Typecast

About Typecast

Typecast is a daily actor guessing game from Smashcut Games, the maker of On Location. Each day's puzzle has three actors, worth 100, 250 and 500 points. For each one you see a filmography table: the year, genre and rating of every film, with the titles hidden as blanks that show only their length and punctuation.

You have 15 guesses for all three actors together. A wrong name costs a guess, and a correct one is free. You also hold a hand of hint cards that reveal more, such as letters of titles or co-stars, each costing up to three guesses. Solve an actor without using a card and the next one pays one and a half times its value, and any guesses left at the end add a bonus. The film data comes from TMDB.

Everyone plays the same three actors that day, and new puzzles arrive at midnight UTC. The Smashcut site also hosts On Location, Headshots and a beta game, Underscore, with rewards and achievements across them.

It suits film fans who know careers and eras: the shape of a filmography, a run of action films in 2017, a lone war film, is often enough to place an actor before any title shows.

How to play Typecast

1. Open smashcut.games/typecast and press Begin.
2. Study the first actor's filmography: years, genres and ratings, with titles blanked.
3. Type the actor's name; a miss costs one of your 15 guesses.
4. Play a hint card if you are stuck, at a cost of up to three guesses.
5. Move on to the second and third actors, worth more points each, and keep guesses in hand for a bonus.

Screenshots

Tips

• Look at gaps and bursts in the years: a long career or a recent breakout narrows the field fast.
• The blank lengths and punctuation in titles, a colon or an ampersand, often give away a franchise.
• Try to solve the first actor without a card, since that raises what the next one pays.

Questions