History in Order: how to put events in order
History in Order is a which-came-first game: it asks for an order, never a year. That makes it a game of anchors, a few dates you know cold and a sense of which events cannot have happened before others.
Every category has a floor
Every kind of event has a first possible date. Nothing in the space deck happened before the first satellite; film and recorded sound need their inventions; most sport records need modern timing. In our deck of 231 events, the categories start here:
64% of the deck is from 1950 or later, so a gap in the last century is usually narrower than it looks.
| Category | Events | Earliest | Middle year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Space | 26 | 1957 Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, reaches orbit | 1997 |
| Science | 22 | 1655 Christiaan Huygens discovers Titan, Saturn's largest moon | 1922 |
| Invention | 39 | 1863 The world's first underground railway opens in London | 1984 |
| Landmark | 35 | 1759 The British Museum opens its doors in London | 1936 |
| Sport | 30 | 1877 Wimbledon holds its first tennis championship | 1967 |
| Culture | 79 | 1605 The first part of Don Quixote is published | 1963 |
Read the line, not the year
You never type a year. Each placement is a choice between gaps on the line, and every card you reveal splits a gap in two. The game deals the event farthest from everything already on the line first, so the first gaps are wide and the last ones narrow.
- 1836The Arc de Triomphe is finished in Paris#1 · ±119
- 1869The Suez Canal opens to ships#4 · ±28
- 1897The first Boston Marathon is run#2 · ±58
- 1955Disneyland opens in Californiastart card
- 1969Doraemon appears in manga for the first time#5 · ±14
- 1987New Zealand wins the first Rugby World Cup#6 · ±9
- 1996Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, is born#3 · ±41
Use living memory
For anything after 1900, ask whose lifetime it fell in: yours, your parents' or your grandparents'. That one question sorts most modern events into the right half of the line before you think about a single date.
Follow what had to come first
Technology leaves a trail. A film about a thing needs the thing; a televised event needs television; a record set on a track needs electronic timing. When two events seem close, ask which one depended on the other.
Questions
- Is this the Timeline card game?
- No. Timeline is a card game by Asmodee, and NYT's Flashback is a different, weekly quiz. History in Order is a daily web game: seven events, three chances, the same for everyone.
- Do I need to know the exact years?
- No, only what came before what. Each year appears as you place its card, and it helps with the next one.