Irregular Crossword Clue Explanation (August 2007)
7 across: ...Are we playing Pokémon or Bridge? (9)
Answer: TRUMPCARD
Bridge was just the best-known card game I could think of that has trump cards.
8 across: ...brainwashing? o.o (4)
Answer: UXIE
Uxie can apparently (according to the Diamond Pokédex entry) perform a complete mindwipe just by looking at you. Ouch.
11 across: The number would be more appropriate for its pre-evolution. (10)
Answer: BUTTERFREE
The 'number' referred to is the number in the crossword, 11 across. :P Which is Metapod's National Pokédex number.
12 across: ...why can Numel learn it, of all things? (4)
Answer: HOWL
Howl is learned by a few Pokémon. Most of them are clearly canines, and then we've got the Whismur family (which would learn it since it's a sound move) and Cyndaquil family, which one can at least somewhat picture howling. Numel, though...
13 across: A blond who's friends with a redhead. (7)
Answer: VOLKNER
Volkner has blond hair, and he's friends with Flint, who has bright red hair. Pretty straightforward.
14 across: I guess they realized they'd overdone that creamy yellow color. (11)
Answer: METEORFALLS
In Ruby and Sapphire, the ground in Meteor Falls was a pretty light, yellow, sandy color. In Emerald they changed this to a 'normal' rock color.
15 across: And what do you know, it did get new evolutions. (5)
Answer: EEVEE
...this one is really pretty obvious. After Ruby and Sapphire did not include new Eevee evolutions, it was assumed that there never would be more, but Diamond and Pearl brought along Leafeon and Glaceon anyway.
16 across: Does he have a lot of lucid dreams? (6)
Answer: LUCIAN
The first thing I thought of when I saw Lucian's name was lucid dreams, which would fit since he trains Psychic Pokémon. The other explanations, that it's from the Latin word for light or from 'illusion' or 'hallucination', make sense too and perhaps more so, but hey.
17 across: You can get it for free now! (6)
Answer: REVIVE
Revives always used to be items that could only be bought for 1500P (or found lying around on the ground), but now you can get an unlimited amount of them for free in the Sinnoh Underground.
20 across: He just loves advertising, doesn't he? (5)
Answer: RYDEL
In R/S/E, a person on Cycling Road will inform you that your Rydel bike has Rydel's name all over it.
24 across: Apparently Cyrus's successor. (6)
Answer: SATURN
After Cyrus has disappeared, Saturn will be in the Team Galactic HQ in Veilstone and says he has been left in command of the HQ and the rest of the membership.
25 across: Yay for mining. (12)
Answer: OREBURGHCITY
Well, Oreburgh City is a mining town. Not much else to it.
27 across: It's orange and you EV train with it. (9)
Answer: POWERBELT
Out of the power items, which are a great help for EV training since they give four extra Effort Points in their respective stat whenever you defeat a Pokémon, only the Power Belt is orange.
28 across: Stand aside. Happiny is now eggier than you. (6)
Answer: TOGEPI
Togepi has been given out as an egg to the protagonist in both G/S/C and FR/LG - appropriately, since it is an egg Pokémon after all - but in D/P it is Happiny that serves this purpose - and it is also an egg Pokémon.
29 across: And we were just celebrating about being rid of Flash... (5)
Answer: DEFOG
Flash used to be the most painfully useless HM move in the games, and when finally D/P made it a TM instead of an HM, we all rejoiced... until we found out that instead we have Defog, which is even worse than Flash.
30 across: Oh, come on. This capitalization doesn't even make sense. (12)
Answer: NEVERMELTICE
D/P officially capitalizes Nevermeltice as 'NeverMeltIce'. As I ranted about in the D/P Changes section, 'Never Melt Ice' doesn't even make the tiniest bit more sense than just 'Nevermeltice', so there doesn't seem to be any reason they'd capitalize it like that.
1 down: 130 base Attack and 120 Defense? Did it really need this? (9)
Answer: PROTECTOR
Rhydon doens't exactly need protection with 120 base Defense, and combined with its Attack base of 130, it really doesn't exactly need an evolution, either - but they gave us Rhyperior anyway.
2 down: Do Pokémon get sent to prison? (8)
Answer: IMPRISON
ImPRISON. Duh.
3 down: This move is so last month. (9)
Answer: WATERFALL
Heh, look at 3 down in the June/July crossword. It's about the most efficient user of Waterfall in the game. :P
4 down: The greatest television in the world, according to Google. (5)
Answer: LUXIO
At the time of the crossword's creation, the top Google result for 'Luxio' was actually a page for a brand of television called Luxio, which claimed it was the best television in the world.
