Can I use my best geo-detective skills to beat my record Timeguessr score?

We're back by popular request with more Timeguessr! ..the game where you have to figure out when AND where iconic or interesting photographs were taken. This week I'm flexing my geo detective muscles on two games, picking apart more photos in the hopes of beating my record score of 46,573.
YOU CAN NOW PLAY ALONG!
Instructions: Play your round, make your selections but instead of hitting "make guess", switch tabs back to KZbin to watch my attempt and the result. This way you don't ruin the game or the video!
The link to this week's game:
timeguessr.com...

[@RealTal.]

Glad to have something to eat fried rice in front of

[@aristology6912]

I eat fried rice in front of my dog to make him jealous

[@toastyy8216]

Glad to have something to eat ramen in front of

[@ebbamb]

Glad to have something to eat bacon cheddar popcorn in front of

[@saphridots12]

Glad to have something to breathe air in front of

[@derpherpula592]

Glad to have something to eat a bowl of cereal in front of

[@aspen9102]

When tom says "Munich" and zooms in on London, I was fully commited to "oh, there is a famous Munich in London then?

[@tav095]

There was such confidence on his zooming in, I had the same thought 😂

[@SuperPuris]

I thought he knew its London, but said its Munich as a joke cause everything looked German

[@PiousMoltar]

Only Tom could stare Jonny Rotten in the face and say "Is this before he joined the band?"

[@stuartculshaw5342]

It's the Damned after Elton John left

[@Carbon2861996]

HE LEFT THE FCKING BAND

[@marlogiannotti5936]

Even better: "is that Paul Weller?!"...

[@kingoftherodeo87]

That’s the most Jonny rotten photo of Jonny rotten that ever Jonny rottened….. so the jam?

[@robertcameron1738]

Spelling: Johnny Rotten

[@wilcooper64]

7:45 Trevi fountain was on the map straight away! I've booked you in for specsavers tomorrow 10am Tom lad

[@sharkdom]

Its amazing to see the differences between the humans' appearance across a few short years, yet the Gibraltar monkey looked exactly the same whether it was 1924 or 2024

[@shipwreck9146]

Because monkeys are smart enough to avoid fashion trends and taxes.

[@jfluffydog2110]

Gibraltarian *

[@flyingchimp12]

Have our bodily features changed?

[@shipwreck9146]

@@flyingchimp12 Not significantly in the past ~300k years. Any changes aren't biological, they're due to lifestyle changes, sedentary lifestyles, less outdoor labor. Our bodies are physically weaker than ever before, but one generation post-civilization-collapse, and we'll be back in tip top shape.

[@kawaiilotus]

​@@flyingchimp12yes, they've gone outwards.

[@theirishninjasanimations]

Tom simultaneously being able to find just about any location in the world based on tiny clues few others would notice but also having never heard of the Trevi Fountain until recently will never not crack me up.

[@olenilsen4660]

Best part is that when he zooms in on Rome, he pauses and decides to go NW of the centre. In that pause, Trevi fountain with a big "Pantheon" kind of symbol is staring him in the face. I just wonder how many times I´ve made mistakes like that myself, because I clearly never see all the clues on screen before scrolling on, I´ve proven that many times.

[@xvgm24]

He has a knack for this sort of thing. There was one video (can't remember if it was GeoGuesser or TimeGuesser) where he did not recognise the Shibuya Crossing. Think he's done the same with Angkor Wat and Chichen Itza too.

[@BendyDH]

I mean, to be honest I’d never heard of the trevi fountain until people on Tiktok and general social media started doing dumb tiktok shit at the fountain. I’d probably seen it in numerous movies but I had no clue there was any significance to it until very recently

[@wolfzmusic9706]

​@@BendyDHI've never heard of it full stop, but I am 19 and only really use Insta, WhatsApp and YT. Also don't watch too many films.

[@marlogiannotti5936]

"Not Marilyn"...

