Sorta — a free daily trivia game and ordering puzzle
Put the world in order… sorta.
Three quiet rounds, five things each, and one hidden way to arrange them. Trust your instinct and see how close your order comes to the truth.
Sorta Game puzzle #97 · October 15, 2026
Three rounds of five things, each with a hidden scale to sort them by — then one last guess at the theme tying all three together. Here’s what this puzzle asks.
Round 1
Order these famous historical automata and mechanical calculating devices by their date of completion, from earliest to latest
- Al-Jazari's mechanical 'Elephant Clock'
- The ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism
- Su Song's astronomical clock tower in Kaifeng
- Charles Babbage's mechanical Difference Engine
- Jacques de Vaucanson's mechanical 'Digesting Duck' automaton
Round 2
Order these timekeeping and acoustic oscillators from lowest to highest operating frequency
- A classic mechanical metronome ticking at standard andante
- A standard orchestral A440 tuning fork
- A grandfather clock's seconds pendulum
- A cesium-133 atomic clock microwave transition
- A luxury mechanical wristwatch balance wheel
Round 3
Order these physical and dynamical systems by their characteristic Lyapunov time (the timescale beyond which physical systems become fundamentally unpredictable), from shortest to longest
- The orbital motion of the dwarf planet Pluto
- Earth's atmospheric weather system
- The orbital paths of the inner Solar System
- A chaotic double pendulum
- Saturn's tumbling moon Hyperion