The Game That Doesn’t Want You to Be Right
Neatorama has been running a weekly feature called “What Is It?” for so long that on November 7, 2013, it reached its 300th round. That’s 300 separate weeks of readers staring at a strange photograph and typing their best guess into the comments. Most games built around identifying something reward the person who nails the answer. This one doesn’t. The prize goes to whoever writes the funniest wrong guess, and that single twist is a big part of why the format has lasted this long.
A Photo With No Clues Attached
Each round works the same way. Neatorama, in partnership with a separate site called the “What Is It?” blog, posts a cropped photo of some obscure object with no caption, no ruler for scale, and no hint about the era it came from. Round 300’s photo showed something with curved, blade-like parts that didn’t resemble any tool a modern reader would recognize on sight. That kind of image invites guesses that swing from the practical to the completely unhinged, because there’s nothing to search your way toward. The blank space is the whole engine of the format. Strip away context, and people start inventing instead of researching.
It Was a Tool for Wagon Wheels
The object turned out to be a rounding plane dated to 1801, a woodworking tool that tradesmen used to prepare and finish the ends of wooden axles. A “plane,” in general, is any hand tool with a blade that shaves thin layers off wood to smooth or reshape it. Beyond that, the source doesn’t spell out exactly how this particular plane was worked, only what it was for. In 1801, that job mattered to almost everyone. Wooden axles were standard equipment in carts, wagons, and carriages, and a tool like this would have sat in an ordinary cartwright’s shop, not a museum case. It’s a 225-year-old object doing a job nobody needs done anymore, which is exactly why it looked so unfamiliar in a photograph.
Wrong Answers, Correctly Delivered
Two entries won round 300, and neither came close to “rounding plane.” One commenter, going by “Colshorts,” called it a “Pirate Pete’s Leg Pointer,” imagining a shop that fitted peg legs for pirates missing a limb. Another, “tarnation,” dubbed it the “Reverence Shaver” and described a mock three-step process involving sticking an arm through it while a friend turned a handle. Neither guess tries to be historically plausible. Both commit fully to a specific, slightly absurd scenario, and that commitment is what makes them land. In this contest, being close to the truth counts for nothing. Being confidently, elaborately wrong is the actual skill being judged.
The Rules Behind 300 Rounds
A contest doesn’t survive 300 weeks by accident. Neatorama keeps entries readable by limiting each comment to one guess, though commenters can post as many separate comments as they like. Links are banned outright, since a URL usually signals someone trying to game the format rather than write a joke. Winners choose a T-shirt from the NeatoShop and have to name their pick or forfeit the prize entirely. Neatorama doesn’t hunt down these mystery objects itself. The actual photos and full historical answers live on the “What Is It?” blog, which supplies the raw material every week for Neatorama to turn into a game.
Why Not Knowing Is the Fun Part
Wheelwrighting and cartwrighting were once ordinary trades, and tools like this rounding plane were as common as a wrench is now. As wooden wheels and axles gave way to other kinds of transportation, those trades faded and their tools went quiet, turning up mostly in antique shops, museum drawers, or, once a week, in a comments section as comedy material. Recognizing that gap, the distance between “everyone owned one of these” and “nobody can name it,” is its own small skill. It’s the same instinct that sends someone down a Wikipedia rabbit hole over something they can’t quite place. Three hundred rounds in, Neatorama’s game keeps proving the same point: a mystery held loosely, with a joke instead of an answer, is more fun than one that gets solved.