[@drewmurphy5696]

“She seem to be finding it all quite funny; as she chongs on her cigarette.” An all time quote. For sure. Love it Tom

[@Donkeyiser]

4:18 what a dead giveaway - it's clearly upside down because the location is Australia Edit: Never mind

[@olenilsen4660]

LOL :D:D:D

[@moonpie21012]

😂

[@YossiRafelson]

That's Obama's oval office based on nothing but the couch upholstery

[@maciejbala477]

*Austria. Australia is that country in Europe known for schnitzels

[@Donkeyiser]

@@maciejbala477 You sure about that?

[@ruimarques7625]

"Is that Fabio Capello?" Oh, boy.

[@sharkdom]

I'm basically just here for more Fabio Capello lore

[@ouzoloves]

UK went decimal in 1971, so thats a clue for future rounds where you see advertising boards in the UK.

[@otsoko66]

that was my first thought -- it had to be after 1971. Earlier than that, 43p would have been written 8/6 . It was so close to 8 / 6 ( 8 shillings sixpence, a nice round price, whereas 43p is odd), that I thought it would have been 1972 or 73.

[@GeoWizard]

Of course. What an idiot 😂

[@CallieMasters5000]

I'm American and even I knew that. Plus, prices went up a lot in the 1980s, so if it's cheap - and especially if it has a price with 1/2p, it's probably the 1970s. I think the 1/2p coin was discontinued in early-mid 1980s.

[@squifymango9156]

@@CallieMasters5000WOW THAT’S SO AWESOME 😃😃😃

[@phenry1970]

And even if it were written in pence only, 43p would have been written 43d.

[@adambrawerman1675]

Film cameras don’t have a linear line of being bad to good, like digital. They got good a long time ago, and still look great.

[@FilthyGringo]

**analysing a picture of Johnny Rotten, looking the most like Johnny Rotten that he has ever looked** "Is that Paul Weller?"

[@pedterson]

"Is this Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten hasn't joined yet?"

[@Schoritzobandit]

I have a couple of friends who play the daily every day - the highest scores we've recorded are in the high 4,800s, 4,500 is an average good day with a couple mistakes. Very fun game, and the developer is responsive via email and a very nice person who is updating the game daily with new rounds while in college. It has a few drawbacks for my personal taste (I think the scores for the years scale way too hard, and years end up being much more important than locations as long as you're not on the other side of the world as a result; also, the variety of the rounds could be better, there are a lot of Times Square/Shinjuku Station/Piccadilly Circus/Champs Elysees/Berlin Wall rounds) but it's such a fun game for rewarding a ton of different types of knowledge and encouraging you to learn more things about the world.

[@brianmcl2010]

My friend & I have found that the staples for the daily (since we started playing daily on Jan 1st this year) are London, LA, NY, DC, Paris, Tokyo, Budapest. You almost never get a daily w/o one of these! Haven't seen many Berlin Wall pics, I'd prefer that since I've been to Berlin and my friend hasn't yet haha! I remember one that I thought was absolute bs where it was a TV set of NY in LA! I personally like the scoring as it is, if you are more than 20 years out you do deserve 0 points on the Time side I'd say, and it is half the game after all. Edit: meant to add, I'm nuts enough to keep mine & my friend's scores since Jan 1st. Our averages are 42.6k + 40.3k. also I wish the map at the end had round numbers on the pins, would make a hell of a difference when trying to remember old rounds from map screenshots...

[@stumccabe]

TOM if you look at the top right corner of the map you can swap between map and satellite image - sometimes very useful.

[@Eisnpass]

Thank you Tom for showing us TimeGuessr! I always play it with my dad when I come back home from university. He‘s a photographer and I am a bit of a history buff and therefore we tend to get some really high scores (our highest is 48,654). Thank you :)

[@MrToucana]

I once showed Fellini’s ‘La Dolce Vita’ 8 times in 3 days when working as a film projectionist - so that was fairly easy. I recognised Kings Cross Station, and remembered that cigarettes cost about 30p for a pack of 20 back in 1973. I knew that Winston Churchill was looking at the bombed out ruins of the House of Lords in the blitz of 1941 - (they didn’t have gaffs like that in the east end!) But I was surprised the b/w photo of the Burmese women was as early as 1935. Good effort - Very entertaining :-)

[@reggiedixon2]

Not being able to tell the difference between Johnny Rotten and Paul Weller had me chuckling

[@GeoWizard]

Embarrassing!

