{Bill does a lot more exploring than Lanette. This is even a little canon. There are not only his exploration logs in LGPE, but at least in PokéSpec and Electric Tales, he’s been known to travel to do field research. Which is difficult to consolidate into his character because the anime and GSC also establish that he intends on sticking around his home for science and that he doesn’t like going outside anyway, respectively, but hey. I like to play that off as just talk.

In terms of the canon of this blog, absolutely, Bill will travel to the ends of the earth to follow leads about new pokémon, new talent for the system, or just scientifically interesting things in general, or he’ll be asked to swing by other regions to offer his assistance and expertise to other researchers and engineers. He still spends a lot of his time in the Sea Cottage performing experiments or in Goldenrod, seeing his family, but, you know. That’s probably like two-thirds of the year.

As for Lanette, she’s a bit less adventurous and more work-oriented/dedicated to the system itself. She’ll absolutely be sent places for work (especially if Bill can’t go or can’t be arsed to go himself, as in the case of anything involving Unova), and if Bill invites her along, she absolutely will go with him to meet new admins or to follow leads on adventures. It’s just that she’s a little less adventurous/curious, which means that she might check out the Regis’ chambers or reports of the Mirage islands, but she’s much less likely to do so without studying them thoroughly, weighing the pros and cons of going, stocking up, and very likely getting someone else to go with her. Or in other words, she’ll go exploring; it’s just that she’s often less … impulsive about it.

(Well, that and she doesn’t get paid nearly as much and can’t sweet-talk her way into getting a grant for anything, as Bill apparently does and can. Dude probably didn’t even have to pay for half the materials in his lab or the time he’d lost by getting stuck as various pokémon.)}

{First and foremost, thank you for the puzzle! 😀 That was a lot of fun~

That said, though, I fully admit I am cool with puzzles, and this really comes from two sources:

1. My fascination with ARGs. Not to date myself, but I first got into that kind of stuff with Eon8 and the Cloverfield viral marketing. Like, the super weird stuff. Then I just kinda stumbled across things like the Unfiction forums (which I’ve never been a member of, but hoooo those threads), Year One, Marble Hornets, Wham City, The Sun Vanished, preeeetty much any video analysis of the weird puzzle-like sites and creepy interactive things and videos out there. I admit I don’t think I’m clever enough to analyze these things or dig around myself (or, in the case of Marble Hornets, I’m too chicken to do it), but it’s always fun to see these things and see other people solve them.

2. My fascination with old point-and-click escape-the-room games. Like, anyone remember Mystery of Time and Space? Or Crimson Room/Viridian Room? Or My Diamond Baby? Samsara Room? All those Flash games where you’re locked in the room, and you have to solve all these series of puzzles to get out? Those I could do, and they were often fun. Like, a fun mix of challenging and absolutely bizarre. (The real-life equivalent—you know, escape rooms and whatnot—would probably be a different story. Let’s just say I don’t actually like being locked up in places, haha.)

Long story short, though, between these two things, I’d pick up things, like the full understanding that hiding messages in images that can be converted to binary that can be converted to map coordinates that can be rearranged to form a URL with a poem to decipher for said message is what the cool kids do.

As for Bill and Lanette, believe it or not, Bill’s not that much into puzzles. There’s something about being asked to do them to prove your intelligence that makes the whole lot of them boring, you know? (The same thing could be said of chess, of playing classical music, of being randomly quizzed or given difficult physics problems on the spot, and of doing all those other stereotypically “genius” things short of being asked to hack stuff or build robots or, well, go on about his fields of expertise/interest, all of which are still the few pleasures he gets out of the whole genius thing. Other than that? It’s really tiring to have to prove you’re smart when you obviously are.) But that isn’t to say he won’t use code, of course—like, obviously, since he has right on the blog. Mostly, he uses it to avoid talking directly about what’s on his mind because he’s actually a pretty terrible liar. Or to send messages only meant for Lanette … because he is, again, a really terrible liar.

Lanette, meanwhile, is the exact opposite. She can’t get enough of puzzles, and she doesn’t even care too much if people shove them her way to make her prove that she’s smart. Incidentally, she has indeed had to prove that she’s intelligent, and she’s had to do it as often or even more so than Bill, given that, you know, she had been a teen genius and a female one at that—because, you know, yay sexism. It’s just that Lanette doesn’t quite get as bored with things as easily as her partner, and in any case, she’s always eager to flex her mental muscles with a good challenge. And anyway, mysteries are awesome. So she’s probably the sort of person who eats up Sherlock Holmes (hence all her deducing), grew up with Nancy Drew, would totally be down for an escape room, and secretly loves Scooby Doo to this day. But to her, puzzles and codes are still a lot of fun, and she’s a lot like me in that she absolutely eats up analysis videos and stalks the Pokémon world equivalent of Unfiction.

Bill, of course, will play along with her to make her happy. As in, if she shares a puzzle with him, he’ll help her out with it. If she watches yet another Sherlock Holmes special, he’s probably right there with her. And if she insists on trying out that new escape room … well, he’ll probably go but just sort of sit off to the side until he absolutely has to pitch in and help the group. I mean, ultimately, it’s Lanette who’s having fun, so he’ll, you know. Totally just let her have all the fun. Until she asks, of course.}