GREATEST HITS MONTH: PUZZLE #79: 4X Game 4: XX/XY 2

GREATEST HITS MONTH

PUZZLE #79

4X GAME 4: XX/XY 2

Well, it's June, the month I was born in, so to celebrate, I've decided to create another theme month in the form of Greatest Hits Month! All this month, I'll be posting puzzles that are either original creations or preexisting puzzle types that have proven successful for this blog, and starting things off will be an original creation of mine called 4X Game! In case you need a refresher on how to solve it, here are the (rather lengthy) directions!

Below, there are 3 "X"'s and one "Y"; the "X"'s each contain four 5-letter answers, and the "Y" has three. Each answer is entered at an angle (save for one of the words in the "Y"), following one of the arrows as it does so, and the last three letters of one answer will be the first three letters of another, albeit in reverse order. In the example above (I know all the answers are three letters instead of five, but hopefully you'll still get the idea), the words in the "X" are MAP, PAT, TAR, and RAM, and the words in the "Y" are ROT, TON and NOR. However, to make things even harder, none of the clues are numbered or in order, so you'll have to figure out which word goes in which angle, but don't worry, as each "tip" of each "X" or "Y" (the outermost letters) will contain the same letters as the "tips" of its neighboring "X" or "Y". Going back to the example above, the rightmost "tips" in the "X" contain the letters "R" and "T", so the leftmost "tips" in the "Y" has the same exact letters, in the same exact placement.

Once you're done, unscramble the letters in the "tips" that have no neighbors (the yellow squares) to get this week's FINAL ANSWER: A three-letter word

X #1
* _____ ½ (gender-bending anime)
* "Are too!" rebuttal
* Controversial Norwegian author Mykle (answer hidden in RAGNAROK)
* Polynesian kingdom with over 170 islands

X #2
* Beetle Bailey's boss
* Kind of tapestry featured in a scene from Hamlet
* Teen Titans character who can control the earth
* White heron

X #3
* Captain America: Civil War actor Chris
* Chocolate-filled Kellogg's cereal
* Ginger-flavored cookies
* Project _____ (recently-cancelled Xbox One game)

Y #4
* Baby carrier?
* Granny and Gordian, for two
* Yzma's sidekick from The Emperor's New Groove

Once you think you know what the FINAL ANSWER is, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net or itsredhead64@gmail.com (though I'm more likely to check the second one) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in about two weeks. You can also use those email addresses to give me some comments and feedback (or get a hint from me in exchange for a "hint star", more details for that are on the sidebar to the right) or send me the answer to last week's puzzle, if you haven't already figured it out. If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a version you can print out!