What's new in Provenance

Every release adds an entry here, newest first. The site shows this file at /changelog.html.

2026-11-08: Counting plays, not people

Provenance now counts plays. A visit, a finished daily or journey, a locked price and a shared journey each add one to an anonymous total, so we can see what players enjoy. Your browser also remembers, on your device only, whether it has already been counted this week and this month, so the totals count browsers rather than page loads. No cookies, no ids, and nothing that follows you; the About page says so.

2026-11-06: What the tycoons paid

New price journey: What the tycoons paid. Eight paintings that America's richest collectors bought from the same New York dealer, from a Memling and a Rembrandt self-portrait to a Winslow Homer, with real prices from the dealer's books. Some were sold under grander names than they deserve; one cost $3,000. It sits with What was it worth? in the New on Provenance shelf.
Two more museums. Its paintings come from the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Art Institute of Chicago, both open access and credited on every reveal.

2026-11-06: Fairer years, sharing journeys, about page

Fairer year scores on long journeys. On a journey whose objects span more than a thousand years, a missed year now costs less: on From the temple walls, 450 years off scores about 2,300 instead of about 1,100. Getting it right still needs the same accuracy for full marks.
Share a journey. The end of a journey now has "Share this journey": your stars, score and one square per stop, plus a link that opens the journey. No answers on it.
About and press pages. What Provenance is, where the objects and prices come from, how every lesson is checked, and a press kit with screenshots. The About link is in the footer.
Trade and travel's skill tree shows What was it worth? second, after Blue and white, so its route no longer crosses the other journeys.

2026-11-06: What was it worth? is here

What was it worth? is now on the main site, at the top of home in a new "New on Provenance" shelf until mid-December.
Share a journey with a link: /#journey/what-was-it-worth (or any journey's name) opens it straight away.
Two fixes: the Silk Roads Basra dish loses a back view whose museum sticker read like a date, and the Swords katana is now pinned at Kanazawa, where its smith worked, not Kyoto.

2026-11-06: What was it worth? (on test)

A new journey on the beta site: What was it worth? Eight paintings that passed through one New York dealer, M. Knoedler & Co., from a Hogarth wedding to a Monet water lily pond. Pin where and when each was made as usual; then, once it's revealed, guess what it sold for in today's money on a price slider. Within 1.5 times the real price scores full marks, and a stop is worth up to 15,000.
Every price is real. Each one comes from Knoedler's own stock books (the Getty Provenance Index), names the buyer and the year, and is converted to today's dollars with the US consumer price index. The lessons explain why it fetched that: the painter's fame at the time, rarity, the buyer and the dealer's markup.

2026-11-05: Fairer hints, your skills and the new lessons

The new lesson layout is on the main site for every journey. Each reveal opens with the surprise, says every fact once, and points from the look-alikes to the clue that rules them out. Today's gallery keeps the old layout for now.
A hint now has a small cost. A stop where you used Show a hint scores at most 9,000, so you can still reach Gold, but not a perfect 10,000. The result says so when the cap took points off, and the end card counts your hints.
Your field guide is now Your skills. The same rules, under the name the epics use. Each skill shows the epics it counts towards, with a link to each.
Your year in the result. The time line now says which year you chose as well as how far off it was.
Stuck zoomed in on a phone? Pinching the photo now opens the zoom viewer instead of zooming the whole page, and if the page does end up zoomed in, a Zoom back out button brings it back.
Fairer clues in five journeys. Blue and white, Swords, The Silk Roads, Benin and the Guinea coast and Marco Polo's world now have a hint on every stop, and the clues that gave answers away are rewritten. The Silk Roads and Marco Polo's world stops are in a new order, so the dates no longer just rise. Every changed clue was played again blind. Benin and the Guinea coast is now marked Intermediate.

2026-11-05: Epics and skill trees

Epics and their skill trees. Home now shows Your epics, under any journey you have in progress: Trade and travel, Arms and armour and Civilisations. Each opens a page showing the whole epic at once, journeys in bands from Beginner to Advanced, one marked Next for you, and the lines between them showing a suggested route (every journey stays open). Move between epics with the tabs at the top or the arrows at the bottom, or from Epics and skills in the menu.
Skills and ranks. Every rule in your field guide is a skill in the epics that teach it, wherever you met it, daily games included. A skill you haven't met for 30 days fades, and Refresh your eye brings it back. Ranks run from Deckhand, Apprentice or Student up to Master, and are never taken away.
Master tests. Finish four journeys in an epic to open its master test: ten pieces you have never seen, photo and wall label only. Score Gold on seven to become Master trader, Master armourer or Master curator.
Hints. In a journey, Show a hint under the clue gives you one more fact about the stop. The end card counts the hints you used; they never change your score or stars.
Smaller fixes. An open menu or dialog no longer lets the page behind it scroll, close buttons are bigger on phones, and a finished journey outside an epic offers Back to journeys.

2026-11-05: Shorter, sharper lessons (on test)

A new lesson layout is on test in every journey on the beta site. Each reveal opens with the surprise, says every fact once, and points from the look-alikes straight to the clue that rules them out. The field guide rules show as titles you can tap open, and each stop ends with one line leading to the next. Today's gallery keeps the old layout for now.

2026-11-05: Helmets and horses

New journey: Helmets of the world. Eight helmets from Japan, Augsburg, Iran, Granada, Tibet, the Mamluk lands, Mughal India and Istanbul, made between about 1490 and 1850. In the Arms and armour epic.
New journey: Horse power. Eight pieces of riding gear and horse art, from a bronze bit of about 700 BCE and an Etruscan chariot to Japanese lacquered stirrups and a Chilean pair, in both the Arms and armour and the Trade and travel epics.
A truer pin for a Rajput painting. The Mewar court painting of a ruler on a prize stallion is now pinned at Udaipur, the capital of Mewar, not Jaipur.