[@andykey78]

"Is that Paul Weller"!? 😂

[@olenilsen4660]

I´m laughing hard at this even though I´m older than Tom, and have no clue which one of them he was actually looking at... I´m ashamed of myself, but I never actually learned about who was in which band, I just loved the music!

[@stubbsz]

Its clearly the Style council

[@mrcomment5544]

It's a sign of intelligence and good taste.

[@ieuanthebeardedbard]

As a Londoner, I was holding my head in my hands when you went into Birmingham for Kings Cross... But then I ended up embarrassing myself when I was saying "Come on, Tom, that's clearly late 80s/early 90s!" for the Gibraltar one 😂 Good fun all round!

[@Kj_Gamer2614]

@ 5:08 that is the microphone for the Dutch news NOS, which is comparable to the BBC here in Britain.

[@DCGrimm]

I would have guessed Den Hague because of that.

[@OntarioTrafficMan]

That threw me off, I was twijfeling between Den Haag and Amsterdam because of it.

[@maciejbala477]

yeah, i was confused too. Not knowing that was a blessing for Tom it seems, because I instantly thought there's no way they have this TV station at the White House, so it surprised me that he was right ahah. I guess any kind of TV journalists go there sometimes.

[@alexmijo]

This game is probably my favorite of all your content with maybe the exception of the straight line missions. So my request is for more of this game

[@elyeye4841]

You're my fav youtuber

[@beorlingo]

You're my fav commenter!

[@TheJumiFilm]

Play the daily! Also you can toggle between different map types with the little map button. Lets you view satellite imagery!

[@MartinvonBargen]

Anita Ekberg shot is a classic. I knew the year off the top of my head.

[@AjZ530]

I knew exactly what and where it was instantly, however I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the film or the year

[@MartinvonBargen]

@@AjZ530 Deffo an eye catching image. I was researching all this stuff in the 80s when i should have been revising for my GCSEs! 😁

[@AjZ530]

@@MartinvonBargen iconic image, even though I've never seen the movie. It's supposed to be good but I don't think I've ever seen a movie older than the 70s. I've been meaning to but I keep getting distracted by other movies

[@MartinvonBargen]

@@AjZ530 Just make some time and try some older films out. You may find that you really enjoy some directors that you hadn't thought of before. Best of luck 👍👍

[@saffianosss]

Shouting through my screen the kings cross one! It's always stood out to me how the tracks end 25m from the exit to the station, and how there's two distinctly different entrance halls.

[@vegancam]

The roof arches are a dead giveaway for King's Cross plus a little bit of modern pop culture reference there in the platform "9 (and 10)" sign.

[@JPRobinso]

I was convinced it was Paddington, but that was closer than New St.

[@curtiswatson4192]

This was my very specific music knowledge but you can tell the Sex Pistols one was 1976 because the Sex Pistols career only lasted two and a half years, and Sid Vicious (who was put in the band in early '77) isn't in the picture.

[@ACRaptor17]

More timeguessr please, it's brilliant and you do a phenomenal job.

[@philjackson6859]

43p means post-decimalisation, just for future reference! It'd be shillings and pence for anything over 12 pence before 1971. Also, the JAM??? Johnny Rotten's your main guy up front

[@Jesperadoo]

Tom not clocking that «Fontana di Trevi» was smack bang in the middle of a building, without the usual landmark icon pains me.

[@joehardy4687]

You can also use satellite imagery on TimeGuessr, might’ve helped to spot the odd cannon

[@durabelle]

And the fountain (or lack of it where he ended up clicking).

[@flyingchimp12]

Tom please do more of this, this game is 100x better to play when you can follow your turn by watching someone else do the same round.

