These are the 5 rounds every player got on June 25, 2026, with the answers and the history behind them. This day is finished, so nothing here spoils a puzzle you can still play — today’s Daily Challenge is a different five events.
Not enough completed runs on this day to report an average without singling out an individual player’s score — we publish one from 5 finishers up.
Round 1
Siege of Constantinople
Siege of Constantinople · 1204 · Medieval
Why there: Constantinople straddled the Bosphorus at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, its immense wealth and control of Black Sea and Mediterranean trade making it both the prize the crusaders coveted and a target reachable by the Venetian fleet ferrying them.
Why then: By 1204 the Fourth Crusade was bankrupt and indebted to Venice, and a Byzantine dynastic dispute offered a pretext, allowing commercial ambition and a weakened, faction-ridden empire to redirect the expedition against its own Christian ally.
- This 1204 event by the Fourth Crusade ended with the brutal sack of the Eastern empire's capital.
- The crusaders established the Latin Empire, fracturing the Byzantine state for decades.
- The city is modern Istanbul, Turkey.
Round 2
Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre · 1940 · 20th Century
Why there: The Katyn forest near Smolensk lay deep within Soviet-controlled territory, a secluded wooded site ideal for the NKVD to carry out and conceal mass executions of Polish prisoners far from witnesses.
Why then: The 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact had let the USSR seize eastern Poland and capture its officer class, and in 1940 Stalin's regime chose to eliminate this elite to permanently cripple any future Polish resistance to Soviet domination.
- This was the Katyn massacre of 1940, the Soviet NKVD's mass murder of around 22,000 Polish officers and elites.
- The Soviet Union long blamed Nazi Germany; it only admitted responsibility in 1990.
- The killings decapitated much of Poland's military and professional class.
Round 3
Withheld from the archive
This round was played, but the event belongs to one of our paid content modules, so we do not republish it on the free archive. It is still available in the app to anyone who owns that module.
Round 4
Battle of Pavia
Battle of Pavia · 1525 · Early Modern
Why there: Pavia sat astride the fertile, wealthy Po Valley of Lombardy, the coveted gateway to control of the Italian peninsula that made it the chosen battleground where French and Habsburg armies clashed over the Duchy of Milan.
Why then: By the 1520s massed gunpowder arquebuses had matured enough to devastate a mounted charge of armored knights, marking the moment when firearms overtook chivalric cavalry and reshaped European warfare.
- The Battle of Pavia (1525) was a decisive Habsburg victory in the Italian Wars.
- King Francis I of France was captured by the forces of Emperor Charles V.
- Spanish arquebusiers demonstrated the growing dominance of firearms over heavy cavalry.
Round 5
Battle of the Trench
Battle of the Trench · 627 · Medieval
Why there: Medina was a fertile oasis settlement ringed by volcanic rock and dense palm groves, leaving only one exposed northern flank that a defensive trench could seal, turning the town's natural geography into a fortress against a cavalry-heavy army.
Why then: By 627 the young Muslim community in Medina had grown strong enough to threaten Mecca's caravan trade, prompting a broad tribal confederation to unite for a decisive siege, while the introduction of a Persian-style trench—new to Arabian warfare—neutralized the attackers' horsemen.
- The Battle of the Trench (627 CE) defended Medina against a coalition of Quraysh and allied tribes.
- The Muslims dug a trench on the city's vulnerable side, reportedly a Persian-inspired tactic (advised by Salman the Persian).
- It took place at Medina in the Hejaz region of western Arabia.
Every Daily Challenge is five real events, one from each of five different eras, identical for every player, scored up to 10,000 points a round on how close you land in space and in time. Read how to play, see where the events come from, or play today’s.