My favourite etymology fact is that “helicopter” is helico-pter — Greek for “spiral wing”. It’s obvious when pointed out, but I’d never have realized it on my own since in English it’s always broken down as heli-copter!
Relatedly, Magic: The Gathering has a creature type called Thopter, which is a rebracketed abbreviation of the word “ornithopter” (from ornitho- meaning bird, and pter meaning wing).
[M]ost of the things we buy have to be paid for twice. There’s the first price, usually paid in dollars, just to gain possession of the desired thing, whatever it is: a book, a budgeting app, a unicycle, a bundle of kale. But then, in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits, and it can be much higher than the first price.
The implication of this sign is that some of the birds in the park are not considered wildlife. Are pigeons wildlife?
It’s easy to confuse the flags of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand if your eyes don’t know what to look for.
I had always distinguished between the two by the colour of the stars in the Southern Cross, but that’s sometimes hard to tell at low resolution. There’s a much easier way to tell them apart: AUS has a giant extra star in the lower left quadrant.
AUS 🇦🇺
NZL 🇳🇿
Today I learned the reason why Vancouver has two impressive-looking historic train stations: they were built by two different companies to serve as the terminus of two different railways.
Waterfront station was built in 1914 for the Canadian Pacific Railway, while Pacific Central Station was built a few years later for the Canadian Northern Railway.1
Anyways, neither station is currently used by the company that built it, with Waterfront Station serving as the regional public transit hub and Pacific Central Station used by Via Rail, Amtrak, and various intercity bus companies.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom calls your attention to the sky… but there’s more weird stuff up there than just the floating islands.
If you look into Hyrule’s sky at night, you’ll see the stars do not move while the moon races from one horizon to the other.
This means that the cosmology of the Zelda universe is significantly different from our own; if Copernicus was Hylian he’d have to give up on the heliocentric model.1
That’s not the only astronomical oddity in Tears of the Kingdom. The sun’s position at sunrise and sunset doesn’t make sense. On Earth, the sun doesn’t always rise and set exactly in the east and west. In the (boreal) summer, the sun rises and sets further north, providing us in the Northern Hemisphere with more hours of sunlight each day.
Here in the Vancouver summer, the sun currently rises 38° north of east and sets 38° north of west. In Tears of the Kingdom the sun rises around 4:00 and sets around 9:00,2 so you’d expect them to happen at similar angles instead of due east and west.
This is more evidence towards a geocentric model of Hylian cosmology, since the timing and position of sunrise and set can be explained if the sun orbits a point directly above Hyrule.
The strangest phenomenon I noticed is the fact that moon only appears at night. Sure, we culturally associate the moon with night, but in reality it’s out during the day half the time. This is what gives the moon its phases; the closer the moon is to the sun in the sky, the less of it appears illuminated to us on Earth. If the moon always rises and sets at the same time of day, its phases cannot be explained as the reflected light of the sun!
The simplest explanation would be that Link is observing the rotation of a moon with one luminescent side, but I looked closely and the half-moon has the same face as the full moon. This means that, like Earth’s moon, the Hylian moon is tidally locked3 and always shows the same face.
A model for the cosmology of the world of Zelda.
My best theory is that the moon is made of a fluorescent material and is orbited by a small body that emits ultraviolet or other high-energy light in the non-visible spectrum. Do you have an alternative headcanon theory?
Julius Caesar’s given name wasn’t “Julius”. That was his full family name — the Caesars being a branch of the Julia family — and his personal name was Gaius.
In his time, he was referred to as Gaius Caesar or simply as Caesar by himself and his contemporaries. Calling him “Julius Caesar” would have been redundant since every Caesar was a Julius.
The Romans had a lot of traditions around names. Gaius Julius Caesar inherited his name from his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.
Caesar’s great-nephew Gaius Octavius Thurinus also took the name Gaius Julius Caesar when he inherited the assassinated dictator’s estate. To prevent confusion, he’s often called Octavianus, meaning “the guy formerly known as Octavius”. The emperor Caligula, Octavian’s great-grandson, was also named Gaius Caesar; we know him by a nickname he received as a small child.
The standard Periodic Table is an iconic data visualization, but it’s not the only way to represent the relationships between elements. This beautiful “ribbon” version was designed by James Hyde in the 1970s.
James Franklin Hyde was a pioneer in the silicone industry, so it’s appropriate that periodic ribbon puts the element silicon in the center and highlights its relationships to the other elements.