[@petercross6960]

how bizarre, I was in the middle of playing timeguessr and your notification popped up. I am a subscriber of course

[@collintaylor7507]

Can’t stress enough how much these videos make my day every time they come out. Cheers Tom!

[@equinox4467]

The NOS is the Dutch public TV news station (our BBC News), so I cringed a bit when you went to the other side of the world. And then you were right lol.

[@PaytonMitchell7]

46,704. Your thumbnail helped a lot with the hardest one.

[@otsoko66]

The Burmese women would have been while Burma was still a British colony, so before WWII (the photo has a real colonial era vibe to it.)

[@JohnyG29]

Burma was a British Colony until 1948, so could have been post-Second World War too.

[@edanlewis5831]

@@JohnyG29yeah but like, not really. Also the British abandoned Burma during WWII, so it was only technically still a colony, but not functionally

[@jointgib]

are there still people with those long necks

[@xvgm24]

@@jointgib There are some but it's gradually losing its popularity.

[@whitcwa]

I recognized the Oval Office right away. I knew the NBC sound man in the photo.

[@CallieMasters5000]

The Oval Office has those built in cabinets and shell motifs because the walls are extra thick to make the oval shape, as there is wasted space in the corners whenever you put an oval room into a square building.

[@champagne.future5248]

Classic Tom not noticing that it’s a reflection in a table but still getting crazy accurate guesses

[@preponement]

One of the guys has on a hat with a US seal. They are all dressed like Americans politicians. Easy enough. But he obviously doesn't know the Oval Office is not in the main White House structure, which is a residence.

[@ashandkenzmorris]

So glad this is back. You seem to have a bit more fun and relax when doing these. I would love to see more of timeguessr in the future

[@dhill1045]

20:00 genuinely might be one of the hardest images I’ve ever seen. That monkey is posted

[@BowmanMars]

hey Tom, I'm playing this game now and just found a cool feature that's helpful. when looking at the map you can swap between standard, satellite and hybrid. just used satellite to help really pinpoint exactly where I needed to be after I found the general area

[@MemeticsX]

First time seeing Timeguesser. Please do more of these; that was cool!

[@lucadev8596]

Was a pleasant surprise bumping into you in stow the other day 😄

[@SingleDadBrushMaster]

did miss with 60 years by this "A vintage camera shot of traffic officers working"

[@gafrers]

The "La Dolce Vita" shot at Trevi Fountain is a bit surreal. Great as always Tom

[@kaleeyed]

I'm not sure you could have said anything more insulting to the Sex Pistols in 1976 than "Are you The Jam?" It's like when Lee Perry pretended he thought The Clash were the Sex Pistols.

[@iwanttocomplain]

I got the right year on the beefeater. I saw it like this. Burhma (now Myanmar) or wherever such an old tradition would still be practised must be approaching 100 years ago. Cameras got quite good quite quickly. But they are all standing stock still. So it's like you said earlier in the video, older camaras take longer to expose so you have stand still, so I thought 1930 then added 5 years just to round it off. They were probably visiting as a side show or in the capacity of entertainment. So this is Victorian London I think. FYI the British Rail logo, not symbol, was designed in about 1960 and is using modernist design style from the Swedish school of design and typography which influenced typefaces from around 1960. This is useful info. Likewise logos become helvetica. Almost all fonts become helvetica in 1960.

[@abhishektodmal1914]

Cheers for all that the channel is, Tom 😃🙌❤️

[@danielwason1184]

I played along with you for my first ever timeguessr game. I managed a score of 43,566 which I was excited about since I just beat you by a few points. It was the round with the monkey I got horribly wrong with the location, almost the other side of the world in south africa but managed to get close with the year. Very fun and you must do some more of these. Thanks mate :)

[@SoulK37]

Great video as always Tom! I would like to see you try again the Obscure Photospheres map sometime in the future!

[@COL-1]

At 17:48 when you zoomed in to the window there's a green poster on the wall with the year 2017 on it, I was shouting at you but you weren't listening! 😂 (may be easier for me to see it as I'm watching on a 47 inch TV)

[@joshuajames1720]

0:38 - why did you go into the Coronation street theme tune? Must just be a British instinct...

