The answer to this month’s puzzle is Inception.

This month’s puzzle required some creativity and also some movie knowledge!

Each movie, as written, had three attributes – color, size, and style. There were a total of 81 movies presented, and exactly 3 movies had each possible set of attributes (e.g. small, red, and italicized). As hinted at by the title “Star Search”, each of those sets of 3 movies starred the same actor. For example, Apollo 13, True Lies, and Twister all starred Bill Paxton.

From there, astute solvers noticed that those 27 actors could further be arranged into groups of 3 based on the color and style of the movies they’d originally starred in, and that those trios of actors all co-starred in another movie. For example, Bill Paxton, Kathy Bates, and Kate Winslet all starred in Titanic.

From there, those 9 additional movies could be sorted (by the style of the original movies that starred its actors) into groups of 3 based on the actor they had in common. For example, Titanic, Catch Me if You Can, and The Departed all starred Leonardo DiCaprio.

Finally, the 3 actors remaining (Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, and Michael Caine) were all co-stars in the same movie — Inception. Deep!

Congratulations to everyone who managed to get through all of the layers of this month’s puzzle!