Older or newer?

Why this is harder than it looks

Emoji arrived in waves, and the waves make no intuitive sense. The original batch inherited a Japanese carrier keyboard's priorities — which is why there has been a fax machine since day one, while obvious staples took another decade. Salute the 🫡, a 2021 arrival, and remember that 🥱 yawning face didn't exist until 2019, years after 🤳 selfie.

Every round is scored against real Unicode release data — the same version history on each emoji's page here. Streak survives while you're right; your best run sticks to this browser. When a matchup surprises you, both emojis link to their pages, where the release story usually explains itself. Warm up on the version pages if you want to study first; nobody will call it cheating, but we'll both know.