In a world that churns out content faster than anyone can possibly keep up with it, review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes come in handy as a quick way to separate the must-sees from the skips. And even if you yourself don’t rely too heavily on the Tomatometer to dictate your TV and movie watchlist, there’s a good chance you know someone who does.
Those people now have a Wordle-like game they can call their own: Rotten Tomatoes’ Daily Tomato, in which you get five tries to guess the mystery movie of the day. To start off, you’re given several key details about the film, including the number of words in the title; the critic and audience scores; the rating; the release year; the genre; and the runtime. With each wrong guess, you unlock another clue.
Clues two, three, and four are all snippets taken from movie reviews, with key phrases bolded to help you narrow your focus. These are more illuminating than you might think they’d be: One could mention a couple comparable films, while the next reveals the names of the main characters. Maybe you’ll even get a sentence featuring the name of the director or a starring actor. The fifth and final clue is a blurry thumbnail image of the movie poster alongside the Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus. If you’re still stumped after that, hey—better luck tomorrow.
As the game’s name suggests, there’s only one Daily Tomato per day. If all that does is whet your appetite for more movie-related puzzles, there are plenty to keep you busy until the clock strikes midnight. With Moviedle, you have to guess the movie after seeing the whole thing compressed into a single second (it gets slightly slower with each subsequent guess). The aptly titled Box Office Game asks you to fill in the top five movies at the box office during a given weekend (with opportunities to unlock clues as you go). For Framed and FlikTok, meanwhile, players guess the movie based on a single frame from it.
Try your hand at today’s Daily Tomato here.
Looking for a new movie to watch, or at least a movie that’s new to you? Mental Floss’s new book,The Curious Movie Buff: A Miscellany of Fantastic Films from the Past 50 Years, offers behind-the-scenes details and amazing facts about some of the greatest movies of the past half-century. And it’s available now at your favorite place to buy books, or online right here.
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