Common questions about The Newer Older Game and The Better Worse Game.
No. Both games are free to play in your browser with no sign-up, no account, and no app download required. Your session and high scores live only in that browser tab.
It's a deliberate design choice. A single-mistake format keeps every round meaningful and makes your streak an honest measure of how well you know a category, rather than something padded by unlimited retries.
Category data for The Newer Older Game is curated and checked against public reference sources for release years, founding dates, and similar chronological facts. See our About page for more on our approach.
Ratings are pulled from IMDb audience scores and reviewed periodically, since a title's score can shift over time as more people vote. Details are on the Better Worse Game about page.
Classic is the standard pace with a normal mix of pairs. Beat the Clock adds a countdown that rewards fast, confident answers. Hard Mode deliberately serves up closer pairs so the years or ratings are harder to separate. Full details are on the How to Play page.
It's a mode in The Better Worse Game that compares individual episodes within one TV series instead of comparing whole shows, so you're deciding which specific episode is rated higher. It's available for a set of well-known series such as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Stranger Things.
Yes. Tap "Choose categories" on the home screen of either game to select one or more categories, or leave them all selected for the widest possible mix of pairs. See the full categories list.
Yes, both games are built to run in any modern mobile or desktop browser without installing anything.
Please use the bug report option on our Contact page. We fix confirmed errors as quickly as we can.
Yes. Category content is kept free of restricted or mature material.
It keeps the streak honest. If a wrong guess only cost you a life, a long streak would say more about how many retries you had than how well you actually know a category. A single mistake ending the run means every number on the leaderboard reflects a real, unbroken chain of correct calls.
No, and that's intentional. Categories built around pop culture, like movies or video games, tend to feel easier because release eras have a distinct visual and cultural style. Categories like treaties, wars, or founding dates for countries and cities tend to play harder, since there's rarely a stylistic cue to lean on, only the actual date. Hard Mode narrows the year gap in any category, so even an "easy" category can be made genuinely difficult.
There's no built-in multiplayer or shared leaderboard right now. High scores are kept locally in your browser, so the simplest way to compare with a friend is to both play the same category and mode and compare your streaks directly.
No. Since scores and category selections are stored only in your browser for that session, switching devices, using a private/incognito window, or clearing your browser data will reset them. This is a deliberate privacy tradeoff, not a bug, since it means the game never needs an account or personal data to keep track of your progress.
New categories for The Newer Older Game and new shows for Episodes mode in The Better Worse Game get added periodically based on player suggestions. If there's something specific you'd like to see covered, the Contact page is the best way to request it.