How to play Timeline
Timeline is a daily history game about committing before you know. Eight real events make up the day’s deck: one starts on the board with its year visible, and the rest arrive one at a time showing only what happened — never when. You choose the gap where each belongs, and only then is the year revealed. A correct call locks the event in place; a wrong one still locks it into its true place, and costs one of three allowed mistakes. Place the whole deck to win. There is nothing to deduce from the feedback in advance — the reveal always comes after the commitment it judges — so what you know about history is the entire game.
How to play
- One event starts on the timeline with its year showing. The rest arrive one at a time, label only — no year.
- Read the event, then press the ＋ where you think it belongs: before everything, after everything, or in a gap between two placed events.
- The year is revealed the moment you commit. Right or wrong, the event locks into its true place, so the timeline is always in order.
- You can be wrong three times. A fourth mistake ends the run; place the whole deck to win.
- The daily is the same eight events for everyone. Practice decks draw from themed banks — inventions, space, history and more.
Tips & strategy
- Anchor to lifetimes and eras, not exact years. "Steam before electricity, electricity before flight" places most events without a date in sight.
- The revealed years are your growing measuring stick — every placement makes the next one easier, so early mistakes hurt most. Slow down on the first two.
- Watch for technology chains: a thing usually arrives after the thing it needs. Satellites before satellite TV, computers before the web.
- When two gaps both feel possible, take the wider one — a wrong guess in a narrow gap was usually a coin flip you didn’t have to take.
- Practice decks are themed, so use them to find your blind spots: if the inventions deck keeps beating you, that’s where the daily will too.
Accessibility
Timeline is entirely buttons: every gap in the timeline is a real button that names its context in words ("Place between 1889 and 1931"), so nothing is dragged and the whole game plays with a keyboard or switch access. Verdicts are announced through one polite live region with the revealed year, correctness is marked with ✓/✕ glyphs and text rather than color, and placed events read as an ordinary ordered list.