Long Multilayered Puzzle: What's the animal?

Question

This is a puzzle I made myself!

What's the puzzle?
You will be presented with an image containing a puzzle, then another one, then yet another one, and so on.
Here's the first image:

Wait, doesn't that count as multiple puzzles?
...I guess it does.

How to find the next image then? Please help!
Here's some information since it's pretty much impossible to figure out yourself:

• All images are posted in Postimages, and you'll need to find the next image's URL from the current image.
• In each image is a puzzle that yields a sequence of letters and numbers. The next image URL can be determined by using that sequence in the format https://postimg.cc/{sequence}. Read that again if it's unclear 🙂
• In the bottom left of each image are formattings that show:
  • Which part of the sequence is filled, and
  • Capitalization/format – U for uppercase, l for lowercase, and n for number (see the first image for visualization).
• The formattings have blanks – fill those in with the puzzle's solutions! Try again if the URL doesn't lead to a valid image.
• It technically can lead to a valid image even if the answer's wrong, but that's very very unlikely.

Wait, can you give me an example?
I originally included examples but they're too long, so I'll add them if/when someone asks.

I can just find the URLs with brute-force, right?
Yes, technically, but that won't be fun.

Can I have some hints? Please???
The answer depends on whether you count this as a hint, but...

The puzzles don't involve ROTs or ciphers or encrypting/decrypting stuff because I'm bad at them.

Also...

Most of the time, you don't need to look for small details.

You're welcome 🙂

How many images are there?
There are less than 20. The last image's puzzle will give the ultimate answer to my question!

How do I know if my answer's correct?
As I said before... The answer is an animal, and is 3-6 letters long.

Some clarifications (so the answer doesn't feel unfair):

• The answer could be the animal's "nickname" or its fancy Latin scientific name.
• The animal can be either fact or fiction (meaning it can be real or fake).

Hey, that's my answer!
Good! Now, write exactly 14 paragraphs describing how you got to that answer. Also, incomplete answers are fine 🙂

But somebody else has posted 78.57% of the answer, what should I do?
Well... you can either edit that answer to include the remaining 21.43% (only do this if you want to spoil the fun for @theozh), or comment on that answer, or post an answer yourself! They're all perfectly fine.
You can also say nothing and wait for others to solve it, give them a small hint, or mislead them by giving a false hint (recommended by 9/10 doctors).

Why is was is was there a bounty?
...I guess @JGibbers wants to draw more attention to this question. Appreciate that, thanks!

I set another bounty to hopefully get someone solve the whole thing. Besides, I don't mind losing my rep points 🙂

⚠️VERY IMPORTANT⚠️

I made at least 1 unintended mistake 😃. So, correction(s):

• In the third image, the format should have a capital F instead of a lowercase f.

Second-lastly, as people have really short attention spans nowadays, I applaud you for reading this far (unless you just skipped through everything I typed above) 👏

Alright, that's all. Have fun and GOOD LUCK!

Answer 1

The animal is

the OPPIH (warning: slightly gross video)

theozh's answer gets as far as Puzzle 9

https://postimg.cc/8jRCMZSM

A couple people solved Puzzle 9 in the comments on that answer:

The letters are country codes of adjacent countries:
TDCFCD: Chad, Central African Republic, DRC
TMAFPK: Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan
VE__SR: Venezuala, _____, Suriname
Guyana is in between them so we have the letters GY.

The black queen hints at the Queen's gambit, where black's only move is d5

So our url for Puzzle 10 is https://postimg.cc/7GYdmv50

Puzzle 10

There is a Greek flag and two fractions, 5/8 and 2/3. The Greek alphabet has 24 letters. 5/8 of 24 is 15 and 2/3 of 24 is 16. The 15th and 16th letters are omicron and pi. At first I mistakenly thought this meant OP as in "original poster" but that led me to OP's user page where there is evidence of quite an affinity for the "oppih"(warning: slightly gross video) which could be spelled omicron pi if pronounced "oh" "pi".

Answer 2

Not a complete solution...

Puzzle 1:

Looks like a QWERTY keyboard.The sequence of the letters is not clear, but first trial would be qw1 BXL___BL ...lln.. https://postimg.cc/BXLqw1BL

Puzzle 2:

The atom model directs to the periodic system of the elements. Two numbers 111,48 mirrored. Element numbers 48 and 111 are Cadmium (Cd) and Roentgenium (Rg) Reversed and lower case makes gr and dc. __J__JTz ll.ll... https://postimg.cc/grJdcJTz

Puzzle 3:

Italy in the center of a map. Approx. on top of Rome the number 1515. This leads to the Roman number MDXV. 4_fvb___ .l...Ull (with the correction f-->F). https://postimg.cc/4mFvbDxv

Puzzle 4:

