I only immigrated to the US in my adult life and I can't say I recognize Barbara Bush at a glance, so I was _also_ off by a few years and a few km on that one :( but still a lot of fun!
One interesting observation is how much less variation there has been in clothes for the past 20 years or so. Someone from 2005 could look completely undisguisable from someone today, by just wearing regular non-fashion forward 2005 clothes. Same goes for haircuts.
Same can't really said about someone from 1955 and 1975, 1980 - 2000, etc.
It's an interesting phenomenon that you can observe with other things as well like tastes in music. I think it has something to do with people having access to about sixty years of people trying out just about everything they could think off. It's all been done before at this point and it's all available in new and fresh forms. So, it's no longer about collectively picking something that is genuinely new but individuals cherry-picking whatever that they like. And it helps of course that we're not funneling media through a handful of TV channels, newspapers, etc. anymore like we used to. So people cherry pick where they get their information as well.
Probably more that’s it’s much easier to market and sell something that’s been done before than come up with something new. Also our supply chains are highly specialized for the stuff we currently make. In 3-5 years we will see bell shaped pants back again as we go from 90’s repeats to 00’s repeats which were 70’s repeats. Etc etc.
Perhaps another less depressing reason is the intersection of two things:
1) For all its negatives, online culture makes it easier to find and acknowledge different groups with different tastes that share yours, you're not as subject to having to "fit in" just with those near you. Maybe another way to say it is that fewer things are "weird" because it's easy to find others doing something similar
2) The availability of styles is not quite as bottlenecked into a limited number of taste-makers like it used to be.
back around 2002 I had some T shirts from the Gap (so, pretty mainstream) that had the visible stitching and tags look like the shirt was inside out; sort of a duplicate in that if you actually wore them inside out they still looked inside out. the only way to really tell was the little washing instructions tag on the inside.
I would say athleisure is a recent development. 10 years ago you'd see far fewer women wearing tight leggings outside the gym. Heck, even in gyms you'd be hard pressed to see the kind of tank tops and sport bras you regularly see nowadays [1]
N.B. I'm just noting the phenomenon, not commenting on its merits
Is that really true? It is true for me, but I always assumed that is just because I were younger last century. In 1990 I could easily tell if someone was looking like 1980, but today I could never guess if someone looked like 2015 or 2025. I would be happy to learn that this is because fashion actually slowed down, but until proven wrong I will just assume it is because I am older and not paying attention.
> could never guess if someone looked like 2015 or 2025.
If you don't think the younger generation dress crazily then fashion didn't change. Every previous generation thought the next generations clothes were crazy.
Well there's very little "common" cultural influence these days. It used to be that you could see a significant episode of a TV show and EVERYONE was talking about it the next day in the office. Now you're lucky if you can even find one person that has seen the show you're even talking about, let alone if they are "caught up" on it since many people prefer to buffer a few episodes while they watch other things.
How is that even possible? Only three years off? I thought guessing it which tens would be good enough. Getting the last digit right is impossible without blind luck? Or am I missing something?
Round 2 I was 5 years off, but I should have been able to get closer if I'd slowed down. Someone with a better knowledge of modern Middle Eastern uprisings or Arabic could have read the signs, but also the tech in everyone's hands was pretty closely dated.
Round 3 was pretty clearly the London Blitz—the uniform was WW2 era and people were piled on top of each other in a London Tube station—which narrowed it down to basically a single year.
Round 4 was another guess-the-decade shot, I was 6 years off (I guessed 1940). Had I thought about it harder it would have been unlikely to have been taken during WW2, which would have bumped my guess up a few years to be closer.
Round 5 was a bunch of protesters who were pretty clearly in the mid-to-late 2000s (cell phone in the background), and the topic of their protest was gay marriage which had a single very important flashpoint in that decade with Prop 8 in 2008.
Round 2 I guessed it was something to do with Arab Spring but without looking up the year of it happened I remember it was late 00s or early 10s so I put 2010.
Round 3
>and people were piled on top of each other in a London Tube station—which narrowed it down to basically a single year.
Not sure that is a knowledge I know but I only guess it was WWII, again without looking it up I only remember it as the 40s.
Round 4 I had the same thought so I guess something like 1960s because I thought it wasn't WWII.
Round 5, not from US so I only know / heard of Prop 8 when Mozilla fired their CTO Brendan Eich. I thought it happened in early to mid 2010s.
I averaged 5 years off, but my average would have been much better without one photo that I botched by 16 years because I'm unfamiliar with early 19th century swimsuit styles.
There were 2 major world events represented, that helps. Clothing style helps.
I skip specifying Standard or Daylight time altogether, and just use ET (or CT, MT, etc). Much easier on my brain, and nobody actually cares which they're in at the moment.
