A brief storytime, darlings. It's a little fictionalized, partly for simplicity but partly because my memory is weak.

I don't watch movies. The last movie I watched was Glass Onion, one and a half years ago at this point. The last one I watched before that was Tongues Untied, in 2021? I couldn't tell you what Kate Winslet was in, other than the one with the iceberg.

My friend Riley is into movies, though (specifically, old movies like Casablanca). And she found an app called "Cinenerdle", what I can only describe as... a PVP version of the film buff thing where you go "oh yeah, she was in La La Land"? You start with a movie, and have to name another movie that "links" to it, by sharing an actor or director. Then their opponent names a link from that movie. Players can only use a given link three times before they've exhausted it, and have to move on to something else-- so eventually someone runs out of knowledge. What's more, you could "ban" a number of links before the game, giving you opportunities to ensnare your opponents.

Now I don't love movies, but I love games involving textured databases. Inspired by the story of Nigel Richards winning the premier francophone Scrabble tournament without speaking a lick of French, I decided to play. Not just play, either-- play to win.

I needed to prep.

"You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one." - GM Mikhail Tal

Half the time on the day I played, Cinenerdle would start you off with Moulin Rouge (2001). John Leguizamo was in Moulin Rouge-- he was in the Super Mario movie everyone talks about. On the right track, but that's probably a movie my opponent knows about more than me. What else, what else... Aha! John Leguizamo played Sid in the Ice Age series. I can work with that.

Okay, the other half of the time, Cinenerdle would start us off with Chicago (2002). Okay, who's in Chicago? I know of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zwellger from crosswords, but couldn't pick them out from a lineup of five blonde white women... Wait, Queen Latifah is in this! Queen Latifah, who IMDB informs me plays the girl mammoth in Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)?

The fabric of the universe was unstitching before me, and its cloth was Ice Age. I did a little more research, and formulated an attack. This must have been what it felt like for Savielly Tartakower to invent chess' Catalan Opening, or for Fermat to catch a glimpse of God too long for the margins of Arithmetica. Hopefully the game would be closer to the former than the latter.

I loaded into a game. Guest Bunch Of Numbers versus Guest Bunch Of Numbers, a battle for the centuries:

GAME: Chicago (2001)
ME: Waiting For Godot (2021) [via John Leguizamo]
OPPONENT: Super Mario Bros. (1993)

As predicted. They knew nothing about Waiting For Godot, but saw that John Leguizamo was in it.

ME: Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)

They were right where I wanted them. In my forest. And that was the third and final John Leguizamo connection, so there would be no rerouting to real movies from here.

OPPONENT: Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs (2009)
ME: Ice Age (2002)
OPPONENT: Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) 

And here was my trap. Jay Leno, I had learned five minutes ago, was in the 2006 film, which allowed me to connect to Cars via his "Jay Limo" cameo:

ME: Cars
OPPONENT: Cars 2

A valiant effort.

ME: Cars 3

And that was it.

My opponent died with unused power-ups that could let them view the cast of the film. (Surely after having their memory jogged that Owen Wilson played Lightning McQueen they could try to continue from here, or at least run into my calculated Owen Wilson ban.) I choose to believe that they didn't simply forget about the powerups-- they just recognized the elegance of our battle. A tipping of the king, in that way.

I lost almost every other match. Thus is the legacy of the Ice Age series.