CineLinkr #164: The Story Behind the Puzzle
Spoilers ahead: for the puzzle and the movies/games
This post assumes you've already solved the puzzle. It reveals all categories and their connections, and discusses plot details, endings, and spoilers for featured movies/games throughout.
Conclave rebuilt the Sistine Chapel at Cinecittà, which is an extravagant amount of work for a film about people being forbidden to leave a room. The ceiling had to look right while Ralph Fiennes counted votes and suspicions.
🟢 Easy: Cattle drives shape the story
Movies: Red River · City Slickers · Australia · The Cowboys
Red River sends John Wayne and Montgomery Clift toward Abilene with a herd and a worsening disagreement. Howard Hawks turns livestock logistics into a western about command, pride, and the danger of having two men convinced they are the boss.
City Slickers makes the same journey into a midlife holiday. Australia stretches its drive across the Northern Territory, while The Cowboys gives John Wayne a crew of schoolboys because every sensible staffing option has apparently failed.
🟡 Medium: A solar eclipse changes the plot
Movies: Ladyhawke · Apocalypto · Dolores Claiborne · Pitch Black
The eclipse is a working part of each plot. It offers a brief opening in Ladyhawke, interrupts the sacrifice in Apocalypto, and gives Dolores Claiborne cover for a killing.
Pitch Black takes the idea off-world. Its planet loses daylight during an eclipse, and the local nocturnal creatures immediately treat this as dinner service.
🔵 Hard: Papal succession drives the story
Movies: Conclave · The Two Popes · We Have a Pope · The Shoes of the Fisherman
Three films put the election itself under pressure. Conclave plays it as locked-room intrigue, We Have a Pope finds comedy in a winner who cannot face the job, and The Shoes of the Fisherman imagines an unexpected Cold War pontiff.
The Two Popes sits just before the vote. Benedict XVI's possible resignation makes succession the subject even without a conclave ballot.
That is why the group feels tighter than a general Vatican category. Every conversation is really about who wears the white cassock next, including the conversations pretending to be about lunch.
🟣 Tricky: Titles name places in Los Angeles County
Movies: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood · Beverly Hills Ninja · Miracle Mile · Laurel Canyon
The titles scatter the answer across the county: Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Miracle Mile, and Laurel Canyon. Once one location registers, the other three stop looking like unrelated bits of movie-title scenery.
Miracle Mile is especially literal. Most of its nuclear panic unfolds around the neighborhood named on the poster, beginning with a catastrophic phone call at a diner.
The pleasure here is geographic rather than cinematic. Tarantino, Chris Farley, an apocalyptic romance, and a prickly family drama share a map, which may be the only meeting they could survive.
The eclipse group had the day's nastiest clock. For a different sort of time control, PixelLinkr lets players rewind mistakes until the timeline behaves.