Hyde may have been inspired by the spiral chart published by Theodor Benfey in the same journal a few years earlier.
Benfey’s periodic snail of the elements. (Theodor Benfey / Science History Institute)
Between cabbage, lettuce, maple, and holly, two plants are in the rosid clade (related to roses) and two are in the asterid clade (related to sunflowers). Can you guess which is which?
I would have guessed that the trees might be related to a woody rose bush, while the leafy greens would be closer to broad-leaved sunflowers. I would have been wrong. Plants are much weirder than that.
In fact, cabbages are much more closely related to maple trees than they are to lettuce; cabbage and maples are both rosids. Meanwhile, holly trees and lettuce are both asterids.
As it turns out, a lot of the categories we use to think about plants — trees, bushes, berries, vegetables, and so on — are not particularly unique from an genetic perspective. Biologist Georgia Ray explains:
On the evolutionary tree of plants, trees are regularly interspersed with things that are absolutely, 100% not trees. This means that, for instance:
- The common ancestor of a maple and a mulberry tree was not a tree.
- The common ancestor of a stinging nettle and a strawberry plant was a tree.
- And this is true for most trees or non-trees that you can think of.
Because of this, there are plenty of plant lists you can play “One of these things is not like the others” with where the intuitive answer is very different from the phylogenetic answer.
If you shuffled all the plants on this taxonomy tree, I would not be able to tell the difference.
Every new emoji starts with a formal proposal justifying why it should exist. The proposal for 🫵 starts with four pages of the history of people pointing at the viewer in art.
Only a few emoji are accepted every year, but anyone can submit suggestions for new emoji. For example:
To address the Unicode Consortium’s emoji selection criteria, you’ll find proposals arguing things like mermaids are 522% more popular than goblins or that teapots are not too similar to teacups. Older emoji didn’t go through the same kind of selection process, which is presumably why there are three separate emoji for optical computer media: 📀 💿 💽.
You can find most emoji proposals linked from their Emojipedia page. Here are a few interesting or funny submissions I’ve seen. (All quotations cleaned up.)
One of the oldest drawings to explore this perspective of the pointing finger is that of Pontormo, an Italian painter of the 16th century. A handful of Baroque examples can also be found.
In 1914, influenced by a cigarettes ad and by advertisement rhetoric in general, the British graphic designer Alfred Leete created the first recruitment poster of its kind. Since then, the number of remixes of those posters — in particular of James Flagg’s 1917 “Uncle Sam Wants You” poster — have grown immensely.
The yo-yo has been around for at least 2,500 years, but reached new popularity in the 1920s when Pedro Flores popularized a new method of attaching a string to the axle that allowed the yo-yo to “sleep”.
Since then, several yo-yo booms have swept the world, often on 7 year cycles of boom and bust. Some may say that the yo-yo has its ups and downs.
🪀 Yo-yo
Currently, emojis only depict people assigned female at birth in a role of pregnancy. If emojis are designed in a manner to be as inclusive as possible this emoji should present its gender more ambiguously.
Additionally, a major gap in the emoji inventory is a manner to depict satisfaction after eating a great meal.
The oldest known example of a knitted object dates back to 11th century Egypt but the complexity of the design of those ancient Egyptian socks suggest that knitting was not new, even then.
🧶 Yarn
The interest in dinosaurs is even stronger than the Google Trends comparisons suggest. People do not search for news on dinosaur attacks, as they would on sharks, lions, snakes, and alligators. The prudent individual rarely searches for dinosaur-skin shoes, nor do they look for an available source of local dinosaur sushi.
Books about dinosaurs range from nonfiction descriptions of the now-extinct animals, to fictional thrillers, like Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, to the 488 (!!) books identified as “Dinosaur Erotica” in Amazon’s Kindle store.
🦕 Sauropod
The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is a 2600-page tome of random facts and figures, from the speed of sound in various media to the chemical composition of the human body.
My sixth-grade teacher’s copy was one of the most fascinating objects of my childhood, and it still makes me giggle with delight.
