Guess the painting
Guess the painting is a daily art game played on the calendar rather than the canvas. One work out of 727 is the answer, you have six guesses, and every miss tells you how many years off you are and which direction to move. You are dating the painting first and identifying it second, which makes it playable even if you know the period better than the picture.
What a miss tells you
Each miss returns the gap in years, an arrow pointing earlier or later, and a score out of 100. Guessing a work you can date confidently is worth more than guessing one you merely recognise. Two guesses that bracket the answer pin the decade, and from there the century clue, the half-century and the artist's initials do the rest.
A worked round
The answer is Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, around 1665, and you open with the Mona Lisa at about 1505. The arrow points later and the gap is roughly 160 years. Guess Starry Night at 1889 and the arrow flips earlier with a gap near 220. The answer sits in the seventeenth century, the half-century clue narrows it further, and the initials clue names the painter.
The clues
Six clues sit above the board and one opens after every wrong guess, running broad to specific: century, half of the century, letters, title starts with, artist's initials, artist.
Common questions
Do I need to recognise the painting?
No. The feedback is entirely about the year it was painted, so you can play it as a dating game and let the clues supply the title.
Which paintings are in the set?
A pool of 727 drawn from Wikidata, weighted toward works with a reliable date and a recognisable name.
Do I have to type the full title?
The leading article is optional: Starry Night finds The Starry Night. Accents and punctuation can be left off too.
What are the six clues?
Century, half of the century, the number of letters in the title, the letter the title starts with, the artist's initials, and the artist. Both letter clues ignore a leading article such as The or La, since a quarter of the titles start with one, and say so when they do.