How the Seinfeld episode timeline game works

Each card is a famous Seinfeld episode, with a short line under the title about the plot, and you sort them by original air date. One episode starts on the timeline with its date visible. With every new card, you choose a gap among the episodes already down and place it there. If you're right, the air date is revealed. If you're wrong, the episode still lands in its proper place, at the cost of one of your three lives.

A show about nothing gives you very little story to track, which is what makes this deck hard. Few plots carry over from week to week, so the clues come from the small things: a girlfriend, a job, a running bit. The early episodes are sparse and a little stiff, while the later ones grow broader and more absurd. The classics from the middle of the run are bunched tightly together.

Want a longer game? On the deck tree you can tick this deck alongside any other one measured in exact air dates, and they shuffle into a single timeline together.

What's in the deck

Here are 28 of the 32 cards you might be dealt, with 4 more in the deck. Their values stay hidden until you place them.

The Seinfeld Chronicles Jerry and George debate a female visitor's mixed signals
The Pony Remark Jerry's joke maybe kills Aunt Manya
The Deal Jerry and Elaine's this-and-that pact
The Chinese Restaurant Waiting for a table in real time
The Library Library cop Bookman hunts overdue book
The Parking Garage The gang loses the car all episode
The Boyfriend Keith Hernandez and the second-spitter theory
The Contest Master of your domain wager
The Airport Jerry in first class, George in coach
The Pick Was it a scratch or a pick
The Outing Not that there's anything wrong with that
The Implant George caught double-dipping a chip
The Junior Mint Candy dropped into a surgery patient
The Puffy Shirt Jerry forced to wear pirate shirt
The Hamptons George's shrinkage defense
The Opposite George does the opposite and thrives
The Switch Kramer's first name Cosmo revealed
The Fusilli Jerry Kramer's pasta sculpture of Jerry
The Soup Nazi No soup for you
The Sponge Elaine hoards her contraceptive sponges
The Rye Marble rye heist by fishing rod
The Bizarro Jerry Elaine meets the gang's opposites
The Little Kicks Elaine's infamously terrible dancing
The Yada Yada Yada yada enters the lexicon
The Summer of George George's severance-funded summer of leisure
The Merv Griffin Show Kramer hosts a fake talk show
The Betrayal The backwards-told India wedding episode
The Strike Festivus for the rest of us