To give a taste of what the book is like, here’s an abridged version of section 15-39 “Density of various solids”. The idea that someone would need a handy reference for the density of cardboard, sandstone, butter, and thirty-eight different kinds of wood is hilarious — but they must be the most interesting person in the world!
| Material | Density |
|---|---|
| Amber | 1.06–1.11 |
| Asbestos | 2.0–2.8 |
| Asphalt | 1.1–1.5 |
| Beeswax | 0.96–0.97 |
| Bone | 1.7–2.0 |
| Brick | 1.4–2.2 |
| Butter | 0.86–0.87 |
| Cardboard | 0.69 |
| Chalk | 1.9–2.8 |
| Charcoal, oak | 0.57 |
| Charcoal, pine | 0.28–0.44 |
| Clay | 1.8–2.6 |
| Cork | 0.22–0.26 |
| Diamond | 3.51 |
| Gelatin | 1.27 |
| Glass | 2.4–2.8 |
| Granite | 2.64–2.76 |
| Ice | 0.917 |
| Iron, cast | 7.0–7.4 |
| Limestone | 2.68–2.76 |
| Paper | 0.7–1.15 |
| Polyethylene | 0.92–0.97 |
| Porcelain | 2.3–2.5 |
| Quartz | 2.65 |
| Rubber, hard | 1.19 |
| Sandstone | 2.14–2.36 |
| Sugar | 1.59 |
| Wood, balsa | 0.11–0.14 |
| Wood, bamboo | 0.31–0.40 |
| Wood, cedar | 0.49–0.57 |
| Wood, mahogany | 0.66–0.85 |
| Wood, oak | 0.60–0.90 |
I’m on a quest to explore the creeks and waterways of Vancouver, Burnaby, and New Westminster. First, I need to understand how the topography of my neighbourhood determines the flow of water and the formation of streams.
A topographic map of the Burrard Peninsula.
Three main topological features define how water flows in the Vancouver-Burnaby-New West area:
These features divide the Burrard Peninsula into four watersheds, which determine where a falling raindrop will flow
The main watersheds of the Burrard Peninsula.
(More detailed watershed maps can be found on the websites of the City of Vancouver and the City of Burnaby.)
Most of the historic streams of Vancouver have been developed over, so rainwater now is mainly conveyed through storm drains and groundwater. In contrast, Burnaby still has plenty of streams carrying rain through its watersheds.
I’ll be exploring these streams and attempting to trace them from source to mouth. Stay tuned for more!
This picture illustrates the danger of poorly-designed streets, which the Swedish government set out to improve in the 1990s. It was originally created by Swedish artist Karl Jilg, who was commissioned by the Swedish Road Administration to explain new Vision Zero initiatives.
The ideas behind the initiatives were that
The picture is intended to turn the kinetic energy of a moving car into a height to show the consequences of simple human mistakes in the road system. Research shows that the highest acceptable speed on a street with active users like this is 30km/h.
Pedestrians navigate the dangerous chasms of city streets. (Karl Jilg / Vägverket)
The image has been widely shared, thanks in part to a 2014 Vox article that used it to call attention to other pedestrian-hostile aspects about many cities’ street designs:
Most roads in the US are built for cars, not for pedestrians. This brilliant illustration shows just how lopsided the the proportions of a normal urban street corner really are.
The city sidewalk picture is just one of a series of four that Jilg illustrated for the Swedish government. The other one I found is set on a highway.
A car moving at highway speeds has a lot of kinetic energy. (Karl Jilg / Vägverket)
I’m not sure whether Jilg did any calculations to create these, but a head-on collision between two cars at highway speed is approximately equivalent to a single car being dropped from a height of 200m. Sweden added median barriers to many highways in the late ’90s, which reduced the incidence of head-on collisions and the risk of fatalities by 80%.
I have unfortunately not been able to find the other two illustrations in the set. Jilg has, however, done other work for the Swedish government.
A less striking example of Jilg’s work. (Karl Jilg / Vägverket)
If you see a coyote in Vancouver, the officially recommended course of action is to yell “Go away coyote”.
Leah and I have really gotten into Magic: the Gathering. Our favourite ways to play are sealed deck and Jumpstart, both of which involve opening new packs and making decks out of what you open.
Since it would be wasteful (not to mention expensive) to buy new cards every time we play, we only buy a certain number of packs each set and re-use the cards we open to make our own packs for later games.
Cutout template for a 94mm × 67mm × 18mm tuck-flap box, which holds 20 unsleeved Magic cards with room to spare.
We originally tried coin envelopes and a product called Cubeamajigs, but neither was as nice or convenient as the side-loading papercraft boxes I made with my Cricut.
The above SVG image can be imported into Cricut Design Space to make boxes of your own. Or, if you want to make a box with different dimensions, a tool called Templatemaker can make similar patterns.
