How to play TRENDLINE
The daily cultural-forensic chart puzzle
TRENDLINE is a daily puzzle for armchair detectives. Each day you get an anonymised line chart of a real-world trend — search interest, an asset price, app downloads — with all the numbers stripped away. Read the shape of the line and name what it is.
Play TRENDLINE →The goal
You're a cultural forensic analyst. The chart in front of you is real data from the real world, but with the axis labels and values removed there's nothing to read except the rise and fall of the line itself. Your task is to identify what the trend actually is — a song, a gadget, a stock, a meme, a news event — and you have up to three guesses to land it. It's the same chart for everyone in the world that day, so it's a fair shared puzzle you can compare with friends.
How to play
Type your answer into the box and hit submit. You get three guesses, and the game eases you in with a two-stage hint system if your first attempts miss:
- Miss once → Hint 1. The category appears, telling you roughly what kind of thing you're looking at — for example a piece of music, a technology, or an event.
- Miss again → Hint 2. The story behind the trend unlocks, and the chart highlights the key spike so you can see exactly which moment matters.
- Forgiving spelling. You don't have to nail the exact title. Close answers and common aliases count, and a single typo on a longer answer is tolerated, so a near-miss still scores.
How to read a chart shape
Because the numbers are gone, the silhouette of the line is your only evidence. A handful of recurring shapes tell most of the story:
- A sudden spike that decays. A flat line, one sharp peak, then a quick fade usually means a viral moment or short-lived fad — a meme, a one-off news event, a song that exploded then cooled.
- Repeating waves. Evenly spaced humps signal seasonality: holidays, sports seasons, or anything people search for at the same time every year.
- Steady upward growth. A line that climbs gradually for years points to a lasting shift — an adopted technology, a maturing platform, a habit that stuck.
- A boom and bust. A steep climb followed by a steep collapse often marks a speculative bubble or a hype cycle that ran out of road.
A worked example
Imagine the chart sits flat near the bottom for a long stretch, then leaps almost vertically to a single tall peak, and within a few weeks slides most of the way back down again. That shape — quiet, sudden spike, fast decay — is the classic fingerprint of a viral fad. It isn't a technology (those build slowly) and it isn't seasonal (there's only one peak, not a repeating wave). So your first guess should be something that blew up overnight: a meme, a viral challenge, a surprise hit. If you miss, Hint 1 might confirm the category is "internet culture," and Hint 2 plus the highlighted spike will pin down the exact week it happened — usually enough to name it.
Strategy tips
- Classify the shape first. Before you type anything, decide which family the line belongs to — spike, wave, slow climb, or boom-and-bust. That alone rules out huge categories of answers.
- Ask what spikes seasonally. Repeating peaks line up with a calendar. Count the humps, note their spacing, and think about what people do at that time of year.
- Weigh recent against historical. A trend that only takes off near the end of the chart is probably something new; one that has been climbing for the whole span is likely an established, long-running thing.
- Spend a guess to learn, then use the category hint. If you're unsure, an early guess is cheap insight — missing it surfaces Hint 1, and the category narrows the field dramatically for your remaining tries.
- Trust the highlighted spike. Once Hint 2 marks the key moment, anchor on that point in time and ask what dominated the conversation right then.
Daily puzzle, streaks & sharing
A new chart drops every day and it's the same for everyone, so the whole world is solving the identical puzzle and comparisons are fair. Solving keeps your streak alive and earns Prisms, the in-game currency, and the fewer guesses you need the higher you climb the global leaderboard, which tracks today, this week and all-time. When you finish you can share a spoiler-free result — a tidy row of squares showing how many guesses it took — without ever revealing the answer for anyone still playing.
How many guesses do I get?
Three. Missing your first opens the category hint; missing your second opens the story hint and highlights the key spike on the chart.
Why are there no numbers on the chart?
That's the whole challenge. With the values and labels stripped away, you have to identify the trend purely from the shape of the line.
Do I have to spell the answer exactly?
No. Spelling is forgiving — common aliases count and a single typo on a longer answer is tolerated, so a close answer still wins.
Is the daily puzzle the same for everyone?
Yes. Everyone gets the identical chart each day, which is what makes the leaderboard and shared scores fair. There's also a practice mode for extra charts.