Hint: Find a common pet breed. (Side note: I want to thank Lewis Dean Hyatt, whose March 2020 puzzle for the Fireball Contest Crossword was--full disclosure!--where I got the idea for this meta's mechanic from. Credit where credit is due! Check out Diary of a Crossword Fiend's review of the puzzle here, but do so after solving this one, as the explanation of his puzzle's mechanic will spoil this puzzle. Cheers! https://crosswordfiend.com/2020/03/29/fireball-contest-march-25-2020/)
The meta answer is SIAMESE (Hint: Look for a common pet breed.)
Please visit this post on my blog for the full explanation of the answer; there's some formatting involved in describing that can't be pulled off in this comment box. Thanks!
Thanks! Yeah, it took a good long time, to be sure! And I started with finding some real word that "ENCODED" could be. It was a bit arbitrary, but my options were also limited (ha!) Thanks again.