Silver Screen Grid

Silver Screen Grid takes the format of the sports grids, where every square is the meeting point of two clues, and applies it to cinema. The grid is smaller than most, two rows by three columns, so a day's puzzle is six films long.

The clues mix people and facts about the film: a studio such as Warner Bros., a box-office haul over a set figure, a star such as Scarlett Johansson or Rebecca Hall, a genre such as animation, a release decade, even an award. You pick a cell, type a title and choose it from a search list drawn from The Movie Database, and each film can be used only once in a grid.

There is no fixed number of guesses. You start each grid with five stars and every wrong film costs one, as does a hint; the grid ends when the stars run out. Every grid also has a Top Billing, the one film that fits the most cells, and the end screen shows how close you came, what other players picked and where your films are streaming.

A new grid goes up at midnight Pacific Time, and the archive keeps every grid since the first, with a Surprise me button for a random past one. Beside the grid sits The Cast, a second daily puzzle in which sixteen films are cast under their lead actors in four takes. The game is free and plays with no account; signing in adds a daily leaderboard, leagues with friends, a stats passport and a streak kept across devices. It suits film fans who know casts and studios as well as titles.