Guess It 
Mystery
The Giant Stone Spheres of Costa Rica Nobody Can Fully Explain
More than 400 carved stone balls, some weighing 26 tonnes, made by hand over a thousand years ago. We know who made them and roughly how. Nobody can say why.
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Editor's picks
See all → Mystery Unsolved Historical Mysteries
The Giant Stone Spheres of Costa Rica Nobody Can Fully Explain
More than 400 carved stone balls, some weighing 26 tonnes, made by hand over a thousand years ago. We know who made them and roughly how. Nobody can say why.
Guess It What Is This Thing?
What Was This Strange Household Object Actually Used For?
A heavy glass dome with a hole in the top, found in sideboards and attics everywhere. Three plausible answers, and one that is correct.
Quiz Guess the Country
Can You Name the Country From Three Clues?
Ten countries, three clues each, getting easier as they go. No maps, no flags, just geography, borders and the occasional oddity.
Countdown 90s Nostalgia
How Many of These 15 Things From a 90s Childhood Do You Remember?
Fifteen very specific objects, sounds and rituals from a 1990s childhood, from the tape-deck pause button to the phone cord that reached exactly nowhere.
Can you solve it?
More puzzles → Guess It What Is This Thing?
What Was This Strange Household Object Actually Used For?
A heavy glass dome with a hole in the top, found in sideboards and attics everywhere. Three plausible answers, and one that is correct.
Odd One Out Visual Puzzles
One Arrow in This Grid Is Pointing the Wrong Way. Can You Find It?
A grid of identical arrows with exactly one impostor. The answer is generated from the puzzle data before the picture is drawn, so there is no argument about where it is.
Guess It Guess the Price
Which Cost More? Eight Price Comparisons From the Past
Not exact prices, which nobody remembers reliably, but the comparisons: which of two things cost more at the time, and what that says about the period.
Logic Puzzle Logic Puzzles
Four Clues, One Queue: Can You Work Out the Order?
A short ordering puzzle with a single provable answer. Every clue is needed, and a solver checks that only one arrangement fits before it is published.
Latest
See all → Guess It What Is This Thing?
What Was This Strange Household Object Actually Used For?
A heavy glass dome with a hole in the top, found in sideboards and attics everywhere. Three plausible answers, and one that is correct.
Quiz Guess the Country
Can You Name the Country From Three Clues?
Ten countries, three clues each, getting easier as they go. No maps, no flags, just geography, borders and the occasional oddity.
Countdown 90s Nostalgia
How Many of These 15 Things From a 90s Childhood Do You Remember?
Fifteen very specific objects, sounds and rituals from a 1990s childhood, from the tape-deck pause button to the phone cord that reached exactly nowhere.
Countdown Dogs
Ten Dog Behaviours Explained by the Job They Were Bred For
Circling before lying down, herding children, digging up the lawn and staring at nothing. Ten everyday dog behaviours traced back to the work the breed was shaped for.
Countdown Weird Animal Facts
Ten Animal Facts That Sound Completely Invented
Ten documented pieces of animal biology and behaviour that read like a wind-up, with the sources attached and the shaky ones left out.
Myth or Fact Classic Movies
Eight Famous Film Production Stories, and Which Ones Hold Up
Film sets generate legends faster than any other workplace. Eight of the most repeated stories, sorted into the documented, the disputed and the invented.
Odd One Out Visual Puzzles
One Arrow in This Grid Is Pointing the Wrong Way. Can You Find It?
A grid of identical arrows with exactly one impostor. The answer is generated from the puzzle data before the picture is drawn, so there is no argument about where it is.
Story Marriage Dilemmas
They Moved in February. Fixing the Tense Took Two Years.
Part five of five. The move was right. That turned out to be the complicating factor rather than the ending.
Strange but true
See all → Countdown Weird Animal Facts
Ten Animal Facts That Sound Completely Invented
Ten documented pieces of animal biology and behaviour that read like a wind-up, with the sources attached and the shaky ones left out.
Countdown Ocean Weirdness
Nine Deep-Sea Creatures That Barely Look Real
The deep ocean is the largest habitat on Earth and the least visited. Nine of its residents, and the specific problem each one has evolved to solve.
Countdown Space Weirdness
Eight Places in the Solar System With Genuinely Bizarre Weather
Sideways glass rain, a storm older than photography, and a moon with rivers of methane. Eight places where the weather report would be unprintable.
Countdown Human Body Facts
Ten Things Your Body Does Constantly That You Never Notice
Reflexes, corrections and background processes that run without you: ten of them explained in plain language, with no medical advice attached.
Nostalgia
See all → Countdown 90s Nostalgia
How Many of These 15 Things From a 90s Childhood Do You Remember?
