Guides · 2 November 2026

Why Simipour beats Pikachu as a first guess in Pokemondle

With every generation switched on, Pokemondle hides one of 1,025 Pokémon, and Classic gives you eight clues per guess: both types, egg group, colour, evolution stage, generation, height and weight. To find the strongest opening move we played each of the 1,025 as a first guess against every possible answer and counted how many Pokémon would still fit the colours and arrows you get back. The average of that count is the score. A perfect opener would leave one.

The ranking

The typical opener leaves about 54 Pokémon (Regieleki sits at the median). The three weakest are Coalossal, Kingambit and Baxcalibur, each leaving close to 300.

Simipour is the most average Pokémon in the game

That sounds like an insult, and in Pokemondle it is the best compliment there is. Four of the eight clues are numbers with an arrow, and an arrow only helps when your guess sits in the middle of the range.

• Height 1.0 m. The median Pokémon is exactly 1.0 m tall.
• Weight 29 kg. The median is 28 kg.
• Generation 5. The middle of the nine generations, and also the biggest single generation in the game (156 Pokémon).
• Stage 2. Stage 1 covers 541 Pokémon and stage 3 only 121, so a middle-stage guess sorts every answer into “earlier”, “same” or “later” in one move.

The other clues help too. Water is the most common first type (134 Pokémon) and blue the most common colour (170). Simipour has no second type, and in Pokemondle a “None” against a “None” counts as a match, so the Type 2 tile alone splits the field almost in half: 499 Pokémon have a single type. Field is the most common egg group (278), so its egg group tile turns green or yellow far more often than a rarer group would.

Dewott, Floatzel, Simisage and Watchog follow the same pattern: single-typed, mid-sized, middle-stage, from the middle generations, with common colours and egg groups. Dewott is almost Simipour’s twin, a blue Water-type in the Field egg group from Generation 5.

Why Charizard and Pikachu struggle

Charizard is everything an opener shouldn’t be. It is a Fire and Flying stage 3 from Generation 1, 1.7 m and over 90 kg, in the Monster and Dragon egg groups. For most answers its arrows all point the same way (smaller, lighter, later generation, earlier stage), and its types and egg groups miss. Hundreds of Pokémon return the exact same row of colours, which is why it ranks 1009th out of 1,025.

Pikachu does better, 364th, because Electric is a single type and stage 2 is useful. But it is small (0.4 m, 6 kg) and from Generation 1, so its height, weight and generation arrows mostly say “up”. Its Field egg group is common, but the Fairy group it adds is rare.

How hard Pokemondle is in practice

Between 27 October and 1 November 2026, players finished 314 Classic rounds of Pokemondle, solved 283 of them (90%) and needed 7.7 guesses on average. Out of the 41 games with enough rounds to compare, only Minecraft, Undertale and Jujutsu Kaisen took more guesses. With 1,025 possible answers that is no surprise, and it is why a good opener matters more here than in a game with 50 characters.

Two practical notes

These numbers assume all nine generations are switched on. If you play with a generation filter, the pool changes and a different Pokémon may come out on top within your range, though the same idea holds: pick something single-typed and near the middle of the height, weight and generation spread for the generations you play.

They also assume you read every tile carefully on your second guess. Pokemondle opens extra clues as you go, starting with a Pokédex entry after six wrong guesses, so a slow start is never the end of a round.

Play: Pokemondle