The Character

About The Character

The Character is one of the daily games on WatchTrail, a site for keeping track of the series and films you watch. Every day it picks one character, the same for every player, and you have eight guesses to name them. The puzzle is numbered, so you can tell which day's character you are playing.

You type a name and pick it from the list that appears. The guess goes into a table that compares it with the answer on six points: the title it comes from, the character's gender, the genres of that title, its decade, its country of origin and its episode count (for a film, the size of its saga). A green cell is a match, a yellow cell is a partial match such as a shared genre, and an arrow says whether the real decade or episode count is higher or lower.

The pool holds about 2,600 characters: around 930 from 233 well-rated series and around 1,650 from 549 films, so names such as Walter White, Jon Snow, Rocky and Forrest Gump are all possible answers. The answer can come from a film as easily as from a show, which makes the first guesses about narrowing down the field rather than winning.

The game is free and has no ads. You can play without an account; signing in keeps your daily streak and puts you on a leaderboard. It can be played in English or French, and it suits anyone who knows their way around popular TV dramas, comedies and film franchises.

How to play The Character

1. Open today's puzzle on WatchTrail; the number at the top shows which day it is.
2. Type a character's name into the box and choose them from the suggestions.
3. Read the row the guess adds: green is a match, yellow is a partial match, red is wrong.
4. Follow the arrows on decade and episode count: they point toward the answer's real value.
5. Use what you learned to pick the next character, and name the answer within eight guesses.

Screenshots

Tips

• Start with a character from a long-running, well-known show: it tells you the most through the arrows.
• Watch the episode column: an up arrow rules out every character from a mini-series or a single film.
• A yellow genre cell means the answer shares at least one genre with your guess, not all of them.
• Remember that the answer may come from a film, where the episode column counts the films in the saga.

Questions