Fifteen very specific objects, sounds and rituals from a 1990s childhood, from the tape-deck pause button to the phone cord that reached exactly nowhere.
Countdown 70s Nostalgia
15 Things From a 1970s Kitchen Younger People Might Not Recognise
Fifteen objects that sat on the bench, in the drawer or under the sink of an ordinary 1970s kitchen, and what each one was actually for.
Countdown 80s Nostalgia
Twelve Things That Lived in an Ordinary 1980s Bedroom
The poster, the radio-cassette, the pencil case with a combination lock: twelve objects that were in almost every 1980s bedroom and are now in almost none.
Countdown 2000s Nostalgia
Ten Things Everybody Did Online in 2004 That Nobody Does Now
Burned CDs, away messages and the family computer in the hallway: ten online habits from the mid-2000s that have disappeared completely.
Guess it
See all → Guess It What Is This Thing?
What Was This Strange Household Object Actually Used For?
A heavy glass dome with a hole in the top, found in sideboards and attics everywhere. Three plausible answers, and one that is correct.
Guess It Guess the Price
Which Cost More? Eight Price Comparisons From the Past
Not exact prices, which nobody remembers reliably, but the comparisons: which of two things cost more at the time, and what that says about the period.
Which Is Worth More?
Which Is Worth More? Six Pairs and the Reason Behind Each
Two similar objects, very different values. Six head-to-head comparisons that explain how condition, rarity, provenance and demand actually interact.
Guess It Mystery Kitchen Objects
There Is One in Almost Every Kitchen Drawer. What Was It Actually For?
A flat metal disc with a wooden handle and a rippled edge, found in kitchen drawers everywhere. Here is what it did, and the three objects people usually confuse it with.
Mysteries
See all → Mystery Unsolved Historical Mysteries
The Giant Stone Spheres of Costa Rica Nobody Can Fully Explain
More than 400 carved stone balls, some weighing 26 tonnes, made by hand over a thousand years ago. We know who made them and roughly how. Nobody can say why.
Mystery Unsolved Historical Mysteries
The Manuscript Nobody Has Ever Read
A 240-page medieval book written in an unknown script, illustrated with plants that do not exist. Here is what is actually established about it, and what is not.
Myth or Fact Ancient Egypt
Myth or Fact: Eight Things Everyone Says About the Pyramids
Slaves, aliens, mummy curses and the cat that was worshipped. Eight widely repeated claims about ancient Egypt, checked against the evidence.
Countdown Ancient Rome
Ten Things About Daily Life in Ancient Rome That Sound Modern
Takeaway food, block-of-flats living, graffiti about the neighbours and complaints about the landlord. Ten details of Roman daily life from the surviving evidence.
Popular quizzes
All topics → Quiz Guess the Country
Can You Name the Country From Three Clues?
Ten countries, three clues each, getting easier as they go. No maps, no flags, just geography, borders and the occasional oddity.
Quiz Map Puzzles
Which Is Further North? Eight Geography Questions That Beat Intuition
Eight comparisons where the obvious answer is wrong, and the reason is almost always the same: maps distort, and mental maps distort more.
Quiz Horses
Can You Name These Horse Colours Correctly?
Horse colour has its own vocabulary, and most of it is counter-intuitive. Eight questions on coats, markings and the terms that trip everyone up.
Trivia Celebrity Trivia
Ten Jobs Famous People Had Before They Were Famous
Career facts rather than gossip: the documented jobs, trades and professions that well-known people held before the work they are known for.
Explore the sections
All 100 topics →Nostalgia
The things we grew up with, and the things that quietly disappeared.
All 10 topics · 10 articles →Brain Games
Puzzles with real answers, generated so the answer is always right.
All 10 topics · 16 articles →Weird World
Facts that sound invented, and happen not to be.
All 10 topics · 10 articles →History & Mysteries
Old lives, open questions and places nobody came back to.
All 10 topics · 11 articles →Human Drama
Original fictional stories about families, weddings, wills and neighbours.
All 10 topics · 50 articles →Home & Life
Old-fashioned know-how, gardens, kitchens and houses worth staring at.
All 10 topics · 10 articles →Places
Maps, outlines, flags and the borders that make no sense.
All 10 topics · 10 articles →Animals
Dogs, cats, horses, birds and the wildlife that keeps surprising scientists.
All 10 topics · 10 articles →Culture
Films, television, music, words and where the fashions came from.
All 10 topics · 10 articles →Curiosity
What is this thing, what is it worth, and how does it actually work?
- Guess the Price
- Antiques & Collectibles
- Which Is Worth More?
- Can You Spot the Scam?
- Everyday Objects: Then & Now