Draft:TimeGuessr
 | Review waiting, please be patient.
This may take 5 weeks or more, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order. There are 2,571 pending submissions waiting for review.
Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
Reviewer tools
|
Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
This draft has been resubmitted and is currently awaiting re-review. |  |
This draft's references do not show that the subject meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion. The draft requires multiple published secondary sources that:
Declined by Sulfurboy 30 days ago.
| |
Comment: I'm not seeing the reliable or in-depth coverage required to meet WP:GNG here unfortunately. For one, a quarter of the sources are for DownDetector and using this as a proxy for a page about Gus Owen doesn't quite seem to hit the mark. The coverage on the game has some trivial coverage by RS like The Guardian and Der Spiegel, but a lot of this is coming from IGDB which is not reliable, or the Spark Impact Report which would seem intimately and promotionally connected to the subject as a client of Spark. Actually a lot of this is just citing coverage on Owen and briefly mentioning he created it. Maybe an Owen page may be the way to go here? VRXCES (talk) 04:29, 5 September 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks for the feedback, i've added dedicated coverage from NPR (Sept 2026), which discusses the game in detail; chopped down the Downdetector citations from four to one and reduced reliance on the Spark Impact Report, removing the claims it was the sole source for. IGDB is now backed by an independent source rather than standing alone. Happy to make further changes if needed!!! Leannejohnstone1984 (talk) 15:26, 5 September 2026 (UTC)
- Another update, i've added a further dedicated source, a September 2026 article in PCWorld by Sam Singleton about the game, and used it to source the scoring and game modes and a short attributed reception sentence. I've also merged duplicate references (IGDB, Stubenzocker), removed an unsourced sentence, and moved the two most recent dedicated pieces (NPR and PCWorld) to the start of the Reception section. Leannejohnstone1984 (talk) 16:16, 29 September 2026 (UTC)
| TimeGuessr | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | Gus Owen |
| Publisher | TimeGuessr Limited |
| Platform | Web browser |
| Release | March 5, 2023[1] |
| Genres | Trivia, puzzle |
| Mode | Single-player |
TimeGuessr is a browser-based photo-guessing game created by Gus Owen, in which players attempt to identify the year and geographic location of historical and contemporary photographs. The game combines elements of geography-guessing games such as GeoGuessr with a historical dating component, awarding points based on the accuracy of a player's year and location guesses.
Gameplay
[edit]Each round presents the player with a photograph. The player places a marker on a world map to guess the photograph's location and selects a year to guess when it was taken. Points are awarded for both guesses based on how close they are to the correct answer, with up to 5,000 points available for each.[2] TimeGuessr releases a new set of five photographs each day, similar to daily puzzle games such as Wordle.[3]
Besides the daily challenge, the game offers random games and community-made games, and players can create their own five-photo game to share with others.[2]
History
[edit]TimeGuessr was created by Gus Owen, who grew up near Newcastle upon Tyne and began developing the game as a side project during his gap year before starting a mathematics degree at the University of Leeds.[4] The game was released on March 5, 2023,[1][5] with a mobile app following in May 2025.[5]
Owen has said the idea was inspired by daily puzzle games such as Wordle and by Instagram accounts posting historical photographs from the North East of England, and that a YouTube video by GeoWizard helped popularize the game following a slow initial release.[4]
Reception
[edit]In September 2026, TimeGuessr was featured by NPR in a roundup of daily puzzle games by pop culture correspondent Linda Holmes, who described the game's mechanics in detail alongside four other titles.[3] The same month, PCWorld published an article aimed at GeoGuessr players presenting TimeGuessr as a history-focused variation on that concept, noting that it draws on knowledge of history and popular culture rather than geography alone.[2]
Earlier coverage came from a range of international outlets. The Japanese technology site Gigazine published a detailed hands-on write-up in August 2023, walking through several example rounds and the specific historical photographs used in the game.[6] The Portuguese site TEK (Sapo) and the German gaming blog Stubenzocker both published dedicated write-ups of the game,[7][5] as did the Brazilian outlet Aventuras na História.[8] TimeGuessr was also included by The Guardian in a roundup of unusual websites in August 2023,[9] by Der Spiegel in a 2025 roundup of browser and mobile games,[10] and profiled by the French outlet 20 Minutes in December 2025.[11]
In November 2024, a photograph in the game depicting a wallaby in Basel, Switzerland, attracted online attention in Switzerland, prompting coverage from the Swiss outlet Basler Zeitung and an ETH Zürich library blog.[12][13]
In November 2025, Owen created a satirical status page for the outage-tracking service Downdetector after it went down during a Cloudflare outage; the site prompted a chain of similar parody pages and was covered by PC Gamer, which identified Owen by name as the creator of TimeGuessr.[14]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 "Timeguessr". IGDB.
- 1 2 3 Sam Singleton (2026-09-25). "GeoGuessr fans should try this addictive history game". PCWorld.
- 1 2 Linda Holmes (2026-09-05). "If you prefer puzzles to doomscrolling, here are 5 great games to check out". NPR.
- 1 2 "Timeguessr". Spark Impact Report 2024. University of Leeds.
- 1 2 3 "Timeguessr". Stubenzocker. 2025-05-29.
- ↑ "TimeGuessr". Gigazine. 2023-08-21.
- ↑ "TimeGuessr desafia a memória e capacidade de ligar imagens e locais". TEK/Sapo.
- ↑ "TimeGuessr: o site que ensina história através de desafios fotográficos". Aventuras na História.
- ↑ "Fish doorbells, historic sandwiches: 50 of the weirdest, most wonderful corners of the web – picked by an expert". The Guardian. 2023-08-31.
- ↑ "Desert Golfing, Travle, Townscaper: Handy-Games für Handy-Games-Hasser". Der Spiegel.
- ↑ "Connaissez TimeGuessr". 20 Minutes.
- ↑ "Basel: Das Wallaby von Esmé Levante kommt zu neuem Ruhm". Basler Zeitung.
- ↑ "Plötzlich rätselt das Netz über ein Känguru in Basel". ETH-Bibliothek Crowdsourcing Blog. 2024-11-22.
- ↑ Tyler Wilde (2025-11-19). "After Downdetector itself went down, someone made a Downdetector Downdetector, and then someone made a Downdetector Downdetector Downdetector, and then…". PC Gamer.
- provide significant coverage: discuss the subject in detail, not just brief mentions or routine announcements;
- are reliable: from reputable outlets with editorial oversight;
- are independent: not connected to the subject, such as interviews, press releases, the subject's own website, or sponsored content.
Please add references that meet all three of these criteria. If none exist, the subject is not yet suitable for Wikipedia.