ERAPIN
A 30-second clip plays. Drag the pin along the timeline to the year you think it was released — closer is more points, exact is glory.
Three taps, one year.
Listen
A 30-second clip queues up. Could be 1962. Could be 2024. Could be anything in between.
Pin
Drag the pin along the timeline to the year you think it dropped. Hop decades, then fine-tune.
Lock
Lock in your guess. Closer to the real year scores higher. Five rounds. One streak on the line.
How Criticscale Erapin works.
Erapin (the daily music game inside the Criticscale iOS app — not to be confused with other products that share the name) is a music year-guessing puzzle. Each day everyone gets the same set of rounds, and you have one shot per round. Songs only — no history photos, no geography, no general trivia.
The rules
- Five rounds per daily Erapin (number can vary slightly).
- Each round plays a single 30-second clip.
- Drag a pin along a timeline that spans roughly 1960 to today.
- One guess per round. Lock it in to reveal the actual release year.
- Listen as many times as you want before locking — there's no time pressure on a single round.
How points work
An exact-year guess earns the maximum (typically about 5,000 points). Points fall off as your guess gets further from the correct year. The scoring is roughly linear: one year off scores high, five years off scores middling, ten-plus years off scores low. Your daily Erapin total is the sum across all rounds, and that total is what the leaderboard ranks.
A worked round
Say a clip plays and you hear a clean drum machine, gated reverb on the snare, and synth bass that sits high in the mix. Those are mid-1980s production cues. You drag the pin to 1985, lock in, and the answer is 1986 — one year off, near-max points. If you had gone with your first instinct of 1992 (because the song felt familiar from a 90s playlist), you'd have scored substantially less.
Where the songs come from
Songs are hand-curated by the Criticscale team. Release years use the original studio recording's first commercial release — not remasters, not reissues, not movie soundtracks that re-released a track years later. When that distinction is ambiguous (e.g., a posthumous release or a single that predates an album by a year), the round is reviewed and corrected if it gets reported. Email support@criticscale.com with the round date and your reasoning.