Stuck Neopets don’t appear when you’re browsing pets in the pound; they can only be found by searching directly for their names. Before diving into random name searches, it’s helpful to understand why some pets get “stuck.” Due to a glitch in the pound, pets with names that start with certain letter combinations don’t display in regular pound searches. These are known as stuck pets. While the exact combinations that lead to a stuck pet are still not fully known, there’s a general theory based on observations. After extensive testing, it became clear that the first two or three letters of a pet’s name play a key role. Below, you’ll find a table listing letter pairs that frequently lead to a stuck pet. Names beginning with these pairs have a higher chance of becoming stuck. Although this isn’t a perfect rule—there are occasional exceptions—more than 70% of pets with these starting letter pairs end up stuck in the pound. Note that this list might not be exhaustive and may contain slight inaccuracies.

AL, AM, AN, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AZ, A_

BE, BI, BL, BO, BR, BU, B_

CH, CI, CL, CO, CR, CU, CY, C_

DI, DE, DO, DR, DU, DY

ES, ET, EV, EX, EY, EZ

FI, FL, FO, FR, FU

GE, GH, GI, GL, GO, GP, GR, GU

HE, HI, HO, HU

JE, JH, JI, JO, JU

KE, KI, KL, KO, KR, KU, KY

LE, LI, LL, LO, LU, LY, L_

MA, ME, MI, MO, MR, MS, MU, MY

NE, NI, NO, NU, NY

PE, PI, PL, PO, PR, PT, PU, PY

RE, RI, RO, RU, RY

SC, SE, SH, SI, SK, SL, SM, SN, SO, SP, SQ, SS, ST, SU, SW, SY, S_

TH, TI, TO, TR, TU, TW, TY, T_

WO

_L, _M, _P, _R, _S, _T, __

Understanding Your Search Options:

Now that you know what kind of names to search, you have several choices on how you’d like to hunt them down.

Manual Searches:

There are many different ways to do manual searches, but in essence they are all the same. In the sidebar or pet lookup URL, begin typing random names that start with one of the letter pairs above. Keep trying until you find a pet that is in the pound. Less than 1% of all names that you type will be stuck in the pound* but don’t be discouraged. This is the easiest method to find new stuck pets for the Lost and Pound page. This method requires lots of patience and creativity.

Whether you decide to type in every single letter combination (anaa, anab, anac…) like Bug does or find lists of words from dictionaries and other sources to copy and paste like Arden does, just be sure that the first two letters are one of the pairs from the table. If they’re not, the pet has no chance to get stuck and you are just wasting your time.

*Most names you check will end up with pets either adopted, frozen, not yet created, or not yet born, only a tiny fraction will be in the pound, and an even tinier fraction of those will be painted or Limited Edition pets.
Search Engines

Sometimes pound pets will show up on search engines. Keep in mind that the majority of these pets are on the search engines because they have been listed on the Lost and Pound so it is unlikely that you will find anything new, rare or exciting. However, you may get very lucky by tweaking your searches, using lots of different search engines and searching often. Try typing this into a search engine: site:neopets.com “owner:in the pound”. You may also choose to refine your search by including things like “the Orange” or “the Orange Grundo.” This method requires some creativity and repetition before you get the hang of it and figure out some tricks of your own.

What does all that mean?

Basically, pet names are grouped by the first two letters of the name. We call this a “string.” Only certain “strings” of names will stick, and not every name in a given string will. The three letters shown above indicate where in the string the names begin to stick.

For example, in the SM- start string, a pet named Smalls will not stick and will be visible to pound surfers. A pet named Smith *will* stick, because it meets both parameters: 1) it is in the SM- string, and 2) it comes alphabetically after SME-

A pet whose name begins with a 2L combo that isn’t on the above list WILL NOT stick, meaning you will not find stuck pets with names starting with E, I, V, X, Z, etc.

For best results, stay with the “sticky” names, or you will not find many pets in the pound
(they will have been scooped up by pound surfers!)

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

The Method

Start with a blank spreadsheet in your editor of choice.
(I’m using Excel so this guide will be tailored towards that!)


Fill in the sheet exactly as follows:
i.e. if there is an equals sign, type the equals sign and everything after it
(Note that every column remains static; you will only ever change the B1 cell once your sheet is set up.)

NOTE: if you are using OpenOffice instead of Excel, everywhere I have used a comma, you need to use a semi-colon instead! If you are using OpenOffice and you are having issues with the petpage rejecting your code, it may be because OpenOffice is autocorrecting all your quotation marks from standard to the curly ones. To change this setting you can go to Tools…AutoCorrect Options…Localized Options. You can customize your start and end quotes in that window (Thanks Katy for the tip!). You can also try using a single quotation mark ‘ instead which seems to work.



You should end up with something like this:



Now that you have your first row filled in, you want to use the “copy” function to drag each cell down, which will fill in the rest of the column with the same formula. You’re going to do this to cells A1, B2, D1, E1, F1, and G1. You can watch me do it in the very slow and funky looking gif below 😉 (ignore the itunes notification, yes I’m listening to Taylor Swift lol)

Notice that the cursor changes from a white cross to a black cross; the black cross indicates you are in copy mode.



The C column will contain unique name endings – however many you want! Just remember to drag the other columns all the way down to wherever your C column is ending.
Some ideas are numbers, endings like -elle -lia -etta etc, or words like baby, cutie, dream
Be creative! 🙂

Now, the fun starts. In your B1 cell – the only one that you will ever change – you can enter any word or combination of letters and it will fill in all the way down the sheet. Example below:



Now, copy the G column, the final one that is ‘concatenating’ a bunch of the previous columns. You can select the entire column by hovering over the top of it until your cursor turns into a black down arrow. Control+C to copy.

Now, you need to paste the code you just copied into an html editor. The easiest way is to use one of your petpages.



Take a moment to notice how this method works. The Excel sheet is generating a series of hyperlinked pet images.

Clicking Preview Changes will start loading the code, showing images of the pet associated with that name. A broken image means the pet does not exist/ the name is untaken.

Make sure you wait until the whole page has loaded.

Any pet who appears unclothed and uncustomised in its image MAY be in the pound.
A pet with a background, wig, potato sack, etc is definitely owned & not worth checking.

Pro tip: On rare occasions you may find that some pets with their basic PB clothes are in the pound. If you want to be thorough you can check Christmas pets with full outfits on; Aishas with collars, Bruces with bows, etc; there is a small chance they may still be in the pound. These pets may have been in the pound when the conversion happened, causing them to appear clothed. If you adopt one of these pets, it will NOT actually have the pb clothes attached.

Also, if you see this red Acara:



It appears to be glitched; the pet is usually not an Acara but most often a blue uni, and it may be in the pound despite appearing as the clothed acara. Glitches are fun aren’t they?  Now, if you see any pets you would like to check, open each one in a new tab.
Use control+click or command+click for a shortcut.
If you are using a mouse you can click with the mouse’s scroll wheel and that opens a link in a new tab too.

Now that you have 100 tabs open and your computer is huffing and puffing, it’s time to see if any of them are actually in the pound! You can quickly go through the tabs using the Control+W shortcut to close each one until you see a pet and not just the red border stating the pet isn’t in the pound.

Did you accidentally close a tab and want to go back to it? Use Control+Shift+T to open the most recently closed tab.