How to play GuessTheRide

GuessTheRide is a car-spotting game. You get a photograph of a car, cropped so tightly that you may be looking at a headlight and nothing else, and you name it. It is free, and you can start without an account.

The daily puzzles

Every day there are four puzzles, one each at Easy, Medium, Hard and Impossible. Everybody gets the same four cars, and you get one go at each. A new set appears at midnight UTC. You can see them all on the daily page.

You start on the tightest crop of the photograph. Type your answer into the box. Each wrong guess pulls the picture back one step, and you can pull it back yourself if you are stuck, which also costs a guess. The sixth step is the whole car, and you get three guesses on it. Name the car and you have solved it.

Then comes a bonus question: which year was it built? Getting the year is a bonus on your result. Missing it costs you nothing.

There is a fifth puzzle, Higher or lower. It asks whether the next car has more or less power than the last one, and counts how long a run you can make.

Ranked 1v1

Ranked puts you against another player for five short rounds, and the faster you answer, the more you earn. The rounds are different kinds of puzzle: naming a cropped photograph, guessing horsepower, telling two photographs apart, finding a car among four, and Higher or lower. You begin on a rating of 800. It goes up when you win and down when you lose, and the ladder ranks everybody by it.

You can also send a friend a link for a friendly match. It is the same five rounds, and nobody's rating moves.

What an account gives you

You do not need an account for the dailies. An account, which is for players aged 16 and over, gives you ranked matches, a rating and a place on the ladder, a profile with your record, a daily streak, and your own picture and car. We keep your email address to sign you in, and other players never see it. The details are in the privacy policy.

Questions people ask

Is GuessTheRide free?

Yes. There are no ads and nothing to buy.

Do I need an account to play?

Not for the daily puzzles. Ranked matches, the ladder and a daily streak need one.

Where do the photographs come from?

From Wikimedia Commons, under licences that allow this use. Every photograph is credited to its photographer on the photograph credits pages, and the About page says more.

What time does the next daily start?

At midnight UTC, the same moment for everybody in the world.

How old do I have to be?

The dailies need no account. To make an account you must be 16 or older.