[@tedtooley9636]

the trevi fountain being visible as a landmark on the map before tom zoomed in drove me INSANE

[@57thorns]

That seashell shaped thing on the wall you had a tendency to cover up made the White house location obvious to a lot of people I think. Including that it is the Oval Office.

[@Zzz3331]

Wow not only are you amazing at geography, you're a great singer too!!!!😮 Britain got talent should be calling you

[@vulpixx4827]

nice one tom! you can definitely get that record. would LOVE to see a perfect score with googling, sounds just like my cuppa tea. cheers mate

[@jennifergarner3517]

We need another straight line video… Isle of Wight maybe? Ireland?

[@jogusfilms6157]

“I’m sure he’s just as bemused as you are ladies” 24:48 😂

[@pjnugget333]

It’s unreal. I’ve been playing Geoguessr for years and I still can vibe out a year better than I can vibe out a location. I wasn’t even playing the second round but just guessed 1937 in my head for the last pic and 2017 for the Munich one. I gotta play this for real

[@JHX1]

That is awesome, also to watch and think along!

[@willowashe]

17:14 I don’t remember this part of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, but my then my Nan always said I wasn’t a very observant child

[@JJ-ig6ot]

Loved the reason for the upside down photo! :) (reflection in the table top) At first I thought it was a clue that it would be on the southern hemisphere!

[@danthecraftman]

10:20 Tom: Not bad! Me: Hey yea that was pretty impressive Tom: Nope, that's shit

[@alfredloch8471]

Best format on youtube

[@gugus8081]

I threw the Gibraltar and the Munich ones, even the Churchill one, but correctly guessed the last one in the 30s. At least I got that on you, you're hella sick at this game haha :) love your vids as always

[@jwalkrr2710]

"I am not mentally in a great place at the moment" got a huge laugh out of me

[@rucker69]

That location marker absolutely robbed you on a good number of those rounds. Notably on the gibraltar one, where it seems you meant to be on the battery, but the location pin was even further away from the battery than your guess was. Madness.

[@Thalweg]

In the future if you ever have another 50/50 between the jam and the sex pistols remember that the jam only had 3 members whilst the sex pistols had 4 members. There were 4 guys who were the subjects in the photo

[@lordmalcolm2675]

The symbol for penny was 'd' before 1971. So you knew you were after 1971 if it is 'p'.

[@AB-pp2zy]

In the munich pic there is a guy with a man bun! How many guys did you know with man buns in 2012? How many did you know in 2017? How many do you know now? It's not hard evidence, but a seeing a manbun would lock me between 2015-2020 straightaway. (I had one :D)

[@mattgolman]

The Trevi Fountain is visible on the map a few times before the "searching" montage. Maybe you were just caught up looking for smaller locations or didn't glance that far south?

[@CallieMasters5000]

Really, a traveler should learn at least the basic locations of a map of Rome: Vatican, Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon.

[@wendyon4517]

Fun stuff. That last one was tricky. Good quality old cameras can produce great images with the right photographer. It's the cameras for the masses that created lesser quality images.

[@drewmiddleton9715]

With all love and respect, 1947 was a crazy guess

[@sethanix3969]

Anyone who seen Harry Potter immediately went King's Cross. Must have been after 74 because there is already catenary.

[@Nooticus]

Really entertaining video, enjoyed the relatively past face

[@ryancharlton4748]

Great free kick v Real Madrid last night mate

[@finlandtaipan4454]

Great video! I have played almost daily for almost a year and I remember most of these (but not the years; I'm so bad with years). Trevi fountain has been easy to find because there is a graphic of it on the map. Has Apple made the graphic smaller? Iceland totally tripped me. With all the Americn cars, I went Alaska. But I guessed King's Cross. I use the satellite view feature of the map a lot. It helps me see some things better than the map view.

