How to Beat Vulture's Cinematrix

Vulture's addictive film trivia game

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in Gigli

I love to sleep in, so every late morning I wake up to updates from a group text where my friends share their NYT Connections scores. I generally do pretty well on Connections, though sometimes I do miss a couple guesses and end up with a “Phew!” score. It’s commonplace to see people complaining about the daily game, crafted by Wyna Liu, because of the hard to figure out categories for the purple row (usually the hardest to figure out). Categories like “cars with the vowels missing” or “planets missing the first letter” are the goofy non-categories we end up with sometimes. But it’s a puzzle, it should be hard sometimes! And I don’t mind.

Enter Vulture’s Cinematrix, created by Joe Reid (co-host of the podcast This Had Oscar Buzz), a new kind of connections/wordle/etc. game that tests players’ movie knowledge. The Cinematrix, which published its 67th daily game today, has been a favorite of mine since its inception. And I commend Vulture on coming up with a really fun game — when I worked at Vulture in 2015 my initial hiring was to create “games” for the website, which I had no interest in at the time because I wanted to be a “SERIOUS” writer (lol), and left four months later to join the MTV News reboot (RIP).

The Cinematrix is played by guessing the connections in squares. It’s usually three actors (sometimes directors) on the left, with three different squares of movie connections to guess. Today’s was Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner, and Jennifer Lopez. The categories were films also starring Ben Affleck, films nominated for an Oscar, and films released from 2000-2009.

The Ben Affleck category was easy, because I’m an Affleck connoisseur (he’s a Leo, after all). Skill at Cinematrix usually comes from remembering a shit ton of films and who stars in them, particularly films with big cast. I’m a fan of the party game where one person in the room starts with a celebrity name, then the next player names a movie that person is in, then the subsequent player names an actor in that film. For instance, I would say “Ben Affleck” and someone would say “Pearl Harbor” and someone else would say “Jennifer Garner.” Which is why I put Pearl Harbor as the answer for a Jennifer Garner film also starring Ben Affleck.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner in Daredevil.

Why didn’t I just put Daredevil? Because you get more points in the game if you select a film that less people have chosen. 10% of people chose Pearl Harbor, which Garner has a small part in. 79% of players picked Daredevil, for instance. Gwyneth Paltrow, another of Ben Affleck’s exes, have only starred in two films together, 2000’s Bounce and 1998’s Shakespeare in Love** so the options are limited. Once once you lock in a guess, it’s permanent. And you only get nine guesses, which is the exact amount of squares on the board. So if you fuck up a guess, good luck! Seems annoying, but also, it’s a puzzle and that’s how these things go! 75% of players guessed Gigli for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, which I figured, so I went with Jersey Girl. Only 18% of players had the same idea.

Oscar nominated films were easy for Gwyneth, particularly when you realize that it doesn’t have to be a film the actor in question was nominated for. Any Oscar nomination will do! The Royal Tenenbaums was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, so I (and 8% of players) guessed that one. Garner was in Dallas Buyers Club, which was (unfortunately!) nominated for a ton of Oscars. Lopez was a bit trickier. Has she been in any movies nominated for Oscars? Hustlers didn’t get a single one. I’d have to dig deep in my brain for visual effects or editing Oscar noms, but I’m not Louis Virtel so that’s not exactly my forte. It was a toss up between The Cell or Out of Sight for guesses and I went with The Cell. It was correct (as was Out of Sight, nominated for Best Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay) thanks to a Best Makeup nomination.

Then came films released from 2000-2009. This is exactly my wheelhouse since all I did in high school was see movies on the weekends. The bulk of my forthcoming essay collection, Pure Innocent Fun (tentatively releasing in February 2025), takes place in the realm of early 2000s pop culture. Here is where I made a slight error. I anticipated the Vulture reading crowd would all pick James Grey’s Two Lovers for Gwyneth, so I went with Shallow Hal. Turns out, only 2% of players picked Two Lovers. 27% of players went with Shallow Hal. I guess the Vulture audience is more low brow than I thought (non derogatory, I am the lowest of brows). For Jennifer Garner, I went with Elektra and for Jennifer Lopez, there were so many to pick from but I went with a personal fave, Shall We Dance?

Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black in Shallow Hal.

I finished the game with a score of 2543, which landed me in the top 1% of players today. It’s easier to land in the top percentile if you play in the morning, when less people have played, but I love a good afternoon try. Even though that does put me in danger of seeing some friends’ results if they screenshot them and put them in their Instagram stories. Without a warning! Unlike the very kind and generous Hunter Harris, who put a warning up before she shared her results today. Obviously as a preeminent Ben Affleck scholar, she bodied it, while also snagging those Two Lovers points.

Are you a fan of Cinematrix? How’d you do you today? And if we’re friends, why aren’t we sharing our scores in a daily group chat yet?!

**Edited to include Shakespeare in Love as a film starring Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow, a movie I’ve mostly forgotten about, sorry!