I’m not sure how it’s escaped my attention until now, but I was recently introduced to the card game Chronology, which was apparently released back in the 1990s and has come in more than one form over that time.

In any case, I’m glad my mother-in-law broke out this game when we visited her the other day. My wife and I love learning about history, so this was right up our alley.

The object of Chronology is to build your own timeline of 10 historical event cards before your opponents can. For you to obtain a card (beyond the first one given to you at the start of the game), another player will draw a card from the stack and read you the event written on it, but they won’t tell you the year. Using that info, you have to guess where it fits on your existing timeline.

Which came first, the invention of mayonnaise or decaf coffee? Was the bikini introduced before or after man landed on the moon? These are the kinds of questions you’ll have to answer.

As the game progresses and you accumulate events, it gets a bit more difficult to guess exactly where something might go. If you guess wrong, the person next to you gets to try, and they’ll have an advantage because you’ve narrowed down the date range for them.

Chronology is simple yet addictive, and you’ll learn quite a few interesting things along the way. Get it for $24 on Amazon, or pick up the Disney edition for $15.