a heptagon of seven Isosceles trapezoids
enclosing a heptagon. Last Friday’s was an octagon and Saturday’s was a nonagon.
Whatever the size of the polygon, the challenge remains the same. In the
central shape is a letter and the surrounding shapes have one letter each.
Simply, the player has to find words composed of at least four of the random
letters (sometimes at least three,
depending on the size of the polygon), but each word must contain the
central letter.
In the course of playing it I have discovered words I never
knew existed, thus negating any thoughts I had previously embraced about having
a ‘good vocabulary’. Too many times I have to press the ‘Solution’ button,
which always kindly enquires, ‘Are you sure you want to reveal the solution?’
Thus it was that I came across ‘tahr’, which can be
spelt ‘tehr’ but wasn’t on this occasion, as there was no ‘e’. The letters were
a central ‘T’, meaning that it had to be used in any three-letter or more word,
surrounded by Y, A, H, R, C, I. There are thirty words to be made from this
array. Encouraging messages pop up if you’re lucky - ‘Average’, ‘Good’, ‘Very
good’ and so on.
Female Himalayan tahrAnyway, ‘tahr’ was new to me, but maybe not to a New
Zealander or a South African. A tahr, I discovered, is an Asian animal related
to goats and sheep. There are three species with distinct differences. The Himalayan
tahr is widespread in the Himalayas and was introduced to the Southern Alps of
New Zealand to be hunted for sport, along with another introduced species, the
chamois. To gain some revenge these two animals are now posing a serious threat
to the ecosystems in those areas. They have no natural predators and so must be
controlled by other means.
The male Himalayan tahr has a beautiful mane.
The following from Wikipedia:
New
Zealand alpine ecosystems evolved over millions of years in isolation without
any large mammal browsers (such as tahr), and many alpine plants have no
defence mechanisms (such as toxins or spines) to discourage tahr from eating
them.
Herding
browsers such as tahr and chamois cause two-fold damage; firstly, by eating
native plants; secondly by trampling large areas of vegetation and compactable
soils, when herds of animals gather together.
Tahr
graze at high altitudes, in alpine grasslands and sub-alpine shrublands, and
browse on native plants that birds, lizards and insects use for feeding,
nesting and shelter. The tahr diet includes some large, succulent herbaceous
species including alpine buttercups and mountain daisies. Some of these species
are ranked as Threatened or At Risk by the New Zealand Threat Classification
System.
Tahr
also feed on snow tussock and shrub species which are the dominant vegetation
in many of New Zealand’s subalpine and alpine environments. Tahr are a major
threat to the sensitive ecosystems of alpine regions as their social nature
increases pressure in localised areas. In extreme situations, large groups of
tahr can transform tall tussocks and subalpine shrublands to a grassy turf or
bare ground.
A pair of Himalayan tahrs escaped
from a South African zoo in 1936 and established a small population on Table Mountain.
Most of them have been culled.
The other two species are
the Arabian tahr of Oman and the Nilgiri tahr of South India. Both are
considered endangered, with the Nilgiri tahr being susceptible to poaching and
illegal hunting.
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