Pokemon BrainStrain v.15 (approved by Lady Vulpix)

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Knight of Time got this. Here you are!

Your turn, pal!

[Knight of Time]

Thanks Mikachu.

Okay, now it's time for a puzzle. If you believe you know the missing letter, it's the one I just cleverly left out from this quirky example of a post. It starts this one.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

That's clever. I think the letter in question is letter D.

My opening guess is Doublade. I hope I spelled it right this time.

[Knight of Time]

You found the missing letter, and no worries, you spelled your guess right. But it's not the one I'm looking for.

Doublade: D*

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

When I thought about the letters, I had to stop before Å, Ä and Ö because they aren't found in English language.

Now I am aiming at a mighty Dragon, namely Dragonite!

[Knight of Time]

I'm afraid your might didn't come out quite right (not yet anyway).

Dragonite: D*

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Let's see if there's a Dugtrio underground in this puzzle.

[Knight of Time]

Your shovel hit nothing but dirt, sorry.

Dugtrio: D*

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

I just noticed I'm missing some formes of Deoxys.

*is greedy*

[Shadow Wolf]

Let me see if I can pierce through the puzzle with Decidueye.

[Knight of Time]

One of you has uncovered a major clue.

Deoxys: De*
Decidueye: De?????y

[Shadow Wolf]

Funny considering how my former guess was never going to fit in this puzzle. Anyways, this looks like a Delcatty.

[Knight of Time]

As I have said before, even a wasted guess can be of big help. It helped you win here, Louis!

'hands you the Delcatty figurine'

Go for it.

[Shadow Wolf]

Thank you Kyle. It is good to have progress no matter the slip ups XD

Anyway, following the letter of the previous puzzle: if you take it as a grade in school (at least in US schools), it is a grade not a lot of people want. However there is a grade worse than D that even less people would want to get in a test. That letter may mean failure at school, but it is the start of this next BrainStrain, which I'm confident the players will work it to make it a success.

[Knight of Time]

Is success here able to come as fast as a Fearow?

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

I'll try Froakie.

[Shadow Wolf]

Not as fast, but it is as clear as water that your guys are very close to it:

Fearow: F?a*

Froakie: F?????e

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Is this Flabébé?

[Shadow Wolf]

Not quite:

Flabebe: Fla???e

PS: Remind me to ask a question after this puzzle is over, either through the thread or through PM.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

So if this is Flapple you should ask me a question?

[Shadow Wolf]

It is, and you have earned a Flapple figurine for your efforts.

*Gives figurine*

And with it, you also have the baton to host the next BrainStrain.

As for the question, I think I have the answer, but just in case: as you can see, the previous guess has special characters (namely, the two é's). Since the calculator is case sensitive, I would have gotten a different result for the BrainStrain if I had written it up exactly how it looks.

As such, my question is: was it OK for me to remove the "tilde"s in the guess? After all, I do know that in Hangman we do it with other special characters (like the dot in Mr. Mine and the apostrophe in Farfetch'd), yet I'm not sure if the é is also considered a special character (probably because in Spanish we use it frequently).

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

I think the thing above the letter e is called an accent mark. To be precise, '~' is what we call a 'tilde'. That was just the linguist in me nitpicking, so let's get to the point.

I think it was okay to remove the accent marks because, as you said, it would affect the result of the calculation done by BrainStrain Calculator. Of course, that's only my opinion as a BrainStrain worker, so it's eventually up to Knight of Time, the creator of this game. So if he has something to say at this point, we'd better listen to him.

Meanwhile, let's get ready for a challenge, for the name of the following Pokemon starts with S!

[Knight of Time]

To be honest, I'm not sure about removing the accent marks (or any other sort of punctuation) from Pokemon. While I can accept Flababe instead of Flabébé, I'm leaning a little bit more toward having the punctuation marks a requirement (this is not an easy thing for me to think about either, I might add).

Meanwhile, let's try Suicune first.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Well, if we really want to be sure, the only thing I can think of now is to ask my fellow multi-language friend Lady Vulpix. She made the BrainStrain Calculator.

Suicune: S*

[Knight of Time]

Yeah, it wouldn't hurt at all to get her opinion on the punctuation marks in certain Pokemon here.

I'll try Salazzle next.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

I already sent her a message via discord.

Salazzle: Sala*

[Knight of Time]

I guess I'll devolve my last guess into Salandit.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Salandit: Sala*

[Shadow Wolf]

Thank you guys. And sorry for the trouble. I just want to make sure that I'm playing the right way.

Anyway, let's take flight with Salamence.

EDIT: Now, just to make sure that I'm in the right line of conversation. I'm OK with the person making the guess to spell it correctly (like Mikachu did when he guessed Flabébé). My question leans more towards how should I put it in the calculator, for it would affect the results I show in the following manner:

Puzzle was Flapple:

If I wrote Flabébé in the calculator, I would get: Fla*
...since the special characters are not in Flapple


But the way I did it (removing the accent marks in the é's), it gave me: Fla???e

So my question is: what would be the correct way to put it in the calculator? And again, I'm OK with people making the guesses with the correct spelling

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

And the name of the Pokemon isn't a secret anymore! (salaisuus is Finnish for secret) Congratulations Shadow Wolf.

Your turn.

[Shadow Wolf]

Thank you very much Mikachu.

As for the next puzzle, probably the most well known DC comics superheroine has this letter twice in her logo and in her Heroine name (Diana Prince is her most popular common name, but she is mostly known as...). That letter signals the beginning of the next BrainStrain.

[Knight of Time]

I assume you are talking about Wonder Woman? Anyway, let's start with Wormadam.

[Shadow Wolf]

That is correct Kyle! The letter, that is. The puzzle still has a long way to go.

Wormadam: W*

[Lady Vulpix]

Thank you guys. And sorry for the trouble. I just want to make sure that I'm playing the right way.

Anyway, let's take flight with Salamence.

EDIT: Now, just to make sure that I'm in the right line of conversation. I'm OK with the person making the guess to spell it correctly (like Mikachu did when he guessed Flabébé). My question leans more towards how should I put it in the calculator, for it would affect the results I show in the following manner:

Puzzle was Flapple:

If I wrote Flabébé in the calculator, I would get: Fla*
...since the special characters are not in Flapple


But the way I did it (removing the accent marks in the é's), it gave me: Fla???e

So my question is: what would be the correct way to put it in the calculator? And again, I'm OK with people making the guesses with the correct spelling

Interesting question. Considering the randomizer converts special characters into regular ones, I think it makes sense to do the same thing and assume an "e" in the result can mean either "e" or "é".

As for the current puzzle, I'll try Wailmer.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Why not Wynaut?

[Shadow Wolf]

Why not indeed. Yet I don't have the answer and neither does this puzzle it seems.

Wynaut: W*

[Knight of Time]

You skipped Gabi's guess Louis (she guessed Wailmer).

Meanwhile, I'll try Whirlipede

[Shadow Wolf]

OK then. Seems that I took the correct option. Thank you Gabi. And apologies for skipping the guess. Somehow I didn't see the post even after taking Mikachu's guess. Let's fix that up quickly (Thank you Kyle for lending a hand too):

Wailmer: W?i*

Whirlipede: Whi*

[Knight of Time]

Could it be Whiscash?

[Shadow Wolf]

That is correct Kyle! The Whiscash figurine is yours.

*gives figurine*

Your turn!