This grid logic puzzle consists of a series of jokes about the opening scene of Zero Wing, a SEGA console video game release whose impressively poor translation from the Japanese became the subject of an extremely popular Internet meme in the early 2000s. The introduction features a villain named CATS (sorry, cats 😾!) surprising and threatening the crew of a spaceship:
In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you !!
CATS: How are you gentlemen !!
CATS: All your base are belong to us.
CATS: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.
CATS: Ha ha ha ha ....
Operator: Captain !!
Captain: Take off every 'ZIG'!!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'ZIG'.
Captain: (...)For great justice.
We've moved this story back two centuries and turned it into a tale of competition for industrial resources in the Gilded Age. The most famous line of this dialogue, CATS's gloating remark "all your base are belong to us", describes what the gentlemen/captains of industry in our puzzle are trying to accomplish: attaining ownership of various bases (in our case, in the chemical sense).
The grid logic puzzle can be solved as follows from the given clues:
| Abercrombie | $3,000,000 | Zanesville | depot | quicklime |
| Billington | $2,000,000 | Harrisville | mine | ammonia |
| Carruthers | $4,000,000 | Dearborn | laboratory | potash |
| Darlington | $1,000,000 | Akron | warehouse | sodium bicarbonate |
| Edmonstone | $5,000,000 | Effingham | refining plant | caustic soda |
The clue phrase you'll get from answering the questions about your answers is FEE SIMPLE AND ALLODIAL TITLE ARE FORMS OF, which is completed (in the blanks at the end of the puzzle) by the answer LAND TENURE.