CineNerdle reads The Audient

I've been playing CineNerdle for something like eight months now and I've never even mentioned it to you.

One of the countless online puzzles that grew out of the Wordle craze, as you can tell by its "-rdle" suffix, CineNerdle requires its players to find five movie titles or themes in a 16-box grid. Each title or theme is comprised of four individual boxes. For example, if you had "Space," "Wookiee," "George Lucas" and "It's a Trap," you'd swap boxes until these four appeared on one row or column, and your answer would be Return of the Jedi. (Lucas didn't direct Return of the Jedi, but he is affiliated with it.) You get 15 swaps to find all five themes or movie titles, and the trick is that there's one where each of the first four answers contributes one box to a fifth answer. 

Once you get three, the boxes turn yellow to let you know you're one away. However, sometimes you'll have two series of yellow overlapping crossing the same rows, so all four boxes in one row or column will be yellow, meaning you have to move one of them to a different row or column, thereby wasting precious swaps. 

The original version of CineNerdle involves getting five movie titles from clues that are not the names of movies. Then there is also the reversal version, accessed from a different tab on the game interface, where you are given titles of movies and then need to figure out five themes that relate to four of the movies each. For example, all four of the movies might be directed by Ron Howard or all four might feature Harrison Ford. But then it even gets silly and superficial, like all four movies have a number in the title or all four movies are about a talking duck.

Then there are also logical games, only about a dozen of which have ever been submitted because they are very complicated. There's a grand theme for the puzzle and then clues about where things need to be moved, like "the four movies directed by Quentin Tarantino are in the four corners" but then also "no films featuring Meg Ryan are adjacent to any of the Quentin Tarantino movies." You get five chances to see if your configuration is correct. These are very rewarding but very time consuming, so they don't easily fit into my need to pass the time quickly for five minutes, which is when I usually play.

I was big into CineNerdle when I first started playing. I had exhausted all the puzzles and had to wait for a new one to be released each day. (The benefit of CineNerdle over something like Wordle is you can play all the puzzles in the archive, so you can pick up any time and not miss any of the games that have ever been offered.)

But then during baseball season, I had the more pressing need to read player news updates or even just stare at the accrued stats of my current fantasy players. Yes, there is a lot of starting at information you already know by heart in fantasy baseball, such is the strength of the obsession. So for six months I really fell behind on CineNerdle, and had more than 100 of each of the mainstream types of puzzle waiting to be played, and a handful of the logical. 

Since the normal baseball season ended six weeks ago, I've had a chance to catch up on CineNerdle and now I am in danger of exhausting all the puzzles again. I'll deal with how to pass my time next when that moment arrives and not before. 

Why am I telling you about this today?

Well, two nights ago I played the game you see above you, reversal #163, two of whose themes were particularly appropriate for The Audient. The print is rather small so let me show you in better detail.

This ...

... is four movies directed by Baz Luhrmann. Immediately below that, at least the way I swapped the tiles, this ...

... is four movies directed by Darren Aronofsky.

Unless this is your first day reading The Audient, you would know that two of my three bi-monthly series in 2023 involve re-watching the films of Luhrmann and Aronofsky. And these two of the three are being conducted in the same months, which are February, April, June, August, October and December. 

In Luhrmann's case I'm re-watching the exactly six features he's made, which is easy enough. With Aronofsky, who has made eight, I eliminated the two I had already re-watched within the last two years, which were The Fountain and The Wrestler. The CineNerdle puzzle designer acknowledged that as well, including only titles I was actually re-watching for each series.

To play out the rest of this game and further demonstrate how it all works, the other three answers were:

1) Films directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

2) Films written by Charlie Kaufman.

3) Films about stage productions.

There's no one right way to orient them, by the way. The answers can appear on any row or column as long as their relationship to each other is the same. It's a smartly conceived puzzle engine.

In a way, the other answers here further the notion that the person who submitted this puzzle reads The Audient. Films written by Charlie Kaufman was my bi-monthly theme in 2021, the year after Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things topped my year-end rankings. If you want to go one further, Inarritu also directed a #1 for me, Birdman, so this puzzle also includes three directors who have made one of my #1 films -- even if Kaufman is being acknowledged for his writing here rather than his directing. (He needs to direct one more feature before he will have four.) 

Look I know it's just a coincidence. Aronofsky and Luhrmann are both big directors. They both had 2022 films that were nominated for Oscars, with The Whale actually winning a best actor statue for Brendan Fraser. I still thought it was funny to see it ... and it gave me an excuse to finally sell you on CineNerdle, if you too are always seeking ways to pass five minutes of your time.

In December I will indeed be wrapping both bi-monthly series by re-watching those 2022 Oscar nominees, one of which was my #1 film of 2022. 

Insanity incarnate, and other Oscar thoughts

I haven't done my usual amount as a lead-up to the Oscars this year on my blog. In fact, I've done almost nothing.

So I thought I'd get in a couple quick thoughts in case you came to The Audient to prime yourself for this year's awards.

First off, the image you see next to you.

