How to play
One coin a day. Six guesses. Two things to find: where the coin is from — the state, country, empire or tribe that issued it — and when it was struck.
1. Look at the coin
You start with the coin's most interesting face. Tap or click it to look closer: pinch or scroll to zoom and drag to move. Some spots are sealed with a hatched patch: those are the details that would hand you the answer at a glance, like a year in plain digits or a country's name in Latin letters. Tap a seal to see why it is there. Everything else — portraits, symbols, scripts, mint marks, legends — is open, and reading it is the game.
2. Make a guess
You play on a map of the world. It shows every issuer that was minting coins around the year on the timeline, with a dot at each capital, and when you move the timeline the map follows. Studying it spoils nothing. Zoom with − and +, by pinching or by scrolling; the globe button shows the whole map again.
Every guess has two parts:
- Who issued it: tap its capital on the map, or type its name in the search box at the top and pick it from the list. Issuers are the states, countries, empires and tribes as they were when the coin was made: the Roman Empire, not Italy; the Dutch Republic, not the Netherlands. You can change your mind until you guess.
- Roughly when: drag the timeline to a year, or tap the year above it to type one (negative numbers for BC).
Then press Guess. You have six guesses.
3. Read the feedback
Each guess is pinned on the map at its issuer's capital, with its number and name. Your latest result shows above the timeline, and all your tries are listed on the board: tap one to find it on the map.
- Place: how far the capital of the issuer you guessed is from the capital of the real issuer, and an arrow pointing the way to go. Amber means you're within about 1,500 km (930 miles). The km and mi buttons switch between kilometers and miles.
- Time: whether the coin is earlier or later than your year — a touch (within about a century), plain earlier or later (within about four centuries), or much earlier or later. Never an exact number of years, so the puzzle cannot be solved by arithmetic. A year close enough to the coin's date counts as the right era; ancient coins get more leeway than modern ones.
- Match: a rough overall score for the guess, as a percentage.
Get one half right and it locks — that's half the coin solved — and your remaining guesses go to the other half. Wrong years are hatched out and numbered on the timeline, and it zooms in on the years still possible.
4. Help along the way
- The back of the coin unlocks after your second guess: switch sides with Front and Back under the coin. Coins with only one side photographed have a written Clue instead, where there is one.
- The badge on the coin says what kind of day it is. Classic is most days: a well-known kind of coin that a curious person can place from what is on it. Tricky is a less familiar one that needs closer reading. Challenge, about once a week, is a coin collectors love and newcomers may never have seen; on Challenge days, tips unlock after your third guess.
5. Finish the day
Win or lose, the right answer is starred on the map, and you'll see the whole coin, what it is, three things worth knowing about it, and where the photograph comes from, with a link to the source. Share result gives you one spoiler-free sentence to send, like “I solved Guessmint #80 in 4 tries.” — never the coin. Your streak counts the days you've played, and it lives only on your device. A countdown shows when the next coin arrives: at midnight Hawaii time, the same moment for everyone. Yesterday's coin, fully revealed, is on the About page.
A few tips
- Scripts narrow the world fast. Greek, Latin, Arabic, Chinese, Devanagari and Cyrillic each rule out most of the map.
- Portraits point to a period. Realistic faces, idealized faces, no faces at all — each belongs to certain times and places.
- A wild first guess is fine. The distance and direction after guess one is often worth more than a careful guess.
- Lock the era first if the date feels easier than the place; the map then shows only the issuers that existed in your year.