Older or Newer — How Well Do You Know Emoji History? 🕰️

We've added a new game to Emojar: Older or Newer. It's a deceptively tricky quiz that tests whether you know your emoji history — specifically, which of two emojis was added to the Unicode standard first.

How It Works

Each round shows two emojis side by side. The left emoji's Unicode version is revealed upfront. Your job is to decide whether the right emoji is older (added to Unicode before the left one) or newer (added after).

After you guess, both version numbers and release years are shown, along with a plain-English explanation of the result. Then hit Next Round to keep going.

The game tracks:

• Correct answers — your running total
• Streak — consecutive correct guesses
• Best streak — your personal record
• Accuracy — percentage correct overall

A recent rounds table at the bottom shows your last 15 picks so you can review where you went right or wrong.

A Brief History of Emoji Versions

Emojis on Emojar span 16 Unicode versions released between 2010 and 2024:

| Version | Year | Notable additions | |---------|------|-------------------| | 0.6 | 2010 | The original 722 emojis — smileys, hearts, basic objects | | 1.0 | 2015 | First dedicated Emoji standard; 1,282 emojis | | 3.0 | 2016 | 🤣 🤦 🧀 and many more | | 5.0 | 2017 | 🧡 🤩 🥳 party faces | | 11.0 | 2018 | 🦸 🧁 🥰 (version jumped to match Unicode) | | 13.0 | 2020 | 🥲 🫁 🧋 bubble tea | | 15.1 | 2023 | 🫨 🍋‍🟩 new family variants | | 16.0 | 2024 | The most recent additions |

Why It's Harder Than It Looks

The instinct is to assume that common, simple emojis are older — but that's often wrong. Some surprisingly complex-looking emojis date back to Unicode 0.6 (2010), while certain simple icons only appeared in recent versions.

The game also includes a difficulty hint before you guess — 😊 Easy when the two emojis are from very different eras, 🤔 Tricky when they're a few versions apart, and 🔥 Hard when they're in adjacent versions and the margin is razor thin.

Play Now

Head to Older or Newer and see how many you can get right. How deep does your emoji history knowledge really go?

More games coming soon! 🎮