Here in Vancouver, the parking bylaw requires one 14m² parking space for every 20m² of supermarket floor space. Adding the necessary lanes to allow cars to get in and out, this law practically guarantees that grocery stores will be more parking lot than store.
In the late ’60s, the government sought to adopt O Canada as the national anthem. The music and original French lyrics had passed into the public domain, but the English version was still under copyright. The government settled the rights for a dollar.
Ironically, the copyright to the English lyrics would have expired anyways by the time the National Anthem Act was finally passed in 1980.
Crayola has a trademark on the smell of its crayons. The odour is described in the Canadian trademarks registry as:
A unique scent of a pungent, aldehydic fragrance combined with the faint scent of a hydrocarbon wax and an earthy clay.
In Canada, a trademark can be anything that is used by by a seller to distinguish their goods or services from those of others, including
a word, a personal name, a design, a letter, a numeral, a colour, a figurative element, a three-dimensional shape, a hologram, a moving image, a mode of packaging goods, a sound, a scent, a taste, a texture and the positioning of a sign.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find records of anyone litigating over a scent trademark.
You can get a really good approximation of a sinusoidal curve from twelve equally-spaced line segments of slope 1/12, 2/12, 3/12, 3/12, 2/12, 1/12, -1/12, -2/12, -3/12, -3/12, -2/12, and -1/12, respectively.
This approximation, known as the rule of twelfths, rounds but otherwise uses exact values along the curve.
The rule of twelfths approximates points on .
I learned about the rule of twelfths from a kayaking instructor and guide, who used it to estimate the tides. In locations and seasons with a semidiurnal tide pattern, the period of the tide is roughly 12 hours, and the rule of twelfths tells you what the water will be doing in each hour.
For example, if you know that the difference between low and high tide is 3 feet, then you can quickly estimate that it the tide will rise by about 3 inches in the first hour, 6 inches in the second, 9 inches in the third and fourth, 6 inches in the fifth hour, and 3 inches in the last hour before high tide.
Recently I’ve been spending my spare time doing two things: solving cryptic crosswords and playing Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The next logical step, then, is to try my hand at compiling my own cryptic crossword themed after the game!
If you haven’t tried one before, a cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is itself a word puzzle. A cryptic clue is usually misleading if taken at face value, but conceals a definition and a secondary indication (usually wordplay) of the correct answer. For example:
The answer is RAGED, meaning “was inflamed”.
At first reading, it seems like this clue refers to the fiery Cinnabar Island Gym Leader Blaine from Pokémon Red and Blue, but the hidden real definition is only the last two words, “was inflamed”.
The remainder of the clue is wordplay that hints at the answer: “Cinnabar” means RED and “gym leader” can be interpreted as “the first letter of gym”, so “A gym leader in Cinnabar” reduces to “A G in RED” — hence, RAGED.
Cryptic clues can be even more complicated and include anagrams, homophones, obscure abbreviations, and all sorts of other devices. Or they can be as simple as a bad pun.
The answer is LEGENDS, which are “passed down through generations”. What do feet have to do with anything? Well, they’re LEG ENDS, of course…
You’ll need to be a Pokémon fan to appreciate all of the surface readings in this puzzle, but don’t worry if you aren’t — none of the clues require any specific knowledge of Pokémon to solve. Once you’re done, you can scroll to the bottom to check the solutions and see how you did. Enjoy!
Confused? Impatient? In the spirit of Fifteensquared, below is the answer key to the puzzle!
As a reminder, a cryptic clue generally consists of a dictionary definition and a secondary indication (usually wordplay) of the correct answer. In the following solutions, I’ve highlighted the dictionary definition hidden in each clue in bold.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| RAGED | A gym leader in Cinnabar was inflamed (5) |
I’ll then explain how the rest of the clue leads to the right answer, as well as how each clue relates to the puzzle theme.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| BARBELL | Angry Bibarel destroyed one-pound weight (7) |
An anagram of BIBAREL after removing the letter I (“destroyed one”), plus L (“pound”). The anagram indicator is “angry”.
Bibarel is a Pokémon in Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| AILMENT | Received draught intended for negative condition (7) |
A homophone of ale meant (“draught intended”). The homophone indicator is “received”.
