Actorle

About Actorle

Actorle was built by László Kiss, a developer from Budapest, in March 2022. He has said he made the first version in about three days after watching Wordle take off, and that he wanted the same step-by-step feel without copying the letter guessing. Shared scores on Twitter brought in most of its early players, and it has since grown into a small family of film games.

The puzzle is a table of films. You can see when each one came out, what genres it belongs to and how well it is rated on IMDb, while the title is replaced by a row of X marks the length of each word. You guess an actor by name. If your guess appeared in any of those films, their titles are revealed, which gives you something firmer to reason from on the next try. You have eight guesses to name the right person.

The interesting part is deduction more than recall. A career that starts with low-rated horror in the 1980s and moves into prestige dramas tells a story, and the shape of a title, two short words or one long one, can be enough to jog your memory. The site now also offers extra modes such as Expert Daily and Fill The Grid, and the iPhone app bundles the daily games with a multiplayer Groups mode, some of it behind the Actorle Plus subscription.

Actorle suits people who know their way around cast lists and enjoy narrowing down a puzzle. It is harder than a guess-the-poster game, because you have to think about whose career looks like this, not just recognise an image.

How to play Actorle

1. Open actorle.com to see today's list of films, with years, genres and IMDb ratings shown and the titles masked.
2. Study the list for clues such as the earliest year, the mix of genres and the length of the titles.
3. Type the name of an actor you think it might be and pick them from the suggestions.
4. Films your guess also appeared in are unmasked, giving you more to work with.
5. Keep guessing until you name the mystery actor or use all eight tries.

Tips

• Look at the oldest film first; it tells you roughly how old the actor is and how long their career has run.
• Guess well-known co-stars of the films you suspect, even if you doubt they are the answer, to unmask titles.
• Count the X marks: a title with one very long word or a number in a series pattern can narrow things quickly.
• A run of high-rated dramas or lots of animation credits points to particular kinds of careers, so read the genre mix.
• Play the sister games moviedle.xyz and actorle.tv if you want more of the same style.

Questions