5 down: Still pretty much the most practical healing item for most situations. (8)
Answer: LEMONADE
A Lemonade costs 350P and heals your Pokémon by 80 HP, meaning each HP costs 4.375P. A Fresh Water, which heals by 50 HP and costs 200P, is technically more practical, as there each HP costs exactly 4P, the difference is minimal and the Lemonade heals quite a bit more. All other healing items cost considerably more per HP of healing, except for the Max Potion when you use it to heal more than 571 HP (a situation which will only ever occur for Chansey, Blissey and Wobbuffet, since they are the only Pokémon whose HP can possibly get that high, and a Wobbuffet would need to be at very low health). All in all, Lemonade wins the deal.
6 down: This name so calls for religious humour. (5)
Answer: GIBLE
I mean, come on. The Holy Gible. It was begging for it.
9 down: Couldn't you have made this place a little bit easier to get to? (13)
Answer: SNOWPOINTCITY
In order to reach Snowpoint City for the first time, you need to navigate your way through Mt. Coronet, get onto the outside, navigate your way through there, and then walk across that annoying deep snow where you can hardly move. Do they hate tourism or something?
10 down: Oh, dear. Tentacles and vore. (9)
Answer: CARNIVINE
Carnivine has tentacles, and it eats other Pokémon. Um, yeah. Hentai artists are going to have a field day with it once they realize this.
13 down: Apparently it's not a queen. (9)
Answer: VESPIQUEN
Its English name was originally reported to be 'Vespiqueen' on Pokéxperto and 'Vespiquen' on Serebii.net The latter turned out to be right, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to leave out that E, since Vespiquen is only nine letters long and thus there is room for one more.
14 down: Finally they get to levitate like they're supposed to. (10)
Answer: MAGNETRISE
The Magnemite family has always been shown to levitate in the anime, but yet has never managed to be immune to Ground moves until now, when it gets this move.
18 down: It doesn't sound like its type, or in fact like the only Pokémon that learns it naturally would learn it... and to boot, that Pokémon doesn't have much to do with this move anyway. (10)
Answer: VACUUMWAVE
Vacuum Wave is a Fighting-type move and is learned naturally only by Hitmonchan. Made me go 'Bzwuh?', at least. And Hitmonchan has truly terrible Special Attack (base 35), so the Special Vacuum Wave is pretty much useless for it.
19 down: Although we got used to it that way, I suppose it sounded more like a Bug-type move before. (11)
Answer: DRACOMETEOR
The first D/P attack to be revealed was 'Meteoric Swarm', a Dragon-type Overheat. 'Swarm' does sound more Bug-like than Dragon-like. Then we all forgot that this was just a translation of the Japanese name, and people even started to wonder if they'd extended the character limit for attacks since 'Meteoric Swarm' was fourteen characters rather than the previously allowed twelve. However, it turned out the actual English name was Draco Meteor, a more type-appropriate name that didn't violate the character limit.
21 down: I guess the 'damaging non-legendary-signature-move Psychic attacks which the Abra family can't learn' list just gained a second member. (11)
Answer: ZENHEADBUTT
The only damaging Psychic attacks that the Abra family can't learn are Extrasensory, Zen Headbutt, Luster Purge, Mist Ball and Psycho Boost. Luster Purge, Mist Ball and Psycho Boost are the signature moves of Latios, Latias and Deoxys, respectively, so the Abra family naturally wouldn't learn them. That leaves Extrasensory and Zen Headbutt, the latter being the new addition to this short list.
22 down: 13 across's predecessor, so to speak. (7)
Answer: WATTSON
He is not literally Volkner's predecessor, of course - as in he didn't own the Sunyshore City Gym before Volkner - but he was the Electric-type Gym leader in the previous generation.
23 down: You can finally see it in action! (9)
Answer: QUICKCLAW
It never used to be possible to actually tell when your Pokémon was benefitting from the Quick Claw except by noticing when you went first against a Pokémon that was supposed to be faster. However, Diamond and Pearl actually show the using-held-item animation when the Quick Claw takes effect.
26 down: Well, it was about time its type got a decently powerful move that more than a couple of Pokémon could learn and get STAB for. (7)
Answer: BUGBUZZ
Bug never used to have any powerful moves learned by more than a handful of actual Bug Pokémon: Heracross monopolized the 120-power Megahorn, and only Venonat, Spinarak, Volbeat and Yanma could get the 75-power Signal Beam. However, now we have a handful of new Bug attacks, the most powerful being Bug Buzz, a 90-power move learned by 11 individual families of Bug Pokémon.
27 down: Found in Eterna Forest when Emerald is in the GBA slot. (6)
Answer: PINECO
Well, Pineco is the only Pokémon that is found in Eterna Forest only with Emerald in the GBA slot. Not much more to say about it.
Page last modified August 13 2016 at 02:34 UTC