Two minutes
How to play
Two objects appear side by side. Each is labelled with what it is — a painting, a photograph, a side chair — and with the museum that holds it. Neither carries a title, a maker or a date. Pick the one you think was made first.
The rules
- Ten questions in the Daily Challenge, the same ten for everyone, resetting at midnight UTC.
- Endless mode never stops and mixes difficulty as you go.
- Choose with a tap, a click, or ← / → on a keyboard.
- Zoom before you commit. Every picture has its own zoom control, and opening it never counts as an answer — Z for the left one, X for the right.
- The reveal shows both dates, the gap between them, and one line of context.
What actually helps
- Material before style. Photographic processes, aniline dye, cast iron and plastics all carry hard earliest dates.
- Watch the format. A carte de visite, a folio engraving and a poster all belong to particular decades of printing.
- Don't trust "modern-looking". A great deal of very old work is startlingly clean, and a great deal of recent work is deliberately antique.
- Mind the region. Most of us hold one timeline, usually a European one. Crossing continents is where the ranking instinct breaks.
A pair is only asked when the two objects' date ranges do not overlap at all. Close calls are close on purpose — but they always have a right answer.