Spectrle

About Spectrle

Spectrle turns a whole film into a picture. Hundreds of frames are taken from across the running time and laid out as spokes in a circle, so the ring shows the film's palette from start to finish: the blue night scenes, the orange desert, a red climax.

You get five guesses. A wrong guess or a skip sharpens the spectrum and reveals a hint, such as the year of release or the film's tagline. Each puzzle has a par, shown as dots, from 2 to 5, and the aim is to name the film at or under par.

There is one daily movie puzzle, the same for everyone, and an archive of past ones that can be filtered by genre, decade and par. Spectrle also runs a Games mode built the same way from video games, and a Random option for extra play.

It rewards people who remember how films look as much as what happens in them.

How to play Spectrle

1. Look at today's spectrum: each spoke is a frame from the film, in order around the circle.
2. Type a film title and submit, or skip.
3. After a miss or skip, the spectrum sharpens and a hint appears.
4. Name the film within five guesses, ideally at or under par.

Tips

• Read the ring as a timeline: big blocks of one colour are long sequences in one setting.
• A mostly dark ring points to thrillers, horror or night-set films; bright saturated rings often mean animation.
• Use the decade and genre filters in the archive to practise.

Questions