Whenabouts is a free daily history timeline game at scalargame.com/whenabouts. Each puzzle contains five historical events connected by a theme. The player reads an event card, drags a year timeline, and locks in the best estimate before seeing the true date and historical context.
There is no elimination state. Every guess earns points, so the goal is to build the most accurate five-event timeline possible.
How it works
Each event includes a title, short description, and image. The year control supports century, decade, and year-scale movement, plus BCE dates. After a guess is locked, Whenabouts reveals the answer, the number of years away, an accuracy grade, and the score for that event.
The five results form a spoiler-free share row:
- exact year
- one year off
- right era
- way off
That format communicates how the run felt without exposing the events or answers.
Year-based scoring
Whenabouts uses a year-only exponential-decay model. An exact year is always worth 2,000 raw points. The score halves as the guess moves farther from the answer, with the half-life adjusted by the event's popularity tier:
event score = round(2000 × 2^(-year difference / half-life))
The five half-lives are 8, 7, 6, 5, and 4 years. More obscure events are therefore more forgiving than widely known events. Month and day remain useful reveal details, but they do not change the player's score.
The daily raw maximum is 10,000 points. That total is also normalized to the common Scalargame PAS scale:
PAS = min(1000, round(1000 × raw score / (2000 × number of events)))
Curated puzzles without a heavy initial download
Whenabouts puzzles are authored ahead of time, then split into monthly JSON files during the build. The browser loads only the relevant month instead of shipping the multi-megabyte master dataset with the initial app. Previously visited puzzle data can be runtime-cached for repeat and offline play.
Daily mode contributes to the official four-game set, streak, and leaderboards. Free Play opens a random past puzzle, restores its own progress, and never changes official stats.
Interface design
The timeline scrubber is built for both touch and pointer input. Mobile players move through event cards in a focused vertical flow, while desktop uses a centered event stage with animated transitions. Images use lightweight placeholders while loading, and the game preserves a readable result even on a slow connection.
Whenabouts is playable in a modern browser, requires no account, and joins Scalar, Continuum, and Tectonic in the daily set.