Modes three and four · timeline
Two of Wonderhop's four daily games run on time. Past asks for the oldest answer you can find; Future asks for the newest. Both play the same seven dated questions, both score by the year behind your answer, and both are free every day.
Sky and Abyss run on survey questions. Past and Future use the other daily board: seven dated questions, each with a list of accepted answers and a year attached to every one. The year is the thing you are really choosing, even though you answer with words.
If the question is about a way people sent messages, the accepted answers might range from something ancient to something from this decade. If it is about a way to keep food cold, the board might stretch from an ice house to a smart fridge. Your job in Past is to land on the old end; in Future, the new one.
In Wonderhop Past, the earliest year on the board is rank one and worth a perfect 100. Each earlier answer also moves the optional travel stat: the game reports the year you reached, so a strong Past run drifts back through centuries rather than months. The second-earliest answer scores 90, the third 82, then 76, 71, 67 and 63 as the curve eases down.
The mistake most players make is naming something merely old. “Old” is not a year. You want the oldest accepted thing, which is often a specialist object rather than a famous one: not the earliest car, but the earliest accepted way of moving something heavy.
Wonderhop Future flips the same board. The latest accepted year is rank one and worth 100, and the year reached climbs towards the present. Because most question lists stop before today, winning Future is about knowing which accepted answer is the most recent — usually a technology, a title or a term that only became ordinary in the last few decades.
A useful mental check: if your answer could have been given by a player in 1995, it is probably not the newest thing on the board. The winning Future answer tends to feel modern enough to be slightly surprising.
Wonderhop sorts the accepted answers of each dated question by year and ranks your answer from that order. The extreme end for the mode is a perfect 100; the next best is 90, then 82, and the fallback floor is 40. The comparison is by year, not by how famous or how clever an answer is: in Past the earlier year wins, and in Future the later year wins.
| Rank on the timeline | Past points | Future points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (oldest / newest) | 100 | 100 |
| 2 | 90 | 90 |
| 3 | 82 | 82 |
| 4–7 | 76–63 | 76–63 |
| Wrong end of the board | 60–40 | 60–40 |
Past heads for the oldest method on the list — a runner, a drum, a messenger bird. Future heads the other way, towards the most recent accepted method. The words are the same game; the direction decides which end of history you want.
Past would choose the cellar or the ice house. Future would choose the modern appliance. The question can be answered correctly two ways, and only the mode tells you which century to aim for.
Here the spread is visible at a glance: a stylus, a quill, a pencil, a keyboard. Past wants the earliest accepted writer; Future wants the most recent. Sorting the verbal list in your head before typing is the whole skill.
Think of three candidate answers and put them in order of age. The extreme one for your mode is the one to type.
Dated boards are built from things with a clear origin year. Abstract ideas rarely have a defensible year.
In Past, a thing that feels old may only be a century old. Ask what the same job was done with even earlier.
Prompts use the past or the present for a reason. “Used to” points you backwards; “now” and “today” point forwards.
Doing Past then Future on the same board teaches you the year range faster than ten single-mode games.
They share a dated board instead of a survey board. Each accepted answer carries a year, and the two games want opposite ends of that timeline: Past wants the oldest accepted answer, Future wants the newest.
The answers are ranked by year. In Past the earliest year is rank one and worth 100 points; in Future the latest is. The next best answer earns 90, then 82, and the curve continues down to a floor of 40.
Every answer is compared by its year: in Past the earlier year beats the later one, and in Future the later year beats the earlier one. The reveal shows each answer's year so you can see exactly where you landed.
The year attached to the thing you named: when it was released, invented, published, founded or first seen. Wonderhop's edition lists that year with every accepted answer.
Yes. Both games use the same seven dated questions and unlock together at 00:00 UTC each day. Playing both is the best way to train your sense of how old or new an answer really is.
One dated board, two directions, seven questions each way.