People & culture

"Peak decade" is not "birth decade"

Actors and athletes are graded on the decade they were biggest, not when they were born or when they started. It is the single most common misread in this family: a career that began in the 1980s and peaked in the 2000s scores as 2000s, and the ordered decade scale will tell you so with a yellow if you are one step out. Think fame, not biography.

The famous-people topics

Actors

Nationality, peak decade, what they are best known for, and gender. "Known for" is an exact-match column tied to a defining role or franchise, so it rarely greens — but when it does, the round is over. Nationality is the more practical opener, because film fame is concentrated in a few countries and a red there is still a big cut.

Athletes

Sport, country, peak decade and gender. Sport is by far the strongest column: get it green and you are inside a list of maybe a dozen names. Guess a sport you actually follow rather than the most popular one — you will read the follow-up clues better.

YouTubers & Influencers

Platform (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, podcast), content type (challenges, gaming, beauty, comedy, vlogs, sport, science, food, talk, dance, music), country and follower count in millions. Follower count is numeric with ▲▼ arrows, and the distribution is extremely top-heavy, so an arrow pointing up from a large number means you are hunting one of a very small handful of accounts.

The culture topics

Holidays

Season, main colour, who it appeals to (kids, adults, everyone) and origin. Season is the natural opener; the interesting wrinkle is that a fair number of holidays are marked "varies", because they follow lunar calendars rather than the Gregorian one.

Superheroes

Publisher (Marvel, DC, other), debut decade, main power (strength, speed, flight, magic, tech, mind, shapeshift, none) and suit colour. Debut decade is ordered and reaches back to the 1930s, and the power column is the one that surprises people — several A-list heroes are graded "none", which is exactly the sort of thing this game exists to make you argue about.

Fairy Tale Characters

Origin, role (hero, villain, princess, helper, creature, trickster), era and whether they use magic. Era runs from ancient through the 1300s to the 1900s as an ordered scale, which quietly teaches you how much younger the famous tales are than they feel.