About
How to play
One film a day, the same one for everybody. Guess as many times as you need. There is no limit, and no way to lose. Each guess is scored column by column:
- ✓ An exact match.
- ≈ Partly right: some shared members, or a related branch.
- ✕ No match.
Hints
Every mode but practice offers hints, and they cost nothing: no guess is spent, and a streak is never broken by one. Each one narrows the field further than the last: the first rules out a good deal, the last leaves a handful of names. None of them ever tells you the answer; that is what giving up is for.
They unlock as you guess and then wait for you. Nothing expires, so guessing on without asking leaves you holding several at once, and you can spend them one after another whenever you like. The button says how many you have and how far off the next one is.
- Daily
- 4 hints. The first after 3 guesses, then one more every 2 guesses.
- Hard
- One hint, after 5 guesses.
- Emoji
- 3 hints. The first after 3 guesses, then one more every 2 guesses.
- Emoji Hard
- One hint, after 4 guesses.
The columns
- Year
- Arrows point towards the answer. The year of first release, wherever it was first released. An arrow points towards the answer.
- Genre
- A match when the whole set matches, close when at least 1 member is shared. Mapped onto a short list of genres a person would use, not the finer one the source keeps. Most films carry two or three.
- Director
- A match when the whole set matches, close when at least 1 member is shared. A set rather than one name, because a film can be directed by two people and half a match is worth showing.
- Lead
- A match when it is the same, no match when it is not. Top billing, as the film's own credits order it.
The other modes
- Hard
- The same board, but you get 8 guesses and can lose. It is a different film from the daily one, on its own sequence and with its own streak, so solving one tells you nothing about the other.
- Emoji
- A short row of symbols standing for the answer. One is shown to begin with and another is uncovered with every wrong guess, until the whole row is out after 3. No columns, no limit, and its own sequence and streak. Every row is written and checked by a person.
- Emoji Hard
- The same row, in 6 guesses. The symbols appear just as fast; what is harder is that you can run out before they do.
- Practice
- A random film, as many rounds as you like. Nothing is recorded, and it can never draw a scheduled answer.
Where the material comes from
Entities are drawn from Wikidata and checked by hand.
Facts are researched and written by a person, each with a source you can follow. None of them are generated by a language model. Where a value is contested or simply unrecorded, the field is left blank rather than filled with a plausible-looking guess.
Scope
This game is played from facts about films (the year, the genre, who directed it, who starred in it) and from emoji written for it here. It uses no posters, no stills, no frames, no promotional artwork and no photographs of anybody. A film is the subject of the puzzle and never the material of it, which is why there is no picture mode: the pictures a film game would want are the one kind this site cannot honestly use.
Who makes this
I am a developer who makes small games for fun. This site is three daily puzzles sharing one engine I built for it: a minute a day, no account, nothing to install, and every fact checked against its sources.
They are free and they stay free. If you have enjoyed them and want to chip in for a coffee, my Ko-fi page is here. It is welcome and never expected.