Actorle

Actorle hands you a mystery actor disguised as a filmography: a list of their movies with every title blanked out, leaving only genres, release years, and IMDb ratings as clues. You crack the puzzle by guessing other actors, unmasking any shared films and reading age hints until you can name the star. It is one actor a day, built for people who actually know their movies.

What is Actorle?

Actorle is a daily browser game where the puzzle is a single mystery actor, presented through their career rather than their face or name. When you open the day's challenge you are shown a list of films the actor had a significant role in, but every title is masked behind rows of X characters, one per letter, with spaces and punctuation kept intact. Each film still displays its release year, its genres, and its IMDb rating, so the visible scaffolding of a career is your starting evidence. The job is to read that filmography like a fingerprint and name the person behind it.

You make progress by guessing other actors. Typing a name into the box brings up a dropdown of matching people, and when you commit a guess the game checks it against the hidden cast lists. If your guessed actor appeared alongside the target in any of the listed films, those specific titles are unmasked in full, turning blanked-out rows into readable movie names. Every guess also returns an age comparison that tells you whether the mystery actor is older or younger than the person you named, and roughly how big that gap is, so the feedback nudges you toward the right generation. You get eight guesses to lock in the right answer, so each one is both a probe for revealed titles and a step toward the right age and career profile.

Actorle was created by Laszlo Kiss, a full-stack developer based in Budapest, Hungary, who built it in about three days in March 2022 after Wordle's rise made him want a daily puzzle aimed squarely at film fans. It pulls its movie data from TMDB and now sits inside his MeTime Games collection of short daily games, alongside spinoffs including Actorle.tv, which runs the same idea on television roles instead of films. The actorle.com site also hosts related modes such as Fill The Grid, Board Game, Storyboard, and StarWords, each with its own archive. The project grew from a weekend experiment into a steady daily draw for movie buffs, becoming one of the better-known film-themed entries in the post-Wordle wave of guessing games.

The vibe is closer to a film-trivia detective puzzle than a quick word game, and the difficulty leans toward people who genuinely follow movies. A casual viewer can still chip away using genre and year patterns, but the players who finish in two or three guesses tend to be the ones who can connect a co-star to a title from memory. There is one puzzle per day, an archive of past games for anyone who wants to keep playing, and a shareable result so you can compare how quickly you cracked the day's actor with friends. It rewards breadth of film knowledge over luck, which is exactly why it has stuck with the cinephile crowd.

How to play Actorle

1. Open the daily puzzle and scan the masked filmography, noting the genres, release years, and IMDb rating attached to each hidden title.
2. Read the spread for patterns: a long career, a cluster of one genre, or an early first film all hint at the actor's age and type.
3. Type an actor's name into the guess box and pick from the dropdown of matching people.
4. Submit the guess: if that actor co-starred with the target in any listed film, those titles are revealed in full.
5. Use the age feedback after each guess, which tells you whether the mystery actor is older or younger than the person you named and roughly how large that gap is.
6. Combine the revealed titles and age clues to narrow the field and name the mystery actor within your eight guesses.

Tips and strategy

• Start with films rated above 8 on IMDb, since high-scoring titles are usually well known and easier to recognize once their names are revealed.
• Read the genre mix to profile the actor: heavy drama, history, and romance often signal a character actor, while fantasy and science fiction point to franchise-era leads.
• Treat rare genre tags like war, sport, or horror as gifts, because far fewer films carry them and they sharply narrow who the actor could be.
• Look at the year of the earliest film, since a first major role usually lands when an actor is roughly 18 to 25, giving you an age anchor before you guess.
• Guess prolific, heavily-connected actors early to reveal as many shared titles as possible, then switch to precision once a couple of films are unmasked.
• Use the masking itself as a clue: colons, dashes, and repeating letter patterns in the X's often expose franchise installments that are easy to identify.

Good to know

Resets

Daily, one new actor each day

Guesses

8 attempts

Cost

Free to play in a browser

Creator

Laszlo Kiss (Budapest), launched March 2022

Data source

TMDB movie database

Archive

Yes, past games are playable

Platform

Web, plus iOS and Android apps

Actorle FAQ

Is Actorle free?

Yes. The daily Actorle puzzle is free to play in any web browser at actorle.com, and there are also free iOS and Android apps. MeTime Games, the collection it belongs to, offers some premium extras, but the core daily actor puzzle does not cost anything.

How many guesses do you get in Actorle?

You get eight guesses to identify the mystery actor. Each guess that names a co-star reveals shared film titles, and every guess returns an age hint, so wrong guesses still move you closer.

When does Actorle reset?

Actorle is a daily game, so a new mystery actor appears once per day. There is only one puzzle each day, which means it is worth using your eight guesses carefully rather than rushing.

Is there an Actorle archive?

Yes. The site has a Past Games archive, so you can go back and play earlier daily puzzles. Related modes such as Fill The Grid and Storyboard have their own archives too.

Is Actorle related to Wordle?

Not directly, but it was inspired by Wordle. Creator Laszlo Kiss built Actorle after Wordle took off, applying the one-puzzle-a-day, guess-and-get-feedback format to actors and their filmographies instead of five-letter words.