I felt like I should have been able to be closer. The images wouldn't zoom on my phone though. I'm impressed by three years off but would consider it quite possible for somone who knows their history.
Score 4722 Avg. Years Off 2.6 here. Spoilers: I got two exactly right (Arab Spring, Battle of Britain) and one off by a year (dancing). The two exacts were pretty obviously tied to specific dated events, and I both love history and have a pretty easy time remembering dates. I love this sort of game, as I do trivia, history trivia especially.
I got one off by 20 years, oops. But there's two where I think you can get exact or off by 1 with some knowledge of world events, maybe it's a 50/50 shot. And there's two where the half-decade is pretty clear.
You know, this game pretty much demonstrates how fast cell phone addiction happened. You can tell the year by how many people are staring at their phones, and how big their phones are. You don't see nearly as many people reading newspapers in old photos as there are people gormlessly staring into their phones in contemporary photos.
That was fun and definitely a bit challenging to figure out—I scored 3677, landing in the top 46%, with an average of 9.2 years.
As for some (hopefully constructive) feedback: I think the year selection slider could benefit from a few adjustments. If an image is from the distant past—say, pre-1950s—it might make more sense to use decade-based precision rather than individual years. For example, a black-and-white photo had me way off that caused me to lose 20 years of my life :). It would be helpful if such images were categorized more broadly, something like “191x”.
For mid-century images (roughly 1960–1990), a 5-year interval could strike a better balance. I came across one from that era and was six years off. And for more recent images, say post-2010, a one-year precision feels reasonable.
Of course, this suggestion mainly applies if we're deducing the year based on visual cues like clothing, hairstyles, and the environment. If the game is intended more as a quiz based on the text descriptions under the images, then it shifts more into trivia territory—and that’s a different type of challenge altogether.
Adding to the chorus: I like the older images and the precise year is important! The underground shelter is something that wouldn’t exist just a few years after that photo, or before.
No, don't stop using the older images! They were the most fun for me! Reasoning about the political landscape that would have led to the beach photo was challenging and rewarding when I got it right. And the London Blitz photo was also a ton of fun to see and think about.
For the record, I especially enjoyed the older photos. Maybe it's just a matter of making it obvious in the UI that they penalize less, so that score maximizers won't be annoyed with them.
This is fun. One tiny bit of UI feedback - when maximising the image, I'd expect the escape key to go back to the game, and found it a bit frustrating when it didn't.
Great idea! The trick is to zoom into peoples clothing, and then the associated event becomes quite obvious. Eg. Photo of Disco, no crazy lapels, obviously towards the end of disco, which puts you within a year or two.
Might have gotten lucky but zooming in on clothing got me to 1.8 years off on average (top 2%).
Interesting. Can we organize an event to blow up reggaeton records (or trap, or latin urban, or whatever they call it now - sounds all similar to me) and hope for it to go away?
Personally, I'd prefer for a young white male demographic to not riot against music primarily associated with certain marginalised communities anymore.
I'm not sure why that would mean it doesn't go higher than top 2%, it would only imply the scores you ended up with were in the same percentage bracket.
Confirming this, it looks like you indeed get top 0% when you end on a perfect score of 5000 with an average of 0 years off.
Is it good, or are those photos already in the training data that the model was trained on?
Would be interesting to see how well it would fare on five photos from different years, using pictures that have never previously been uploaded anywhere.
One thing I realized was: the presence or absence of smartphones is an easy way to determine whether something happened before circa 2009 or after. Another: indoor smoking.
Small bit of feedback that – after expanding an image – it'd be nice to more easily collapse it and return to the game screen. Maybe by pressing escape on the keyboard and/or clicking on the image.
Also I think there’s a bug when you view “All-time Stats”. I’ve only played once and in my first game I scored 3971 but it shows lifetime points of 7942 (which exactly double 3971) and 2 games played.
As someone with interest in fashion and social politics, I got that photo year within 2 years difference. Many photos here are largely identifiable as political events but certainly helps to have a fashion background as others have commented in this thread.
I love this idea so much and would make this one of my daily games.
FWIW: The jankiness of the slider feels quite jarring, given it’s the sole interactive element. It makes the thing difficult to stick with. On my iPhone 12, it lags way behind and the numbers update at like 10fps.
I really hope this keeps getting daily images added.
4580. Helps if you recognise the current affairs. Gay marriage, Arab spring, London Blitz came up. Leaving me with a party with a mix of drab and 70s disco clothing so I guessed 1981 and was close enough!
The one that got me was some people at a beach in black and white.
I wanted to play more but couldn't find any way. Refresh page, no new game link, tried entering URL again. Checked but no cookies to delete. That's one way to ensure I never visit the site again.
