About the theme

African Safari covers the savanna's big-name cast — lion, elephant, giraffe, zebra, leopard, hippo, rhino — alongside the supporting players: warthog, mongoose, wildebeest, aardvark, pangolin. The longer Latin-rooted names (porcupine, crocodile, wildebeest) take ten-plus cells and tend to anchor the bigger grids' diagonals. Meerkat and impala slip in as the shorter alternatives. The filler reads as the savanna would — heavy on A, O, and the open consonants of animal names.