How to play Hearsay

The rules

• Start typing a title and pick it from the list. The list is the same every day and holds hundreds of films, shows, books and plays, so it never points at the answer.
• A wrong title costs 100 points. Six wrong titles and the answer is shown.
• Small differences do not matter: case, punctuation and a leading The are ignored.

The clue ladder

1. The genre.
2. Who says it.
3. A credit: the director of a film, the creator of a TV show, or the author of a book or play.
4. The title's first letters, with a blank for each other letter.

There are always four clues. When one of them would name the work outright (the line is narration, say, or the speaker is the title character), the title's length (words and letters) takes its place. Each clue costs 150 points. Clues come in that order, one at a time.

Scoring

• Naming the work is worth 1,000, minus 150 per clue and 100 per wrong title, never below 100.
• On some days (when the work has several well-known characters) there is a bonus round: if you named it without taking the who-says-it clue, pick which of four characters said the line for 200 more.
• So the best possible day is 1,000, or 1,200 on a bonus day.

Tips

• Read the line out loud: voice, era and slang say a lot about where it comes from.
• The year rules out more than you think. Try a clue before burning wrong guesses: a clue costs 150, a wrong title 100, but the clue also narrows things down.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my answer not in the list?

The list holds every work our quotes come from plus hundreds of other well-known titles. If yours is missing, it is not the answer.

What if a book and its film share a title?

Then either counts: we match on the title, not the medium. The medium shown with the line tells you which one the quote is from.

When does it change?

Every day at midnight UK time. Past days are in the answers archive.