The surface reading suggests an item like a Full Restore used in the Pokémon games to cure status conditions. The British spelling of draught/draft is partly in service of the surface reading; the influence of Harry Potter has made it more common in Canadian and American English when referring to potions and elixirs like those used in Pokémon.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| GOOD-NATURED | Jolly well suited ultimately to go after flora and fauna (4-7) |
Breaks down into GOOD (“well”), and D (“suited ultimately”, meaning the last letter of suited) after NATURE (“flora and fauna”).
Natures in Pokémon are characteristics that increase one stat at the expense of another stat. “Jolly” is a good nature to have for certain Pokémon on a competitive team.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| KIND | Type disadvantage primarily follows lineage (4) |
The letter D (“disadvantage primarily”, meaning the first letter of disadvantage) following KIN (“lineage”).
Pokémon types have strengths and weaknesses against each other; for example water-types are good against fire-types and ground-types are not effective against flying-types. Because Pokémon evolutionary lineages tend to share types, they also tend to share their type advantages and disadvantages.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| ALPHA | Dominant peak of area (5) |
A charade of ALP (“peak”) and HA (“area”)
The surface reading suggests Mount Coronet, the dominant geographical feature of Hisui. The answer references Alpha Pokémon, larger- and stronger-than-normal Pokémon that serve as minibosses in Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| GRIT | Stony resolve (4) |
Pun on two definitions of grit.
Similar puns are present in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, as the items Grit Dust, Grit Gravel, Grit Pebble, and Grit Rock are used to raise Pokémon’s effort levels in a given stat.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| NOTCHES | Cuts tumblestone to catch child? (7) |
An anagram of STONE surrounding (“catching”) the letters CH (abbreviating “child”). The anagram indicator is “tumble” although, as the question mark acknowledges, it’s slightly dubious to need to split apart a compound word in a cryptic clue.
A tumblestone is a raw material used when crafting Poké Balls to catch Pokémon with.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| AMNESIA | Memory loss means a name is confused (7) |
An anagram of A NAME IS. The anagram indicator is “confused”.
The character Ingo in Pokémon Legends: Arceus suffers from amnesia after being transported through time and space from the Unova region.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| WARY | Cautious of battle decision (4) |
A charade of WAR (“battle”) and Y (abbreviating yes, a “decision”).
Trainer battles in Pokémon Legends: Arceus end with a stylized wordmark reading “Battle decided”.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| START | Spookiest artifact conceals origin (5) |
Concealed in spookieST ARTifact.
Three artifacts — the Adamant Crystal, Lustrous Globe, and Griseous Core — are used to change the legendary Pokémon Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina into their Origin Formes. Of these, the one associated with the Ghost-type Giratina is probably the spookiest.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| EPEE | Sword repeats point about Pokémon starter (4) |
The letter E (“point”, as in the compass point east) repeated three times on either side of (“about”) P (“Pokémon starter”, meaning the first letter of Pokémon).
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| CRYSTAL BALL | Lustrous Globe (7,4) |
Cryptic definition — “Lustrous Globe” is just a funny way of saying “crystal ball”.
As mentioned above, the Lustrous Globe is a key item associated with the legendary Pokémon Palkia.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| EDITION | Version exclusives? To begin with, supplement lacks announcement (7) |
The letter E (“exclusive to begin with”, meaning the first letter of exclusive), then ADDITION (“supplement”) lacking the first two letters AD (meaning “announcement”).
Historically, Pokémon games have been released in groups of slightly different versions, such as Pokémon Red and Blue, Pokémon Gold and Silver, and Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. The primary difference between versions in the same generation are Pokémon that can be caught in one game but not the other; these Pokémon are referred to as version exclusives. Pokémon Legends: Arceus is somewhat unique in that it is not paired with a second version (or supplementary DLC), so there are no version exclusives getting in the way of catching ‘em all.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| PHONIER | Phione evolution rumour: tip is more fraudulent (7) |
An anagram of PHIONE, then R (“rumour tip” meaning the first letter of rumour). The anagram indicator is “evolution”.
Phione is a semi-mythical Pokémon which can be bred from, but strangely does not evolve into, Manaphy. False rumours and urban legends were common in the early days of Pokémon before reliable and comprehensive sources of information developed on the internet.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| ARAGON | A dragon without a leader makes historic country (6) |
The letter “A” is directly lifted from the clue, then DRAGON minus the first letter (“without a leader”). Aragon was a medieval kingdom that unified with Castile to form modern Spain.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus takes place in Hisui, a region loosely based on 19th-century Hokkaido. According to in-game legend, it was created by Arceus alongside the deities of time and space — which are revealed to actually be powerful Dragon-type Pokémon.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| RECON | Another trick for gathering information? (5) |
Pun — if a trick is a con, is the second time you do it a re-con?
