TimeGuessr

[sundarurfriend]

Scrolling with the mouse on the image (no Ctrl or anything, just scroll) zooms into the section of the image you're on, for anyone else trying "Open image in new tab" or other ways to zoom in.

I'm a big GeoGuessr fan, and had heard of TimeGuessr occasionally in those circles. I'd assumed it would be mostly pictures from the USA and so wasn't massively interested, and from trying it out now, I wasn't too far off: most of the images were from the US and Western Europe, and every single picture so far has been from a rich country. There are obvious reasons for that, and it's not a bad thing in some absolute terms, but it makes it kinda boring for me - the big appeal of GeoGuessr for me is that you routinely get dropped off in a country that you don't often think of, and momentarily get to see and imagine life through their eyes.

Maybe over time, TimeGuessr will also accumulate images from more varied places - or maybe one of the alternatives mentioned in this thread (whentaken and whichyr) already do better in that regard?

[baw-bag]

Its not true!

I have been playing TimeGuessr for 11 months, I do it before bed.

I have been all over, I personally really struggle between Vietnam and Thailand and got even that wrong with Cambodia. I am simply ignorant but it's not just rich countries.

[InitialLastName]

I don't know, my pictures definitely biased towards "cameras are accessible in these places" but I had modern Nepal and Bangladesh, as well as 1930's Finland.

[fnky]

First game, the places I got was:

- Argentina - Belarus – I guessed Poland, because the picture dipicted Polish soliders right after WII - Poland - France - Finland

[NooneAtAll3]

> Scrolling with the mouse

once again nobody cares about laptop users :/

[mmahemoff]

This is fun! I didn't immediately notice the time slider and thought it was just GeoGuessr with historical pictures, but the time element adds a whole new dimension.

[xeonmc]

Should probably be renamed to “Spacetime Guesser”

[eastbound]

I find the UX of Whichyr much better, but it doesn’t have the geographical component. But you see your final ranking on a gaussian curve and it’s fun!

https://whichyr.com/

And here are other games in that style of 5-minutes cultural guesses:

https://framed.wtf/

https://gaps.wtf/

https://sutom.nocle.fr/

https://globle.org/?

https://worldlegame.io/?

https://flagle.gg/

https://phrazle.gg/

https://numberle.org/

Not working currently but guess a historical moment: https://www.historle.com/?#

Guess a wikipedia page: https://pedantle.certitudes.org

[tasuki]

I'm at 200 tries for the "Guess a wikipedia page" thing, completely exhausted, and not getting anywhere. Very frustrating, yet I can't bring myself to abandon it...

[Jordan-117]

Love their selection of photos more than the competition -- more likely to contain giveaways like a famous location from an unusual angle or a subtle date, so it feels more like detective work than guesswork. Just wish it reset at midnight local.

[me_bx]

The game 'Whentaken' [1] follows the exact same concept.

Just mentioning in case people are interested in alternatives / slightly different UX.

[1]: https://whentaken.com/

[JimDabell]

Also whichyr: https://whichyr.com

Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43715024

[SamBam]

Fun! I was surprised how often I was 1 year off and in the right city for things that I was just guessing about.

On small error I found: there's a photo that's outside Piazza Navona in Rome in the 30s, which it lists as being 700 meters away at Piazza Venezia. I know I'm correct -- I lived a street away from there.

[hdjrudni]

Maybe it moved 700m since the 30s? =)

[captn3m0]

I couldn’t figure out how the time picker worked (and that there was a time picker) till the third round when I realised I was being penalized. Got 34k still.

[trebligdivad]

I'm glad you figured it out...I don't see a map to put a pin into.

[tesuto]

Out of curiosity, I wonder why the game chose Apple Maps. I would have expected OpenStreetMap. Interesting choice.

[brahma-dev]

This is how it renders for me. https://imgur.com/a/kJmNMUR

[alexkearns]

Not quite the same but we created a timeline ordering game for US presidents: https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/1842261/US-Presiden...

You can also use our app to create timeline ordering games on subjects of your own choosing.

[pmxi]

This is really cool.

However, my first photo said "Times Square, NY" in the corner, with a copyright for 1908 which gave it all away.

[cosmodev]

I just clicked to take a quick look, and suddenly found myself playing it's a simple but surprisingly enjoyable game

[pastage]

Some photos are off by at least 100 meters and it is surprising how easy a photo can be off a year so easily. I believe it happens because the easy timestamp is at the time of development, means you can easily be two years off. Also surprising how easy it is to get exact date and time of day on some of the photos.

