Order by the year each character first appeared on screen, counting the Tracey Ullman Show shorts. You place all 40 cards on one timeline, one at a time. You start with three lives, and ten right in a row wins a lost one back.
Every card is a resident of Springfield, with a line about who they are printed underneath, and you order them by the year they first appeared on screen, counting the shorts from The Tracey Ullman Show. One character starts on the line with a year showing. Place each new face in a gap. Guess right and the debut year pops up; guess wrong and the character shuffles over to where they really belong, taking a life with them. You get three, and a streak of ten correct placements restores one you've lost.
The shorts and the first seasons introduced a huge supporting cast in a short span, so the early part of the line is very crowded, and later arrivals are fewer and farther apart. Characters who feel as if they've always been around may have turned up a little after the core cast. One-off guests who grew into running jokes are the hardest to pin down.
Want a longer game? On the deck tree you can tick this deck alongside any other one measured in release years and dates, and they shuffle into a single timeline together.
Here are 28 of the 40 cards you might be dealt, with 12 more in the deck. Their values stay hidden until you place them.
