Reel Haiku

Reel Haiku is a film guessing game by Mike Linsey and Nathan Haslewood, who also make the daily fiction games on novlr. Its own description is short: a daily film puzzle in three lines.

Every day there are three puzzles, the same three for every player, and they change at midnight UTC. Each puzzle is a haiku about one film. The first line appears in large type, and you type a film title and choose it from the list. A wrong guess, or pressing Next clue, brings in the next line; after three lines without the answer the puzzle is missed. The films are drawn from 1940 onward, and where two films share a title, naming the right title with the wrong year costs you nothing.

At the end of each puzzle you see the film and its year and a row of three squares showing on which clue you solved it, ready to share. When all three are done, the page counts down to the next day's set and keeps your streak in the browser. The finished poem can be printed or saved as a poster in a clean view.

The set of haiku is fixed: 600 poems, three for each of 199 films, shuffled once and dealt three a day, so each film turns up three times with a different poem, and the whole set comes round again after 200 days. A week after a day has passed it joins the archive, which lists each day's films and lets you play any of its puzzles again.

It suits film fans who like a riddle more than a stills or cast quiz: the lines hint at plot, setting and mood rather than show the film.