Tapio had an idea right away what it was, but didn't want to answer too soon, just in case that might aggravate the sphinx (he was not quite sure of sphinx behavior and wished he could ask Isla about it). So he carefully reviewed the other parts of the riddle--ah, yes, it was referring to alphabetic letters, wasn't it? So, the first letter, or the "head" of the word 'crowd' was 'c', the "belly" of the word 'beast' was the letter in the middle, 'a', and the "tail" or end of the word 'rat' was 't', and that spelled..."Cat!" Tapio said out loud. "That is, I believe that is the answer," he continued, stepping forward a little and making a deep bow to the young sphinx. Because, one could never be to careful with mythological beings.
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