Guess the movie game for two: name the film from one frame

The best guess-the-movie game for two is one where you can see your partner's face when they get it before you. Freeze Frame on crisskross arena shows you both one frame from a film, hidden under a grid of tiles that flip away one by one, and the first to name it gets the points. It is free, it runs in the browser, and the video call is in the room.

How Freeze Frame works

1. One frame, under tiles. The picture sits under a grid of 24 tiles. 4 are already gone when it appears, and the rest flip away until the whole frame is there at 6 seconds. Every piece you can see is sharp - a face, a skyline, a costume - so the first second is often enough.
2. Type the film. Start typing and pick it from the list. It knows alternative titles, so you don't lose a frame to spelling.
3. Quick is worth more. 100 points the instant the frame appears, down to 10 at the buzzer. 7 seconds a frame, 3 wrong guesses each.
4. You against your partner. You both get the same frame at the same moment, with your own guesses. You see when they have named it - never what they said. The tiles flip in the same order on both screens, so neither of you sees more than the other.
5. 10 frames a reel. Most points wins, and it goes on your head-to-head record.

Global, Bollywood and Korean reels

Pick a pool: Global for Hollywood and world cinema, Bollywood for Hindi films old and new, or Korean for everything from thrillers to romcoms. Each pool has 150 films. Most are the ones nearly everyone has seen; a share are romances and romcoms from further down the list, the films that never top a chart but get watched twice. If one of you grew up on Shah Rukh Khan and the other on Bong Joon-ho, take turns choosing the pool.

A new reel every Monday

Each week every pool gets one reel, and every couple plays the same one - once. Once, because a reel you have already seen is a reel you know the answers to. Your own score goes on that week's leaderboard next to everyone else's, so you are racing your partner and, quietly, every other couple too.

The weekly reels are for couples who have paired up on crisskross arena (free, one link). Anyone can practise on their own first, with no account - practice reels never use that week's films.

Why a frame and not a poster

Posters give the game away: the title is on them, or the lead actor is standing in the middle. A frame from the film is fairer and more fun - you recognise a film from a corridor, a colour, the back of a head. The frames are textless stills from TMDB, the film database, and we leave out the ones that are really posters with the words taken off.

Tips for winning

• Guess from the first tiles. Points fall every second; a confident early guess beats a certain late one.
• Watch for colour. Film stocks and colour grades are signatures - teal-and-orange, the green of a heist film, a Wes Anderson pastel.
• Faces beat places. If a face is showing, start with whoever it is and narrow down by decade.
• Save a wrong guess. You only get 3. Spend the first one when you are fairly sure, not to fish.

Start a game

1. Open Freeze Frame and sign in with Google (free).
2. Pair with your partner from the same page - one invite link.
3. Open your room, start the call, pick a pool and play this week's reel. Or practise alone first.

Questions people ask