[@JaapvanderVelde]

The NOS with the red O is the Dutch BBC. Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, which translates to Dutch Broadcast Foundation. But it's a total red herring here, of course. And the fountain to any movie lover is instantly the Trevi fountain scene of the all-time top-100 movie Dolce Vita from 1960, so 1959 is a reasonable guess.

[@brendangarske553]

These are so good

[@dejopa_el_loquillo]

My score was 42,048 but without the thumbnail clue it would have been way worse but even though i couldn't get the locations as good as you did in London on the 1 round because I don't know that place in London and also the Munich round because I don't know where they celebrate the Oktoberfest i Managed to score a lot of points by always being only 1 year of on the first 3 rounds which saved my final score. Anyway good game :)

[@Muminalfurinn]

Icelander here. Pretty sure the location in the game in Iceland is not very accurate. This would be in Fljótshlíð and there is no farm this far in the valley.

[@beautifulsmall]

Just did a daily , its such a great way to learn .... points in the ground. and when you have enough points you can make more connections.

[@1320fastback]

The Iceland trucks were very telling. The two in front are Chevrolets and the vertical marker light on the front fenders are pre 1980. The Ford truck a few rows back is 1983 model.

[@jylntdd]

i freakin love this game, thanks for the vid tom

[@tobysimmonds487]

My score: 37,599 Honestly, having most of these be in London was a godsend for me (I live there) but that one Oktoberfest round is where I lost most of the points when I decided they looked too Scandinavian to be in Germany, so I went for some random city in Sweden with H and B in the name... GG Tom!

[@pieisnice9]

Nice to see it's not just me, I got about 36k and also got ruined by the Oktoberfest round.

[@jakefromstatefarm1405]

Yes, more of this! (I got 38,526 on the play along 👍)

[@AndyChatsFPL]

Flabbergasted that Tom didn't recognize Kings Cross. So iconic and I assume he's been there!

[@Lainfan]

NOS in the second pic is a major dutch news company. I would not have guessed the white house xD

[@motelghost477]

14:55 It was Sid Vicious who jioned in 1977. Johnny Rotten was in the band from the start.

[@matthewjenkins1161]

The cigarette price of 43p was a clear indicator that it was post-Feb 1971, due to decimalisation. I got that it was Kings Cross right, but guessed 1973. If it helps at any point, I started smoking in 1989 when 10 B&H were 85p or £1.60 for 20.

[@componick6393]

The guard is holding a 303 rifle - which is a clue to it being around WW2, but they did use them all the way into the late 50's.

[@TheGills4life]

Looks like one of the drinkers in the background of the Munich round is wearing the 2017-18 Bayern home shirt.

[@cce2739]

I thought I was the only one that saw that

[@JustLukeMorgan]

Love these videos! If you ever make more GeoGuessr content, would love to see you play the Wetherspoons map again!

[@TheCallyandRudyShow]

Love watching you're videos man, your skills with this stuff are second to none honestly Finally took the plunge in starting my own channel. Hopefully i get a following like you one day 😅

[@Goose9595]

I’ve seen a tapestry based of of that Gibraltar photo in the Pinakothek in Munich

[@Viniter]

Graininess in old film photographs is not the best indicator of the age. Size of the grain didn't really change all that much over the years, and you can be completely thrown off by a medium/large format negatives. Better indicator might be dynamic range - look for the loss of detail in shadows, that could indicate older, lower quality film stock.

[@rpchan]

I’ve never screamed so loud at Geowizard about La Dolce Vita….

[@002DrEvil]

The image at 7:31 is from a film called La Dolce Vita, and the actress is Anita Ekberg, so that would have been an easy one for me.

[@rlcChels]

Started playing this daily since you put me on! Great fun

[@sanderappel4499]

The NOS mic in the Washington round really threw me off, since NOS is the Dutch national news station, I was fully committed to it being The Hague

[@PeterMoore66]

Sex Pistols! That was Johnny 'Rotten' Lydon. Sid Vicious hadn't joined yet. That's Glenn Matlock, the original bassist, on the left.