The ultimate goal of Pokémon Legends: Arceus is to perform research tasks to collect information on all the Pokémon, which are compiled into the Pokédex.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| CLAN | Family heads to calm lightning-affected nobles (4) |
Formed from the first letters of (“heads to”) Calm Lightning-Affected Nobles.
In the Pokémon Legends storyline, five “noble Pokémon” have become frenzied due to lightning-like energy from space-time rifts. The heads of the Diamond and Pearl Clans help you calm these nobles by providing you necessary items to set up boss battles.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| EAST | Beasts short of coasts where the sun rises (4) |
Obtained from BEASTS by taking away the first and last letter (“coasts”).
The sun rises in the Cobalt Coastlands, so the “beasts” could refer to Purrloin, Murkrow, or the other Pokémon found in the approach to the shoreline.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| ULTRA | Greater part of beautiful tradition (5) |
Hidden (“part of”) beautifUL TRAdition.
The Ultra Ball is an improved version of the Poké Ball used for catching Pokémon.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| SENDER | One who posts mission in southeast river (6) |
Constructed from END (in the sense of goal or “mission”) inside the letters SE (“southeast”) and followed by the abbreviation R (“river”).
The surface reading could refer to Arezu or any of the NPCs who request your help in the Crimson Mirelands surrounding the rivers in southeast Hisui.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| BLACK AND WHITE | Sharply divided about old-fashioned graphics (5,3,5) |
Double definition; can refer to moral lines or early TV.
The clue references the controversy over Pokémon Legends: Arceus’s somewhat dated-looking visuals. The answer references the fifth-generation games Pokémon Black and White.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| 9d | TIME TRAVELLER |
Anagram of RARE ITEM TO LEVEL, after removing (“disregarding”) the letter O (“zero”) and one of the Es (short for “electricity”). The anagram indicator is “crafts”.
The main character in Pokémon Legends: Arceus is a time traveller, having fallen through a space-time rift to a world of the past. Item crafting is a mechanic in the game, although admittedly rare candies that raise a Pokémon’s level are not craftable.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| AMPS | Current maps inaccurate (4) |
Anagram of MAPS. The anagram indicator is “inaccurate”. Amps are a measure of electric current.
Because Pokémon Legends: Arceus takes place in the past, “current” maps of the Sinnoh region only vaguely resemble the regions depicted in the game.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| DECOY | Distraction from the last month expressing dismay (5) |
Charade of DEC (the “last month” of the year) and OY (“expressing dismay”).
As mentioned in my introduction, I’ve been using Pokémon Legends: Arceus and cryptic crosswords like this one as a distraction from recent events.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| ABETS | Everyone entering STAB moves helps (5) |
The letter E (abbreviating “everyone”) in the middle (“entering”) of an anagram of STAB. The anagram indicator is “moves”.
In competitive Pokémon, STAB stands for same-type attack bonus, referring to the 1.5x damage boost moves get when used by a Pokémon of the same type. All else being equal, it’s better to use a STAB move than a non-STAB move, which helps when trying to predict what options an opposing trainer might select on their turn.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| ADMIT | Random rifts drop odd characters to accept (5) |
Obtained by deleting the odd-numbered characters of rAnDoM rIfTs.
The surface reading references the randomly-occurring space-time rifts that bring the main character (and others) to the setting of Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The main character briefly struggles to gain the acceptance of the people in Jubilife Village.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| GEESE | Birds glide vacantly around — look up! (5) |
The letters GE (“glide vacantly”, meaning glide with its middle letters removed) set around SEE (“look”) spelled backwards (“up”, since this is a vertical clue).
The inclusion of ride Pokémon in Pokémon Legends: Arceus allows you to glide around, vacantly or otherwise, with the help of the flying-type Braviary.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| DATA | Information vaguely written up (4) |
The phrase A TAD (“vaguely” when used adverbially, as in a tad familiar), spelled backwards (“written up”, since this is a vertical clue).
The Pokédex is notoriously filled with vague and occasionally dubious descriptions that resemble Pliny the Elder’s writings more than it does a modern encyclopedia. The Pokédex in Pokémon Legends: Arceus is literally written up as a book.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| RECOIL | Concerning loop leading to self-inflicted damage (6) |
A charade of the abbreviation RE: (“concerning”) and COIL (“loop”).
