Play Wordle with these movie titles

Neither of this week’s puzzles is exceptionally tough, but one will require harder work than the other. That one is not mathematical, but a word puzzle that also requires some knowledge of Hollywood:

#Puzzle 12.1

A movie collector has a daughter who is less interested in movies than in the letters that make up their titles. She observes that one shelf contains five DVDs with five-letter titles.

“Is this some sort of alphabetical arrangement?”

“Not alphabetical,” her mother replies. “These movies are together because they feature the same superstar.”

“See,” says the child, “there’s an A, B or C in each of these five titles.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“This,” her daughter points at a DVD, “is the only title that contains all three letters. Those two other titles have two each out of A-B-C, in two different pairings.”

The budding puzzler now names a consonant that is neither B nor C. “This appears in all five titles, including in the fourth place in the title that contains A + B+C.”

Her mother now all ears, the child names a vowel other than A. “It appears in four of the titles. The fifth uses a third vowel, which appears twice. It’s the only title with a repeating letter.”

Who’s the superstar and what are these five movies?

#Puzzle 12.2

At every bus station along a route, one bus from either direction arrives every 20 minutes, halts briefly, then continues its journey. If you ignore the few seconds spent while stopping, every pair arrives and departs at practically the same moment in any station. Also, these moments of arrival and departure are simultaneous across stations.

At 1 pm one day, just when one bus is leaving, you start walking in the same direction from the same station. At 1:15, you meet a bus from the other direction. At what time will you be overtaken by a bus from the station where you started?