Is When? a timeline game?

Yes, with one pin instead of cards. You get one event and place it on a timeline that spans 5,000 years. The reveal shows the real year and how many years you were off.

Is there a history version of Wordle?

A few, and When? is one. TimeGuessr gives you a photograph and wants the year and the place; this one gives you a thing and one ribbon, and the answer is only a year.

How do you play When?

You get a pictogram and one line, say the fax machine being patented. Drag the pin until the loupe shows your year, then lock it in. Typing the year works too, 450 BC included.

How is a round scored?

In years from your pin to the real date, with the direction: 132 years too late. Where the source gives a range instead of a single year, that range widens the tolerance. No points, no ranking, no streak nagging.

Yes, and you never need an account. Past days live in an archive; your first archive day is free.

Are there new rounds every day?

Five a day, the same five for everyone. They change at midnight UTC.

When, roughly, was the fax machine patented?

Play today’s rounds

FreeNo account required5 rounds a day2 minutes

Nintendo is as old as the Eiffel Tower. I said 1975.

Tim

81% finish all five rounds

How to play

Read the thing, look at the shape. The ribbon runs from 3000 BC to today.
Drag along the ribbon. A loupe opens over the pin and names the year.
Lock it in. One shot, then the ribbon shows the real year and the gap between.

Play today’s five rounds

The reveal

132 years too late

Alexander Bain patented the fax in 1843, thirty-three years before the telephone. Source ›

The name sends you to the wrong century. What Bain patented was an Electric Printing Telegraph, so date the telegraph, not the office machine. That puts it 33 years before the telephone patent of 1876.

What is in it

These, and more every week. Some everybody gets within a decade, some nobody sees coming.

Great Pyramid
Colosseum
Gutenberg Bible
First bicycle
First barcode
First iPhone
and more

Start with today’s first event

Questions

Is When? a timeline game?: Yes, with one pin instead of cards. You get one event and place it on a timeline that spans 5,000 years. The reveal shows the real year and how many years you were off.
Is there a history version of Wordle?: A few, and When? is one. TimeGuessr gives you a photograph and wants the year and the place; this one gives you a thing and one ribbon, and the answer is only a year.
How do you play When?: You get a pictogram and one line, say the fax machine being patented. Drag the pin until the loupe shows your year, then lock it in. Typing the year works too, 450 BC included.
How is a round scored?: In years from your pin to the real date, with the direction: 132 years too late. Where the source gives a range instead of a single year, that range widens the tolerance. No points, no ranking, no streak nagging.
Is it free?: Yes, and you never need an account. Past days live in an archive; your first archive day is free.
Are there new rounds every day?: Five a day, the same five for everyone. They change at midnight UTC.

Play When? today