DAILY NO. 3 · VERIFIED MEASUREMENTS
The five insects & bugs objects from the Size It Up puzzle on September 3, 2026, with the measured size of each, the reference it was compared against, a source you can check, and how the community's guesses landed. Want the surprise first? Replay this puzzle — archived days never touch your streak.
Answer: a leafcutter ant measures 1.3 cm (length / span), which is about 1.2× smaller than the reference, a honey bee at 1.5 cm.
Leafcutters routinely carry many times their own body weight.
Common miss: players tend to inflate a leafcutter ant when it sits beside a honey bee — big things get squeezed, small familiar things get stretched.
Answer: a giant stick insect measures 56 cm (length / span), which is 1.2× as big as the reference, a domestic cat at 46 cm.
Record stick insects can exceed half a metre with legs extended.
Common miss: players tend to compress a giant stick insect when it sits beside a domestic cat — big things get squeezed, small familiar things get stretched.
Answer: a mosquito measures 1.5 cm (length / span), which is 1.2× as big as the reference, a leafcutter ant at 1.3 cm.
Only the females bite; the whine is the wingbeat, hundreds of times a second.
Common miss: players tend to compress a mosquito when it sits beside a leafcutter ant — big things get squeezed, small familiar things get stretched.
Answer: a Goliath beetle measures 11 cm (length / span), which is 1.1× as big as the reference, a hamburger at 10 cm.
Among the heaviest insects alive — the larvae can reach 100 g.
Common miss: players tend to compress a Goliath beetle when it sits beside a hamburger — big things get squeezed, small familiar things get stretched.
Answer: a large dragonfly measures 12 cm (length / span), which is 1.2× as big as the reference, a monarch butterfly at 10 cm.
Dragonflies catch their prey on over ninety per cent of attempts, the best hit rate of any predator.
Common miss: players tend to compress a large dragonfly when it sits beside a monarch butterfly — big things get squeezed, small familiar things get stretched.
Sizes are measured along the axis named in each round and link to their published source. Explore the full library by category, or read how scoring works.