Deduction Strategy

Choosing an Opening Guess

Your first guess has nothing to react to yet, so it works best as a broad probe. A useful opener tends to combine a common generation, two types rather than one (filling both Type 1 and Type 2 with information instead of one guaranteed dash), a height and weight somewhere in the middle of the range, and a color that isn't especially rare. There is no single Pokémon that's mathematically "best" to open with — the skill is in reading the row you get back, not in memorizing a starting pick.

Interpreting Green, Yellow, and Gray

Green cells are settled — stop considering alternatives for that attribute. Yellow cells are directional: a yellow Generation means try one generation closer; a yellow Height or Weight means the arrow tells you which way to adjust; a yellow Type means the type you guessed is real, just in the other slot. Gray cells still narrow the field — they rule out an entire attribute value, which is often just as useful as a green match, especially early on.

Narrowing Generation

Because a yellow Generation cell means "one away," two guesses from adjacent generations can pin the answer's generation down almost immediately. If your first guess is Generation 2 and comes back yellow, the answer is Generation 1 or 3 — a second guess from either side resolves it.

Using the Height/Weight Arrows

Treat the arrows as a binary search, not a hint to ignore. If a guess's Height comes back gray with ▲, your next guess should be noticeably taller — not just slightly, since gray means you're still more than 20% off.

Using Typing Efficiently

Because Type 2 shows a dash (and counts as a match) when the answer has no second type, guessing a dual-type Pokémon is informative either way: a gray Type 2 either means the answer has no second type at all, or has a completely unrelated one — and a follow-up single-type guess can distinguish those two cases.

When to Reveal Clues

Clues never cost a guess, so there's little downside to revealing one once you're genuinely stuck rather than burning two or three guesses on long shots. That said, using clues is visible in your shared result — if preserving an unaided streak matters to you, save them for when you'd otherwise use a guess purely to gather information rather than to actually name the Pokémon.

Avoiding Wasted Guesses

A wasted guess is one that can't possibly teach you anything new — guessing a Pokémon that shares no plausible attribute with what you already know, or re-guessing something whose feedback you've already fully absorbed. Before submitting, ask whether the guess could still come back green somewhere useful, or whether you're just guessing hopefully.

An Example Deduction Sequence

Here's a real sequence, computed against an actual secret answer, showing how a a few gray and yellow rows narrow things down:

Water, Generation 1, and Blue are all locked in. The answer is bigger than Squirtle and one evolution stage further along.

Type 2 is confirmed as Flying. Combined with guess 1, the answer is a Generation 1, Water/Flying, Blue Pokémon, larger than both guesses so far.

The height arrow flipped to ▼ — Onix (8.8m) overshot, so the answer is shorter than 8.8m but still taller than Squirtle. Weight is now yellow, so we're within 20% on that axis.

At this point — Water/Flying, Generation 1, Blue, large but under 8.8m tall, one evolution stage past a basic form — a confident final guess is Gyarados, which is in fact the answer used to compute this whole sequence.