4878, avg 2.4 years off. Way better than I thought I'd do, I think I just got lucky. I agree that it's a lot like chronophoto.app, but that also has freeplay. This has a nicer looking UI but I think a worse feature set. In particular the scroll-to-zoom and freeplay on chronophoto are nice to have.
Edit: I had seen the photo in the subway before, or something very similar. It's an interesting decision to use photos from big events that people might recognize. (Not inherently bad IMO, just not what I would have intuitively chosen)
Thanks! This is all super helpful. I’m hoping to have something like Chronophoto’s zoom working by tomorrow’s game, and a freeplay-style mode is in the works too.
Do you think it's more satisfying to guess based on clues like tech, clothing, and photo quality, or when you recognize the historical event or era (assuming it’s something a little less recognizable than that subway photo)?
I think both are good, it's nice to have variety. It was very satisfying as a user to think that the photo of all the people might be of the Egyptian revolution in 2011, then end up getting the year exactly right. Some photos are inherently gonna be easier to tell than others. Wartime photos can have a fun game of "figure out which war it is based on the equipment". I think the problem with the subway photo is that it's a very memorable situation, to use subway tunnels as shelters. But there are plenty of wartime photos that aren't gonna be that way.
I also like trying to figure out where the photo was taken, even if that isn't strictly part of the game. So I'm glad that the photo caption is there.
If you grab statistics per photo rather than the whole thing, and maybe do rough client geolocation, you can turn this into a sociological study and publish a paper about it…
This is exactly the same game as chronophoto.app, as far as I can tell, except with way better UX and as a “daily challenge” type game. Well done, anyway! It’s a fun game.
Nah seems like pictures choosen for this purpose? Or do you mean they will sneak in a picture with an unknown date every now and then to good estimators?
Eh, we already had a discussion a few days ago about people using AI to effortlessly geolocate photos. That's the "where". I could see a model that also provides the "when" as useful for a lot of purposes.
More seriously I often wonder how this works in the brain when there is no obvious historical clue. Is it akin to guessing a numerical quantity (like when seeing a crowd) ?
I think those indicate how far off that guess was. I have a dartboard when I guessed the year exactly right, numbers 1 and 3 matching these years off, and a blind man for >10 years off or around there.
Yes, I confirmed it with the results from other friends. Very unintuitive, though. Just saying "Accuracy:" before the emojis, would give a good enough hint of what those mean.
Guessing the year each photo was taken can be surprisingly accurate when you observe changes in technology, fashion, or even product developments visible in the background.
Make the logo clickable so it goes to the homepage
On the sharing stats page, add a link to start the game, e.g. if I send the link to someone to challenge my score, there needs to be an easy way to start the game.
I created a similar game a couple years ago for guessing the year of an object in the Met’s collection. Would love any feedback if people want to try it. https://davidfdriscoll.github.io/met-chronoguesser/
https://timeguessr.com/
Discussed on HN a couple of years ago too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37203511
edit: found another game like OP in the linked thread https://www.chronophoto.app/game.html
I only immigrated to the US in my adult life and I can't say I recognize Barbara Bush at a glance, so I was _also_ off by a few years and a few km on that one :( but still a lot of fun!
https://whentaken.com/teuteuf-games
Same can't really said about someone from 1955 and 1975, 1980 - 2000, etc.
edit: Score 4695 Avg. Years Off 3.0
1) For all its negatives, online culture makes it easier to find and acknowledge different groups with different tastes that share yours, you're not as subject to having to "fit in" just with those near you. Maybe another way to say it is that fewer things are "weird" because it's easy to find others doing something similar
2) The availability of styles is not quite as bottlenecked into a limited number of taste-makers like it used to be.
Until something new is done ;)
The sound pallette is just about infinite with what's possible.s.
I think modern music has become homogenous because true art is risky and won't pass a modern focus group.
i really liked them, was sad when they went away
N.B. I'm just noting the phenomenon, not commenting on its merits
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/women-are-intimidating-men-w...
If you don't think the younger generation dress crazily then fashion didn't change. Every previous generation thought the next generations clothes were crazy.
It's the length of the socks
2000's: jeans
2010's: leggings
2020's: not those
How is that even possible? Only three years off? I thought guessing it which tens would be good enough. Getting the last digit right is impossible without blind luck? Or am I missing something?
Round 1 I just guessed in the middle of the 70s.
Round 2 I was 5 years off, but I should have been able to get closer if I'd slowed down. Someone with a better knowledge of modern Middle Eastern uprisings or Arabic could have read the signs, but also the tech in everyone's hands was pretty closely dated.
Round 3 was pretty clearly the London Blitz—the uniform was WW2 era and people were piled on top of each other in a London Tube station—which narrowed it down to basically a single year.
Round 4 was another guess-the-decade shot, I was 6 years off (I guessed 1940). Had I thought about it harder it would have been unlikely to have been taken during WW2, which would have bumped my guess up a few years to be closer.
