Silph Puzzle Hunt 2021/Natural Order

Natural Order
Silph Puzzle Hunt 2021
Round 1
Author(s)	Level 51
Links
Puzzle	Link
Solution	Link

Description

Natural Order is a crossword puzzle from Round 1 of the 2021 Silph Puzzle Hunt. Beyond a given enumeration of (5 8) below the puzzle, this puzzle presents itself as a standard crossword.

Solve Path

This puzzle is indeed a standard crossword, but some of the clues may hint solvers as to what the next step may be.

• 25 across, Town in a video game series this puzzle's theme relates to, which clues to PALLET, lets solvers know that this puzzle somehow relates to Pokémon.
• 135 across, Word in this puzzle's title that isn't hintful, which clues to ORDER, hints that somehow the word NATURAL, in the context of Pokémon, is used in this puzzle.
• 1 down, What the central 5x5 block represents, in this puzzle, clues to CHART.
• 48 across, What this side of the central 5x5 square represents, clueing to DECREASE, and
• 68 down, What this side of the central 5x5 square represents, clueing to INCREASE, solvers now have axes for the chart.

Searching for Pokémon chart natural or something similar will direct the solver to a 5x5 chart of natures in Pokémon games, with the top axis representing an increase, and the left axis representing a decrease.

Some of these natures are found in this puzzle, as answers to crossword clues. Highlighting the locations on the 5x5 chart which correspond to both a Pokémon nature and a word in the crossword grid and reading top-to-bottom left-to-right yields the clue phrase TYPE I ERROR. Answering this clue with an answer length of the given enumeration (5 8) yields the final answer to this puzzle.

Final Answer: Click to revealFALSE POSITIVE

Puzzle Elements

Clue Centric - The primary mechanic of this puzzle is answering crossword clues, which, for the most part, are traditional American crossword clues.

Crossword - This puzzle presents itself as a traditional American crossword. The first part of the solve tasks the solver with answering clues to fill out the crossword grid. Some of the clues require knowledge of the puzzle mechanics, but the vast majority do not and can be solved in a standard crossword fashion.

Media - This puzzle requires knowledge or research of the popular video game franchise Pokémon.