The puzzle gives a number of pictures of snakes in silly situations. As solvers attempt to solve them, they should start to notice that each word/phrase starts with Cu, the symbol for Copper, as clued by the title. The next realization solvers should make is that, in fact, every picture can be spelled out entirely with chemicals to help disambiguate them.
Each picture additionally has a number of snakes in it. Solvers can take the Nth element in the clued word/phrase. Each of these has an atomic number between 1 and 26, which should encourage solvers to convert them via A1Z26.
| Picture | Number of Snakes | Nth Element | Atomic Number | Clued Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cu P I Ds B O W | 5 | B | 5 | E |
| Cu Mg Ra No S Al I S | 2 | Mg | 12 | L |
| C U B B Y | 5 | B | 5 | E |
| Cu Re Ds Al Mo N | 4 | Al | 13 | M |
| Cu C K O O | 2 | C | 6 | F |
| Cu F F S | 2 | F | 9 | I |
| Cu Es Ti C K | 3 | Ti | 22 | V |
| Cu B O I Db O Ne | 2 | B | 5 | E |
| Cu Ra Ca O | 3 | Ca | 20 | T |
| Cu B Er O V Er | 5 | V | 23 | W |
| Cu P Ca K Es | 2 | P | 15 | O |
Reading in order, this gives the phrase ELEM FIVE TWO - the fifty second element is Tellurium which has a symbol of Te. Repeating the puzzle's mechanic and adding a Cu to the start, we get the answer, CUTE.
With the exception of Cum Grano Salis, every picture's word/phrase can be uniquely parsed as a set of elements - NO can unfortunately be parsed as either No or N O, however, as that's after the extract, it should have no impact on the solve.