On first sight it looks like a clock with 12 subdivisions. What does ENE mean? ENE is e.g. a romanian last name or the airport code of an airport in Indonesia. So maybe some letters of numbers nine and six in Romanian or Indonesian? However, apparently, this should be a compass rose (but shouldn't this have 16 subdivisions?) and ENE stands for East-North-East. The arrow to 1 points to West (W) and South (S) or apparently (SSS). Take the first letter of W and the second and third letter of SSS. 18__mv_T ..Ul..l. https://postlmg.cc/18WsmvsT

Puzzle 5:

Six times F, 0, 1/3 makes #FFFFFF in RGB colors "white" and #000000 is "black" and 1/3 * 6 is 2. _ypj8_h_ l....U.n https://postimg.cc/wypj8Bh2

Puzzle 6:

No idea what the first image should represent, some pads or a door stopper...? Well, The puzzle text has some typos: gues > guess, bob > job, nect > next. Take the correct letters, i.e. s,j,x. A card deck has typically 52 cards. ___V_Lq_ UUl.n..n https://postimg.cc/SJxV5Lq2

Puzzle 7:

A map which only shows blue. This could be a zoom-in into an ocean, i.e. sea. Chess... the position of the black king (g8) or the white bishop (h7)? Doesn't work. Black must have done a castling which is noted as 0-0 or sometimes as O-O... no idea...

For the time being I'm stuck here.

ok, apparently these should be the Marshall Islands, two letter code (mh) (I overlooked OP's comment on 2-letter code), however, I couldn't find any map which resembles the given image, so this was more a trial and error. Chess: last move white Bishop (B) to h7. ___n__FM lll.ln.. https://postimg.cc/mhbnh7FM

Puzzle 8:

Except for Clint Eastwood I had to reverse image search the other people. 1. Clint Eastwood, 2. Robert Downey Jr., 3. Snoop Dogg, 4. Lionel Richie. They are all US-citizens. About the huge number... it is in the list of the on-line encyclopedia of integer sequences https://oeis.org/A002000/list but how further? 8__C_ZS_ .lU.U..U. If first part is maybe uS, how to make two letters out of this big number?

Stuck again...

Apparently, I consulted the only Wikipedia language page where Lionel Richie was not listed as Jr. Thanks to the hint from @Sconibulus it is not US, but Jr. For the second part, I have no idea how to reduce the big number (similar to Puzzle 3 as @Sconibulus suggets) down to two letters. So, wild guessing led to MM, but why MM=2000? 8__C_ZS_ .lU.U..U https://postimg.cc/8jRCMZSM

Puzzle 9:

No clue where to start. A lot of letters. First guess would be the first letters of the words of a well known quote or song or whatever. The second drawing, no idea what this should be: a strange meeple? a pawn in a game? How to get from this to a letter and a number? Game over...? I'm also not sure what this Easter egg in the lower right corner should hint to.

Stuck again...

Answer 3

Good job, everyone!

First, to the people who contributed in solving this:

• @theozh (puzzles 1-7)
• @Sconibulus (puzzles 8, 9)
• @caPNCApn (puzzle 10)

...and to those who stopped by:

• @DanDan0101
• @1357924680a
• @PattuX (extra credit for thinking about sequences and even flag ratios, that's creative!)
• @toybaer
• @JS1 (extra credit for thinking about the map of Greece (and even finding an actual animal), that's also creative!)

Clarifications

Puzzle 4:

However, apparently, this should be a compass rose (but shouldn't this have 16 subdivisions?) and ENE stands for East-North-East.

Correct! Of course, putting 16 subdivisions would make it much more obvious–so I decided to use a clock instead.

The arrow to 1 points to West (W) and South (S) or apparently (SSS).

Actually, it's just S. The 2,3 bit tells you that S is the second and third letter 🙂

Puzzle 6:

No idea what the first image should represent, some pads or a door stopper...?

Actually, those are three blank Scrabble tiles (which refer to three letters)! Image taken from here (manually edited).

Puzzle 8:

So, wild guessing led to MM, but why MM=2000?

Well, that's because the number is in OEIS A002000 (I also pointed this out in a comment).

Puzzle 9:

I'm also not sure what this Easter egg in the lower right corner should hint to.

Exactly! I intentionally put it there to make you overthink. You're welcome :)

The black queen hints at the Queen's gambit, where black's only move is d5

Actually... It refers to the Queen's Pawn Game (hence the GAME text), where black plays d5.

Puzzle 10:

[...] that led me to OP's user page where there is evidence of quite an affinity for the "oppih"...

Indeed! The hint was in my profile. (Also, if it's not clear enough, the "I really really like oppihs" bit is actually a joke. I'm not an insane person obsessed with oppihs 🙂 )

Alright, hope you enjoyed this puzzle! Thanks for stopping by.