Challenge #2

Have you tried GeoGuessr? It’s kinda like a pictorial geographic version of Carmen Sandiego with difficulty levels of FUN to IMPOSSIBLE. Yesterday I found myself on a backroad in Northern Brazil. I walked for about 4 miles along a dirt road before I found a sign that hinted at a local town. For me, successful sleuthing of this kind is deeply rewarding.

I’ve always thought it would be awesome if you could playback a memory at random. You could passively watch the events and try and guess the time and place of the memory. GeoGuessr is an enjoyable substitute for my idea with the obvious shortfall of not including timeline positioning. With a timeline component you’d have to find tiny clues from common items surrounding you to guide you.

With this in mind, I’ve been working on a reverse timeline positioning challenge. I provide the dates, you try and guess the object in question.

Clue format will start with the year of invention or successful proof of concept and follow it with the decade when the item became prevalent in a common American household (or if its not a household item, common enough prevalence such that usage is no longer novelty)

For example:

1876:1950-60
Answer – the telephone.

There will be controversy with each of these items. In the case of the telephone there was a long development period. 1876 marks the first public demonstration of a bi-directional transmission, so that’s the date I chose. Further, the decade of commonality was tough to gauge for this one as well as most of the following challenges… In the 60’s according to the US census 80% of homes had a telephone… but data before then is hard to find.

Give these a shot! I’ll post the answers tomorrow. Good luck!

Question 1 Easy
1903:1944-54

Question 2 Medium
1945:1976-86

Question 3 Medium
1928:1955-1965

Question 4 Hard
1902:1947-1957

Question 5 Easy
1992:2007

Question 6 Extremely Hard
1756:1907-1917