Cinematrix turns one today! Where did the year go? (Don’t answer that.)
To commemorate the game’s first birthday, we combed through a year’s worth of data to put together a snapshot of how we constructed the first 338 grids — and how successful you were at completing them. Ever wondered which clue combinations were the hardest? Which actors have appeared the most often? Or which category players complained (lovingly) about the most? You’ll find all that and much more below.
Total Number of Cinematrixes
When the game launched last February 26, it started out as a weekdays-only affair. Weekend games arrived on June 15, 2024, and we never looked back, even doubling up on a few special occasions. The 338 grids from year one included a number of themed subsets and bonuses, such as:
➼ 4 sports grids: 3 during football season (including 2 featuring the divisive “Title Contains an NFL Team Name” category) and 1 for the World Series
➼ 4 themed weeks, on the topics of rom-coms, Halloween and horror, Saturday Night Live, and holiday movies
➼ 3 bonus grids: a collab with Criterion Channel featuring three directors on its service, a Cannes Lions edition for Vox Media’s marketing team to show off at the advertising festival, and a “Now in Theaters” grid that appears during Screenvision’s preshow entertainment in movie theaters
➼ 1 grid made for the Cut’s Cheaters Week
➼ 1 guest grid designed by Julia Fox
➼ 1 grid honoring J.D. Vance
Different Actors Used
We get a not-insignificant number of emails from players asking us to feature a greater variety of actors in the game, and you can count on seeing plenty of new names going forward. But! Over 500 different actors have already appeared! Various Cinematrixes have also featured:
➼ 67 directors
➼ 6 composers (Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and Pasek and Paul)
➼ 6 writer-directors (Aaron Sorkin, Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, John Hughes, Nancy Meyers, and Nora Ephron)
➼ 1 writer-actor (Mike White)
Grids Featuring Morgan Freeman
The legendary actor is the person we used most during our first year. He was followed closely by:
➼ The 6-timers: Cate Blanchett (including the Bob Dylan category, see below) and Nicolas Cage (including the Dracula category, also see below)
➼ The 5-timers: Zoë Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicole Kidman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Amy Adams, and Denzel Washington
Grids With the Category “3+ Words in Title”
That was our most frequently used category, appearing in roughly a fifth of the grids we published. (We’ve gone as high as “4+ Words in Title,” which we used 36 times. Maybe this year we’ll tease out a “5+ Words” grid.) It was followed by:
➼ 62 grids with the category “$100M+ Worldwide Box Office”
➼ 57 with “Two-Word Title”
➼ 52 with “One-Word Title”
➼ 47 with “2015–2024” and “Oscar-Nominated Film” (tie)
Number of Possible Actors for the category “Anyone Who Played Dracula”
Nice. That’s the largest set of options for one of our “Anyone Who Played …” clues. The next one up, “Anyone Who Played Joker,” had 30 possible answers. After that, we had two ties:
➼ 8 actors for “Who Played Bob Dylan” and “Who Played Batman”
➼ 7 actors for “Who Played Catwoman” and “Who Played James Bond”
How Did You Play?
Overall Success Rate
When you average the percentage of correct responses across all the squares found in all the grids we designed this year, that’s how well you all did. Not bad! Room for improvement!
Times Black Panther Appeared as one of the “Most Popular Correct Answers”
Whenever the best Marvel movie was an eligible answer for a grid, it tended to be used. The movies that appeared almost as frequently as “Most Popular Correct Answers” were:
➼ 16 times: Oppenheimer
➼ 15 times: Titanic
➼ 14 times: Love Actually
The Success Rate for “Crispin Glover” x “Number in Title”
That was our hardest intersection of the year. (Sorry). The runners-up were:
➼ 14.3%: “Kathryn Hahn” x “Keegan-Michael Key”
➼ 14.4%: “Dennis Quaid” x “Title Begins With K or C”
➼ 14.9%: “Laura Linney” x “Begins With a Vowel”
➼ 14.9%: “Giancarlo Esposito” x “$100M+ Worldwide Box Office”
The Success Rate for “Based on a Book” x “Kristen Stewart”
And this, unsurprisingly, was our easiest intersection. After that came:
➼ 92.6%: “Timothée Chalamet” x “Based on a Book”
➼ 92.5%: “Ryan Gosling” x “Emma Stone”
➼ 92.1%: “Margot Robbie” x “Character Name in Title”
➼ 92.0%: “Joaquin Phoenix” x “One-Word Title”
The Success Rate for Grid No. 91
The Cinematrix in which players had the highest average success rate across all nine squares was this grid featuring Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Andrew Garfield. The most popular correct answers included La La Land, The Notebook, Barbie, Poor Things, The Amazing Spider-Man (and its sequel), and Tick, Tick … Boom!. Yorgos hive showed up.
Players to Achieve a Perfect Grid
Just over 100 of you earned a score of 2,700, which requires finding the rarest answer for all nine squares. Even if some of those players had assistance (we hear the whispers), it’s still a feat to game out which obscure movies from a given actor’s filmography will end up being the least frequently used on that day. Kudos!
Number of Emails We Received About the “Character Name in Title” Category
We used this category 34 times because we’re gluttons for pain (or, more accurately, for chagrined emails about why certain guesses didn’t count). Joe Reid went long on our new approach to this category in the latest clarifications and corrections.