2026-11-04: Japan's kiln towns and close-up journeys

New journey: Japan's kiln towns. Eight objects from eight Japanese towns, from a flame-rimmed pot of about 2500 BCE to a cloisonné drum made for a world's fair: a grey jar from the Sea of Japan coast, a porcelain beauty, a Bizen dish, a white incense burner from the far south and a Hokusai print. In the Civilisations epic, Intermediate.
Close-up journeys. Some journeys now zoom the map in on one country, and the place counts town by town: full marks within 40 km of where it was made, then fewer points the further off you are. Being in the right country is no longer enough there.

2026-11-03: Pins at sea

A pin in the sea near the answer country counts as inside it. If the nearest land is that country and it is within 200 km, you get full place marks, so a guess in the Java Sea "in the middle of Indonesia" scores as Indonesia. A pin nearer another country's coast still counts as outside.
The cloisonné drum's medium line now mentions the enamel.

2026-10-29: Temples, gems and fakes

New journey: From the temple walls. Eight pieces that once stood in temples, from a relief of Nefertiti at Karnak and a Javanese temple carving to Angkor's flying dancers, a Korean bodhisattva and a pair of Japanese lion-dogs, across about 3,000 years.
New journey: Gems that travelled. Eight jewels, from Ur's lapis headdress to a Colombian emerald crown and Tibetan amber. Each one tells how far its stones came, where museums record it.
New journey: Real or fake? Seven forgeries and later copies, and one genuine piece once called a fake. Pin where and when each was really made, then learn the giveaway.
Pistols stays last in the journey list, after the new journeys.

2026-10-26: Three new journeys and journey levels

New journey: Knights and samurai. Eight armours and helmets from Japan and Europe, from the early 1300s to 1745, in the Arms and armour epic.
New journey: Aztecs and Incas. Eight objects from Mexico and the Andes, starting with an Olmec face made between 900 and 400 BCE and ending with a cup from just after the Spanish conquest. A new epic, Civilisations.
New journey: Here be dragons. Eight dragons and serpents from China, France, Cambodia, Istanbul, Vietnam, Mexico, Korea and the Caucasus, across nearly 2,000 years.
Every journey shows how hard it is. A small tag on the journey's card and intro reads Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. Each journey was played blind by a separate AI tester, from the photo first, then with the clue, to set its level and check that no clue gives the answer away.
Pistols is marked Advanced and moved to the end of the list. The guns give little away on their own: you'll lean on the clues.
Pistols' clues are reworked. Each clue now tells you what to look for on the gun itself (the lock, the grip, the inlay), the Tula pair makes way for a coral-covered pair from Algeria, and the Dagestan pistol takes dates further either side of 1850.
Two extra photos that gave answers away are gone: a museum label on the Silk Roads silk ("Spanish, XII Century") and the maker's signature on the Brescia pistol.
A clearer line in the Buddhist altarpiece lesson. The flaming halo marks Buddhist Asia, and Northern Wei China passed this flame-edged style on to Korea.

2026-10-20: Journeys first

The home page opens with journeys. A journey you've started sits on top with a Continue button, then the journeys, then today's gallery.
Journeys are grouped into epics. Trade and travel holds Blue and white, The Silk Roads, Benin and the Guinea coast and Marco Polo's world. Arms and armour holds Swords and Pistols.
New journey: Swords. Eight blades, from 9th-century Nishapur to a forked sword from the Congo, by way of Brunswick, Japan, Istanbul, the Caucasus, the southern Philippines and the Deccan.
New journey: Pistols. Eight pistols from Augsburg, Japan, Brescia, Lucknow, Tula, Doune, Hartford and Dagestan, made between the 1560s and the 1850s.
Benin and the Guinea coast replaces Benin City. The pin now travels from Sierra Leone to Benin City, Ife, Ghana and Owo. Every stop has been fact-checked.
Far misses still score. Points drop quickly once you leave full marks, then taper off slowly instead of reaching zero. A wrong continent or a guess centuries off is worth a few hundred points, not none.
Place is measured from the border. Outside the answer country, the score uses the distance to its border, the same number the result shows ("2,450 km outside Iran").
The photo viewer no longer flashes the previous photo, stretched, before the new one loads.
The welcome box offers "Start a journey" first, with today's gallery second.

2026-10-19: Easier scoring and owner fixes

Anywhere in the answer country scores full place marks, however large the country. More leeway on dates.
The result says why you got your points, for example "260 km outside Italy; anywhere in Italy scores full marks", and a near miss reads "Keep looking" instead of "far off".
Look back at a finished round from its dot, the results or a journey's end card.
Journeys keep your progress (Continue · stop n of N), and archive games count in Stats.
Help (?) lists what every button does. Cmd/Ctrl+Enter sends feedback.
Map and photo fixes: one click always places the pin, the photo viewer can always be closed, photos keep their shape and are never enlarged past their own size, and a long press on Android no longer opens Google.
Place names carry the country, as in "Near İznik, Türkiye".
Lessons: no more "the Met says"; the sources are listed at the bottom. Journey stops no longer tease the next answer.
Photos: hi-res photos for the Benin stops, and 90 repeated or tiny extra views removed.

Before 2026-10-19

2026-10-17: a UX audit pass on the reveal, journey end, results, feedback, archive, stats, practice and music screens.
2026-10-12: journeys, lessons ("How to read it"), extra views, confidence and Your museum / Your atlas came out of beta.