At the library yesterday I wondered how closely I could guess the publication date of paper back romance novels based on the appearance of the people on the cover. Such an endeavor could easily be adapted to an online contest. The contest would show an image intended to be of people contemporaneous with the publication of the image: maybe book covers but also lots of magazine advertisements. The image database could be huge. One could choose the date range covered. Alternatively one could enter one's own birthdate and then the time range of pictures displayed could increase as you rose in level. Points would be 5 points for the correct year, 1 point for 1 year + or - the correct year.

This would be the sort of silly diversion which could serve as a vehicle to show players advertisements. If popular there could be subcategories: hair (male or female), pants, cars, type fonts etc. It could also be a game show where celebrity contestants make silly or erudite remarks about the images in addition to guessing their dates.
-- bungston, Jan 09 2012

Name that Town Name_20that_20town_2e
another theoretical web pastime [bungston, Jan 09 2012]

Don't do it just with images intended to be contemporaneous. I can date speculative fiction magazine covers to within at least a decade by what the art looks like. I strongly suspect serious garb geeks can do the same thing for popular renditions of historical garb (look at the different Robin Hood movies for what I mean). That last would probably be the hardest, though.
-- MechE, Jan 09 2012


No, [MechE], "historical" costumes (and in fact "historical" anything is one of the easiest things to date if you know your stuff.
-- pocmloc, Jan 09 2012


//cars//

Far too easy.
-- RayfordSteele, Jan 09 2012


The cars category would throw a bone to the men too manly to be bothered by niecities of hair fluff and tie width. The ability to identify make and model of a car 40 years old should be a point of pride and stimulate the competitive senses.

Note that this would not necessarily be from ads for the machine - it could be a car, plane or bike in the background. Trickier also because a car from 1976 could be in an image from 1982, and for full points players in the car category would have to get both.

This concept is similar to the "where are you" google maps game except it is "when are you".
-- bungston, Jan 09 2012


This is one of the challenges I face in my photography efforts - how to create images that cannot be readily dated.
-- normzone, Jan 09 2012


Never would have guessed that you are a fan of paperback romances, bung. Sheds a whole new light!
-- DrBob, Jan 09 2012



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