The Grid #34

The Grid is a square of nine cells, each sitting at the intersection of a row criterion and a column criterion. You place a show that satisfies both at once, never reusing a title. It's less a memory test than an exercise in retrieval under constraint: you certainly know an animated show with over a hundred episodes — the question is whether you can find it the moment you're asked. The grid is the same for everyone each day.

How to play

• Nine cells, nine guesses. Each cell wants a show that satisfies both its row and its column.
• A show can only be used once. The counter on a cell tells you how many valid answers exist.
• The grid changes every day and shares as a square of emoji.

Three ways to play better

1. Attack the cell with the lowest counter. Two-answer cells are the ones you may no longer be able to fill once you've spent your shows.
2. Save your "Swiss army" shows for last: a long, well-rated series satisfies many crossings, so don't burn it on an easy cell.
3. Read both criteria before confirming. Half of all wasted guesses go to a show that ticked the row and forgot the column.

Where the data comes from

Categories cross verifiable attributes: genre, decade, country of origin, episode count and rating, across the 571 shows in our cache with at least 1,000 votes. A day's draw is only kept if every cell admits at least two answers — a single-answer cell would be a riddle, not a game. And if you think of a show that isn't listed, put it forward anyway: it gets looked up and judged by the same rule.

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