Some kitchen ingredients better than others for clumping??

That's not matching my experience.

Yes; I was encouraging an early death for Glewyas, and was then placing the hydra in the centre of the room. But when food respawns, it respawns already moving, so they can move outside the hydra's radius of damage before the next tick of damage happens. So if I do nothing I usually end up with 2 or 3 mobs outside the damage range when I can only afford to have one out there. This why I'm standing on top of the hydra trying to find ways to attract them back to me.

Am I missing something? I've been back through the cylinder list to see whether I overlooked an upgrade that would increase the hydra radius, but I couldn't see anything.

Also, just noticed the hydra page claims that at level 1 the training counts were 6 awfuls and 7 strongs, so I've updated that to the current requirements of 7 awfuls and 8 strongs. Not sure when that changed, but maybe some of those who posted replies managed to complete Rank 1 when the counts were at the lower level, which would have made it significantly easier.