[king_phil]

Did not work too well for me on mobile. One time it did not scroll but went back, one time controls were missing

[setsewerd]

Yeah I had issues with the mobile web version as well. Worked for 4 rounds but then the time selector stopped moving when I tried to select, and the map stopped loading detail when zooming in (and wouldn't let me place a pin). Started over and the same thing happened in the 3rd round.

Still a great little game though

[mh-]

I didn't try the web based one, but the mobile app works great.

[Arech]

I absolutely love 3 dimensional nature of the game and how carefully many images are chosen to allow for a precise spacetime localization with a bit of a research. Super enjoyable experience in startling contrast with geogessr, which I don't even want to open. Thanks a ton!

[phgn]

Why do I have to pick both a location AND year? Why not focus this game on the year only?

[cheschire]

You’ll probably enjoy this game then

https://whichyr.com/

[kaishiro]

That's like asking why a weather app needs both a date and city - the temperature on July 4th matters, but it's completely different in New York vs. Cairo. Same with this - the year sets the global context, but the location defines the local experience.

[justbeingbored]

Just played 5 rounds. I wanted to see my score as ranked against others, but u didn't do that. That's like me saying here is 800 points for your post. There is no context for the score.

[xboxnolifes]

The context is how close you were to the correct answer, not to your peers.

[gblargg]

Does it at least tell you how close you were for each one? (feedback so you can improve)

[fcatalan]

Yes, score rankings are missing. There's a leaderboard for the daily, but only shows accounts you have friended.

For reference, I tend to hover around 44k for the daily. 48k is a lucky/easy day, 40k some disaster happened. Under 40 is very rare. I like to think that would be above average, but without rankings I don't know :)

[cellis]

indeed, this is screaming for a leaderboard and eventual Geoguesser. Sadly I do believe the reasoning models can one shot this? Maybe would take away all the fun

[jen729w]

I got ~28,000.

[INTPenis]

It wasn't really clear to me that you had to select the year as well as location. Because the year was already written in a red box, so I never tried to change it.

[Humphrey]

This is fun! While some are obvious, and some you need to "cheat" by Googling - it's really fun looking at a part of the world you wouldn't normally browse a map of.

[junon]

30,592/50,000 is higher than I thought I'd get. This is fun!

One of the photos was someone holding a phone with Timeguessr on it. Still managed to get the date wrong - it was taken in 2024.

[stephenhandley]

Super fun! Would be cool to be able to challenge someone after going through a round. Also maybe clear CTA after round on way to sign up to save your score.

[breakyerself]

There was a chalkboard menu in the picture with the date on it, but it said I was 50 years off. Meta data isn't always reliable.

[elwell]

That was really fun; I was pleasantly surprised with 43,165. Trusting intuition worked well.

[wdutch]

Oh nicely done! There was me thinking I'd done well with 38,332 / 50,000. It'd be nice if the site itself showed how well you did relative to others but I can't see anything like that, maybe I'm missing it.

[golfer]

Cute game! Needs an easy way to maximize the picture so you can see it full screen (on laptop).

[osigurdson]

It should be called "locationguessr" imo since that is what you are guessing.

[gandalfgreybeer]

Just in case you enjoyed this, and based on you using “locationguessr”, I’d recommend looking up Geoguessr :)

[diego_moita]

There's an year slider on the bottom right. You're supposed to guess the year too.

[nokita]

Irretrievably hung my phone requiring a hard reset.

Using Chrome on vanilla Android on Samsung.

[mh-]

Seems like an issue with the OS? Surely a web page in a userland app like Chrome shouldn't be able to do that..

[fcatalan]

I do the timeguessr daily every day almost as a ritual, it's fun, satisfying and educative.

It's also very interesting to watch people try after you've done it: how they catch on stuff you missed, their strategies to find and date things, or how they infuriatingly ignore whatever was the giveaway to you.

[oofnik]

41,481. Nice. That was a fun time waster.

[eej71]

I got lucky - I got the Hagia Sophia twice.

[ukprogrammer]

Great idea! What's the tech stack?

[rossant]

Nice. Got 30,527.

[nisse72]

I guessed 2021 for one photo which turned out to be Joe Biden's inauguration fireworks. It tells me I was 20 years off?

[whamlastxmas]

Very fun!

[mocmoc]

love it