TimeGuessr: How to Play, Score and Use Every Mode

What is TimeGuessr?

TimeGuessr hands you a historical photograph and asks two questions: where was this taken, and when? You place a pin on a world map, set a year, and submit. You are scored on how close both guesses land. It is sometimes described as GeoGuessr with a time axis.

The catch is that the official site explains almost nothing. Its menu offers a random game, the daily challenge and community games, and that is all. This page fills in the rest.

How to play TimeGuessr

1. A photograph loads. Read it for clues before you touch the map.
2. Pin the location. Zoom the map and drop your pin as close as you can.
3. Set the year. A specific year, not a decade.
4. Submit. The game reveals the real place and year, and your points.
5. Repeat. A standard game is a run of five photos; community games can differ, because their creators choose the set.

How scoring works

Two things decide your points for each photo: how close your pin landed to the real location, and how close your year was to the real year. The official site does not publish a scoring table, and independent write-ups disagree on the maximum per photo, so we don’t quote one. Compare scores inside the game, where the numbers are shown to you after every round.

Daily, random and community

• Daily — the daily challenge, one set a day.
• Play — a random game on demand, for when you have finished the daily.
• Community — games made by other players, often themed.

There is no archive entry on the official menu. The similar WhenTaken does list a Daily Game, an Archive and a Community section, with a year range of 1860 to 2026.

Free, and on your phone

You can play in the browser at timeguessr.com, and the site links to apps on Google Play and the App Store. Check the site and the store listings for any paid options, as we haven’t verified them.

What to look for in a photograph

• Clothing and hairstyles are your fastest date signal.
• Vehicles and number plates narrow the date and often the country.
• Signs and scripts can settle the location by themselves.
• Architecture gives a continent, sometimes a decade.
• Plants, terrain and driving side remove most of the map at once.

Because the photos are archival, rounds sit in the photographic era; nobody was there with a camera before it.

TimeGuessr vs GeoGuessr

GeoGuessr places you in a street-view panorama and asks where you are. TimeGuessr gives you a historical photograph and asks where and when. Both score on map distance; TimeGuessr’s second axis changes how you read every image, because you are hunting for a period as well as a place.

Games like TimeGuessr

WhenTaken asks the same two questions. For outline-based geography, see Worldle, and for the full list, games like Worldle.

Find your next puzzle in the daily game directory or browse our daily word games by type.