Sometimes, a website doesn’t need to do much to leave a mark. It just needs to provide some fun and light entertainment. That’s exactly how I felt when I opened https://whichyr.com for the first time. Simple, quiet and oddly fun.

The site greets you with a clean, dark background and a single picture and below it, at the centre, a question you may not have even asked yourself — “Which year is it?” And then you notice year boxes to guess the year.

Yes, it’s simple as that. So when you open whichyr.com, you won’t find any flashy design and no unnecessary clicks. It jumps straight to the point. You see a photo, and your job is simple: guess the year it was taken. It might sound dry at first, but here’s where it gets a bit addictive. The images it shows are sometimes black and white, sometimes just old enough to make you think, “Wait... is this the ’70s or ’90s?” You tap a year and it immediately tells you if you were right, along with the actual year and your score.

It’s not about being correct all the time. It’s about testing your instincts, your memory of history, your feel for fashion trends or architecture, the background and even the smallest details you might have missed otherwise.

There are no sound effects. No animations. No social logins, leaderboards or rewards, but it gives your brain a nudge, in a quiet, clever way. Just a quiet little challenge, one photo after another. You can play for five minutes or take longer than you’d expect.

However, if the site had added some info, maybe a short story behind each image, a hint before guessing or even categories like fashion, cities or cars for visitors to choose from, it would have been great. But then again, maybe its charm lies in how straightforward it is.

So when the days are just too hot to handle, guess some random old photos from around the world and test your genius at https://whichyr.com

Published in Dawn, Young World, May 31st, 2025