I have been playing the image puzzle on Pokédle every morning for about three months. I am not especially good at it. I am, however, slightly better than I used to be, and most of that improvement came from noticing the same handful of things over and over. This post is mostly that list.
If you already get it in one guess every day, you do not need any of this. If you guess wrong four times before the crop is large enough to be obvious, some of this might help.
Color does most of the work
Most Pokémon have one color that takes up more than half the sprite. Pale lavender with a bit of pink, and you are almost certainly looking at something from the Espeon, Mew, Gardevoir, Sylveon area. Muddy brown is a Sandslash or Rhydon or Bouffalant kind of mon. Saturated red is usually Fire.
This is not a clever insight. It is just that I kept guessing wildly before I trained myself to actually look at the dominant color for two seconds. Once you do, the candidate list goes from 1,025 to about twenty before you have used a single guess.
The edges of the crop tell you a lot
Look at the outline of whatever is on screen. Smooth, no joints? Probably a slug or a fish. Goomy, Magcargo, Wailord. Hard plates with rivets is almost always Steel. Aggron, Bisharp, Stakataka. Soft repeating tufts is mammal, usually Normal or Fairy. Furret, Stoutland.
When the crop is really tight and you can only see one body part, eyes are gold. A round black dot with a tiny white highlight is Gen 1 cartoon style. Slit reptilian eyes are dragon. Compound bug eyes are obvious once you have seen a few.
Texture is the thing nobody mentions
Once you start noticing it you cannot stop. Legendaries and pseudo-legendaries get this glossy plastic shading with one big specular highlight. Latios, Rayquaza, Mewtwo. The rural-feeling Normal types, Miltank and Bibarel and Bouffalant, have a matte, almost hand-drawn brushstroke look.
Flat reflective facets, like cut crystal, almost always mean Rock or some crystalline Psychic. Sableye, Diancie, Carbink, Sigilyph. Crisp banded fur edges show up on Gen 5 and later. Earlier sprites use softer gradients. None of this is a rule. It is just what I keep noticing.
Wait for the next zoom step
My worst habit was guessing at max zoom because I felt confident. I was rarely right. The puzzle gets meaningfully easier each step, and the cost is one extra row in your guess list. That trade is almost always worth it unless you are absolutely sure.
If you are stuck at the widest crop and still cannot name it, think about what is not in the frame. No visible tail, ears, or horn usually means the mon is round and centered. Jigglypuff, Snorlax, Munchlax, Drampa.
Keep a note of the ones you miss
After a couple of weeks you will notice you keep getting wrong the same kinds of Pokémon. For me it is mid-stage Unova and Kalos mons that I never used in any game. A text file with the name and a one-line description of the crop is enough.
Reading that file once a week did more for me than any of the tricks above. If you want to drill faster, Unlimited mode runs the same puzzle on a random Pokémon every round.