How to Solve Pokemon Connections

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. These nine moves fit any board on this site. They do not reveal today's groups. For that, open the answers page after you have used the hints.

1. Say the category before the fourth tap

If you cannot name the property, you are collecting a vibe. Vibes cost lives. "These feel like water" is a hypothesis. Count the Water-looking names. If you have five, it is not the group, or one of them is a colour or a generation instead.

2. Find the name that fits two stories

The dangerous tile is the one you can justify twice. A Fire/Flying name can finish a Fire set or a Flying set. Park it. Build the other three of one story first. If those three only exist inside one story, the fourth tile is decided and the overlap was a decoy.

3. Clear a broad group only when the count is four

Primary type and generation are broad. They are valid yellow or green groups only when exactly four names on the board share them. Five names that share a generation means that generation is not the group, even if four of them "feel right".

4. Count, then commit

Write a tally in your head for the property you suspect: generation, colour, first letter. Sixteen names is small. A tally that lands on four is a candidate. A tally that lands on three is a one-away waiting to happen if you force a fourth.

5. Treat a shared first letter as a late suspect

Letter groups are allowed, and the letter S covers 135 species in the extract, so several S names on one board can be an accident. I still use letter groups, in the blue band on the daily and sometimes earlier on Expert. Do not open with them unless the other stories already failed.

6. One away means change one name

The message appears when your four include exactly three from one remaining group. Test a one-name swap against your suspected category. The message does not tell you which three were right, so compare every candidate with the property you named in step 1.

7. Spend a life when two stories both have three

You have four lives. A position with two incomplete stories is the right time to test one. Guessing on the first click, with no count, wastes the same life and teaches less. After the miss, the board is the same except for the life. The information was the point.

8. Read colour after type

Body colour is a recorded field, not the type colour you remember from a battle. A green-bodied group can include names whose type is not Grass. If Grass is already solved, look at the recorded colour next, not at a second type you have already used.

9. Leave the narrow group last

Legendary, mythical, baby, and a single evolution line are small buckets. They are easier to see once twelve names are gone. Forcing purple first usually means you noticed four famous names and called them a category. Fame is not a field in the extract.

On Unlimited and Expert the same nine moves apply. The streak ends on a loss, so a deliberate life in step 7 is still a life on that run. I would rather lose a practice run on a counted guess than preserve a streak with a guess I cannot explain.