Round 5 was a bunch of protesters who were pretty clearly in the mid-to-late 2000s (cell phone in the background), and the topic of their protest was gay marriage which had a single very important flashpoint in that decade with Prop 8 in 2008.
Round 2 I guessed it was something to do with Arab Spring but without looking up the year of it happened I remember it was late 00s or early 10s so I put 2010.
Round 3
>and people were piled on top of each other in a London Tube station—which narrowed it down to basically a single year.
Not sure that is a knowledge I know but I only guess it was WWII, again without looking it up I only remember it as the 40s.
Round 4 I had the same thought so I guess something like 1960s because I thought it wasn't WWII.
Round 5, not from US so I only know / heard of Prop 8 when Mozilla fired their CTO Brendan Eich. I thought it happened in early to mid 2010s.
There were 2 major world events represented, that helps. Clothing style helps.
I felt like I should have been able to be closer. The images wouldn't zoom on my phone though. I'm impressed by three years off but would consider it quite possible for somone who knows their history.
Skill issue.
As for some (hopefully constructive) feedback: I think the year selection slider could benefit from a few adjustments. If an image is from the distant past—say, pre-1950s—it might make more sense to use decade-based precision rather than individual years. For example, a black-and-white photo had me way off that caused me to lose 20 years of my life :). It would be helpful if such images were categorized more broadly, something like “191x”.
For mid-century images (roughly 1960–1990), a 5-year interval could strike a better balance. I came across one from that era and was six years off. And for more recent images, say post-2010, a one-year precision feels reasonable.
Of course, this suggestion mainly applies if we're deducing the year based on visual cues like clothing, hairstyles, and the environment. If the game is intended more as a quiz based on the text descriptions under the images, then it shifts more into trivia territory—and that’s a different type of challenge altogether.
Also, older photos are scored more generously, so being a few decades off won’t tank your score nearly as much as it would on a newer one.
Might have gotten lucky but zooming in on clothing got me to 1.8 years off on average (top 2%).
> obviously towards the end of disco
What is the end of disco?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night
Confirming this, it looks like you indeed get top 0% when you end on a perfect score of 5000 with an average of 0 years off.
I'm impressed that AI is that good.
Would be interesting to see how well it would fare on five photos from different years, using pictures that have never previously been uploaded anywhere.
Small bit of feedback that – after expanding an image – it'd be nice to more easily collapse it and return to the game screen. Maybe by pressing escape on the keyboard and/or clicking on the image.
One thing though, the url in the share text doesn't start with https:// so it doesn't turn into a clickable link when posted in some chat clients.
Great game though, really good idea!
Probably didn't help that I'm not American so the cultural references aren't there.
If someone likes additional challenge then Teuteuf Games' WhenTaken has both guessing the year and location: https://teuteuf.fr/
They also got Worldle which was covered on hn - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30367906
FWIW: The jankiness of the slider feels quite jarring, given it’s the sole interactive element. It makes the thing difficult to stick with. On my iPhone 12, it lags way behind and the numbers update at like 10fps.
I really hope this keeps getting daily images added.
The one that got me was some people at a beach in black and white.
it's really fun/simple so can't feel too bad
Decent try considering most of the options were USA specific.
Edit: I had seen the photo in the subway before, or something very similar. It's an interesting decision to use photos from big events that people might recognize. (Not inherently bad IMO, just not what I would have intuitively chosen)
Do you think it's more satisfying to guess based on clues like tech, clothing, and photo quality, or when you recognize the historical event or era (assuming it’s something a little less recognizable than that subway photo)?
I also like trying to figure out where the photo was taken, even if that isn't strictly part of the game. So I'm glad that the photo caption is there.
[1]: https://www.metmuseum.org/
WhichYear 4/20/25 3045 pts 13 avg. years off
whichyr.comIt’s in the 3rd line, the one before the website url (penultimate).
More seriously I often wonder how this works in the brain when there is no obvious historical clue. Is it akin to guessing a numerical quantity (like when seeing a crowd) ?
Below my points, and how many avg years off, I got a dartboard, then "6", "3", emoji of a blind man walking, then "6".
Suggestions:
Make the logo clickable so it goes to the homepage
On the sharing stats page, add a link to start the game, e.g. if I send the link to someone to challenge my score, there needs to be an easy way to start the game.
I'll definitely take a look at it tomorrow.
3⃣ 1⃣ 8⃣
whichyr.com
3433
Avg. Years Off
12.2
4266
Avg. Years Off
5.2
2⃣ 1⃣ 1⃣ 1⃣ 1⃣
whichyr.com
I got a score of 3740 and an average of 10 years off.
I can share, or get all time stats. That's all.