Pokemon Connections Categories

Poke Connections is a free, fan-made browser puzzle: 16 Pokemon names, four hidden groups, four lives. It is not affiliated with NYT Connections, Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, or Pokennection. A category here is a property shared by exactly four names on that board. The property comes from a public Pokedex extract of 1,025 species, checked 5 Nov 2026.

I count primary type and "either type" separately. Primary Water is 134 species. Water as either the first or second type is 154. Both numbers are the same extract under two definitions. I do not average them. Serebii confirms individual entries such as Pikachu's mouse classification; it is not the source of these totals. The official Pokedex URLs were reachable but did not expose readable entry data in this check, so they are not counted as independent confirmation.

The generator may use the families in the table. It may not use a joke, a move, or an ability, because this extract does not carry a move list and I will not invent one. Starters, hidden words, and real-world animals are real category ideas in the genre. They are not in the generator until the extract has a field I can check.

Try these properties in the puzzle maker; the rules page explains lives and one-away feedback.

Families I am not using yet

Starter quartets such as Charmander, Cyndaquil, Torchic, and Litten are a clear Fire-type-starter idea, and the research file records that example. The extract has no starter flag, so the generator cannot prove a name is a starter. I mention the example as a pattern, and I do not pretend today's board used it.

Hidden words inside names, shared abilities, and the real animal a design is based on show up in public answer archives for other puzzles. Gastly's Levitate ability is listed on Serebii (1 readable source in this check), which shows the kind of fact an ability group would need. I do not have that fact for every species in the extract, so ability groups stay off the board.

When you build a puzzle in the maker, the overlap check uses only the families in the table. A warning means one name also matches another group's property. A warning is not a second full solution by itself. The maker and daily generator also test whether another complete four-group partition exists among the supported properties.