Several moves in Pokémon inflict recoil damage on the user. On the rare occasion when a battle devolves into a repetitive loop of healing and status moves, one of the combatants will eventually run out of available moves and use Struggle, which is one such move.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| PALLID | Friend cap lacks intensity (6) |
A charade of PAL (“friend”) and LID (“cap”).
This clue is a stretch to relate to Pokémon, but “friend cap” could be interpreted as referring to the limit of 6 Pokémon you can carry with you at a time. This limit feels less stringent than it does in other games, since it is easy to switch them out at the camps scattered across the region.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| KYRIE | Sacred words from the end of legendary shield-bearer (5) |
The end of valKYRIE. The Kyrie eleison is the common name of an important prayer in some Christian denominations.
The surface clue is suggestive of the legendary Zamazenta, the cover mascot of Pokémon Shield.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| TALON | No getting up after taking half of Metal Claw (5) |
NO spelled backwards (“getting up”, since this is a vertical clue) after the latter half of meTAL.
The surface clue references the Pokémon attack Metal Claw.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| TING | Metallic noise and lossless glint? Variant! (4) |
Anagram of GLINT after removing L (standing for “loss”, so “lossless” suggests its removal). The anagram indicator is “variant”.
Shiny Pokémon are rare variants with unusual colours. When a Shiny Pokémon appears in the wild or from its Poké Ball, it is accompanied by a sound effect and a flash of light and stars.
| Solution | Clue |
|---|---|
| LOPE | Run from training under large officer (4) |
The initialism PE (“training”, as in physical education) after (“under”, since this is a vertical clue) the letters L (short for “large”) and O (short for “officer”).
The surface clue refers to Zisu, the captain of the Galaxy Team Security Corps, who can be optionally battled at the training grounds.
Eagle-eyed solvers may notice the thematic message spelled out by the top and bottom rows of the puzzle: ARCEUS LEGEND.
Shawn Mendes’ song “Lost in Japan” has had me geographically confused since I first heard it covered by Scary Pockets. If you haven’t listened to the lyrics, the song is about a person who is thinking about their crush and the possibility of taking a last-minute flight to Japan to see them.
The question I can’t get off my mind is: where is the song supposed to be taking place?
The chorus goes:
Do you got plans tonight?
I’m a couple hundred miles from Japan, and I
I was thinking I could fly to your hotel tonight
‘Cause I can’t get you off my mind
from which we can infer that
The most likely candidates for airports within “a couple hundred miles from Japan” are in South Korea.
The area within 100 to 500 miles of a Japanese airport with year-round scheduled international flights.
When I first considered the geography of the song, I was satisfied with that answer: couple of hundred miles, South Korea, that sounds about right. But then I noticed the opening lyrics:
All it’d take is one flight
We’d be in the same time zone
That would seem to rule out South Korea, which is in the same time zone as Japan. With the closest locations out of the picture, we have to stretch our interpretation of the song. Here are the possibilities I can see.
Shanghai is 500 miles (in different directions) from Okinawa and Kyūshū Islands. Shanghai Pudong International Airport was the eighth-busiest airport in the world when “Lost in Japan” was released, and has plenty of routes to both Naha and Nagasaki.
This is probably the most plausible answer if we make the thematically appropriate assumption that the lovestruck protagonist is downplaying the distance in order to convince themself that taking a last-minute flight is a good idea.
Vladivostok is also within 500 miles of New Chitose Airport in Sapporo. This possibility is pretty funny, but unfortunately it’s ruled out by logistics. The only regular flight I could find between the two was only opened by Ural Airlines after “Lost in Japan” was released, and did not last long before world events shut it down permanently.
There’s only one location that geographically fits the lyrics exactly: our protagonist is in Taiwan, and their crush is less than 200 miles away in Ishigaki on Japan’s southwesternmost inhabited archipelago.
With a creative enough interpretation, this is also consistent with the second verse:
Do I gotta convince you
That you shouldn’t fall asleep?
It’ll only be a couple hours
And I’m about to leave.
The singer is presumably in a hurry to leave because they have just checked the timetable for the only direct flight from Taipei to Ishigaki, which runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays during the tourist season. The flight is short enough that “a couple hours” is realistic if customs is quick.
The line about falling asleep is, of course, a request for the romantic interest to skip their usual afternoon nap, since China Airlines flight 124 arrives at 11:35am.