This is an event my friend Ross from my Flickchart discussion group on Facebook is attending. It's at the AMC 14 Georgetown in the D.C. area. (He's currently about to start The Revenant as I type this, but I'm posting it much later than I'm typing it, so you can't read this and still go try and catch the 5:10 a.m. showing of The Martian. Sorry.) That's right, all eight best picture nominees during a 24-hour period, with only short breaks in between. They charge $65 per ticket.

While on the one hand I think he's totally crazy -- especially since he's already seen all the movies, some of them more than once -- on the other it's something I totally would love to do some year. I'm curious how seeing all the nominees in such close proximity would change my thoughts on their respective merits.

I'd also love to be the one programming it. Specifically, the one deciding which films belong in which time slots, and whether that would reveal your own personal biases. Whoever did it this year has done a pretty good job. Brooklyn (the only one I have yet to see) seems like a nice soft introduction to the experience, a film that is totally suitable for a morning time slot. This could also reveal the biases of the programmer, as the first one is obviously the one everyone will be freshest for. The Big Short seems to make a pretty logical follow-up, keeping things at least comedic if not light throughout, then Room hits you with a bunch of depressing shit mid-afternoon. The Revenant keeps you down at that level to such an extent that Spotlight, even though it's about child molestation by Catholic priests, seems like a comparative ray of light. Spotlight is also in what's considered the most traditional time slot for a centerpiece, though as the fifth film it's debatable whether that really matters at that point. Mad Max of course makes a terrific midnight movie (it's essentially the most critically acclaimed midnight movie of all time). Bridge of Spies gets kind of the short shrift I suppose, but one hopes that residual energy from Mad Max would give it something of a boost. Then The Martian, well, this is when you really sleep I guess, if you weren't already doing so during Spies. But being the last movie also gives it something of a position of program prominence. You'll feel like Matt Damon just trying to survive at that point.

I don't ever expect to live in the D.C. area, but maybe one of the theaters will do this in a city where I do live someday.

Michael Keaton vs. his former director

If conventional wisdom holds and this is a best picture race that boils down to The Revenant vs. Spotlight -- though I'm told not to count out The Big Short -- then one of two creative people will be a repeat winner from last year.

Actually, there are probably any number of creative people Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu used on both Birdman and The Revenant, most prominently cinematographer (and likely three-time winner) Emmanuel Lubezki. But for the purposes of simplicity, let's boil this down to Michael Keaton vs. Inarritu.

Keaton was of course the star and one-time frontrunner for best actor in Birdman, and when he lost to Eddie Redmayne, I at least hoped that appearing in the best picture winner would serve as a nice consolation prize. Now he's up for just the latter prize this year with Spotlight.

Inarritu, on the other hand, won best director for Birdman. If The Revenant wins best picture, it will be the first time in history that the same person has directed consecutive best picture winners. Another best director win would just be icing on the cake, and both of these things might happen, even though The Revenant has earned its share of backlash.

I guess I'm rooting for Keaton to come out on top in this battle.

Although I didn't see Spotlight in time to rank it with my 2015 rankings, it would have been a contender for my top ten for sure. What's more evident as time goes by is that I would not rank The Revenant in my top ten if compiling my rankings today, even as amazing as the movie looks. It got my #9 spot, already falling from the #4 spot where I had initially inserted it after seeing it. Given another week it might have been down around #15 or even #20. I still think it's a very good film, but I also think that at its core, it's pretty empty. As is, though, it's my highest ranked best picture nominee, so I can't say I'd be entirely disappointed if it won.

How we almost didn't see the Oscars

The Oscars will of course play live while we are at work on Monday, so we'll need to stop checking the internet as soon as Sunday at 5:30 PST/8:30 EST rolls around. (Which will be right when my lunch starts, so at least I'll get in some morning internetting).

It airs on Australian TV both live, and delayed to start at some weird time at night, like 9:45. We obviously want to record the live one so we can start watching it with our dinner, though even then my wife might not make it through the whole thing. (She didn't last year.)

But any and all plans came within about 24 hours of being scuttled.

Until around Sunday morning at 9:30, we didn't have any idea why we weren't getting any TV channels on our TV.

Since neither we nor our kids tend to watch much on live TV these days, we hadn't troubleshot it very aggressively. But as the Oscars snuck up on us this year, we realized only recently that we needed to get it sorted out prior to Monday, or else it wouldn't be possible to either record the show or watch its delayed broadcast.

We'd tried restarting our Fetch box, our intermediary device that offers us on-demand and queues of free programming, mostly television shows. The on-demand was working fine, but not the TV channels. I'd also felt to the back of the TV to see if the antenna was plugged in, and it surely was.

By Sunday morning I was really worrying. It was too late to get a vendor involved or to try to replace a malfunctioning Fetch box. I started wondering if the Oscars were the kind of thing you could catch on YouTube, or even buy somewhere on the internet.

Fortunately, my wife -- the real brains of our operation -- had the good sense to check the other side of the antenna, the wall side. It was here that it was unplugged, likely by one of our kids.

Now we have the Oscars set to record and can be fairly certain that they actually will do so.

Whew.

Enjoy the ceremony, and check this space for my obligatory post-Oscars recap. Even though I was slack on pre-Oscars posts, I do (sort of) commit to providing you one of these.