📸 Snap
The basics
You see one archival photograph. Click the map to place its subject, set the landmark or event year on the timeline underneath, and lock in.
Both answers are revealed together with your distance error, your year error and a combined score.
Two independent puzzles
The clues for place and the clues for time are usually different parts of the same image, and it helps to hunt for them separately.
- Place clues: architecture, building materials, terrain, vegetation, road layout, signage and language.
- Year clues: architectural style, construction methods, vehicles, clothing and the historical context of the landmark or event.
The scoring is forgiving in one direction
Distance error and year error both reduce your score, but they fall off gradually rather than all at once. Being in the right country and the right decade already scores well.
That means the worst outcome is a confident answer in completely the wrong place. If you are unsure between two continents, pick the one with more supporting evidence rather than splitting the difference over an ocean.
A worked photo
The image shows a large iron structure under construction, surrounded by low stone buildings with tall shuttered windows and steep roofs.
The buildings are the place clue. That style of stone facade and shutter is European, and the roof pitch narrows it further. The iron structure is the time clue, because that kind of exposed lattice ironwork belongs to a specific stretch of the late nineteenth century. Two different features, two different answers, one photograph.
Tips worth remembering
- Zoom into the photo mentally, corner by corner. The useful detail is rarely the subject in the middle.
- Date the newest thing you can see. A scene is at least as recent as its most modern object.
- Vegetation and light are quiet but strong hints about latitude.
- Place the pin before you think about the year. Location often suggests the era.