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posted by Jason Kottke  ·  gift link

Wikipedia History Timeline Game

This game from Tom Watson is great fun: you’re presented with a succession of people, places, and things with associated dates that you have to correctly place in chronological order, like so:

screenshot of the Wikipedia history game

All the data is pulled from Wikipedia and it gets harder as you go along because the gaps in time between dates already on the timeline get shorter. Did the discovery of radium happen before or after Queen Victoria’s death? Was Jane Austen born before or after the American Revolution? I know everyone is all about Wordle right now, but this game is much more my speed (and I can’t stop playing). (via waxy)

Update: For fans of this, there are at least two board games that are similar: Chronology and Timeline.

You may have also noted that the data is a little…wrong in places. The dangers of building a game based on a non-structured dataset. Think of it as an unintentional “hard mode”. (thx @bobclewell & peter)