How to Play Fresco: Guess the Painter

1. Objective

Fresco is a daily art game: one famous painting, and you name the painter. Under the painting, the painter's name waits as blank tiles, one per letter. You have six guesses, three letters you can buy, and no clock.

The tiles are half the puzzle. A seven-letter name rules out every painter whose name is not seven letters long, so you read the painting for its age and its hand, and the tiles for its length.

2. The Daily Painting

One painting publishes every day, and everyone gets the same one.

  • Free, with no account. Anyone can play today's painting. Sign in to keep your record and be rated.
  • One attempt a day. Once the painter is named, or the guesses run out, the board counts down to tomorrow's painting.
  • Public-domain masterpieces. Every painting is a real work, shown whole in its own proportions, from Wikimedia Commons.
  • No signatures. Where a painter signed the canvas, the signature is blurred before the day is published.

3. The Name Tiles

Each tile is one letter of the name the game is looking for, and a gap splits the words: VAN GOGH is three tiles, a gap, then four. The name is the one the painter is known by, so VERMEER, not Johannes Vermeer.

  • Spelling is forgiving. Capitals and accents do not matter: Dürer and DURER are the same guess.
  • Known names all count. Leonardo, da Vinci and Leonardo da Vinci are all right, even where a form does not fit the tiles.
  • A name that cannot fit is refused, free. It never spends a guess, and it tells you the name is a different length.

4. Guesses and Reveals

You have six guesses. Only a name that fits the tiles and is wrong spends one. Here the name has seven tiles, two of them already bought:

  • A reveal uncovers one hidden letter, chosen at random, for 150 points.
  • Up to three reveals, and at least two letters always stay hidden, so a short name offers fewer: a four-letter name offers two.
  • Six spent guesses end the round, unsolved, and the painter is shown.

5. Score and Rating

  • You start with 1,000 points. Name the painter first time with no reveals and you keep them all.
  • A spent guess costs 100 and a reveal costs 150.
  • A round you do not solve scores nothing.

When the round ends

  • The painter, the painting's title and its year.
  • Sharing sends your guesses and reveals as coloured squares, never the painting, so it spoils nothing for anyone yet to play.

Signed-in players are rated. Every player starts at 1500, and what moves your rating is the share of the 1,000 points you kept. A day counts towards your day streak when you name the painter. Your rating ranks you on the Fresco leaderboard, and feeds the one Overall rating BattleGuess keeps for you across every game you play.

6. The Painters

The answer is always one of 154 painters, from Duccio and Giotto to Klimt and Schiele, across seven eras of Western painting. Their works number 5,030, so a painter you know may well appear with a painting you have never seen. See every painter, by era.

7. Tips

  • Date the painting first. A gold ground means before about 1500; loose, visible brushstrokes usually mean after about 1860. The era cuts the field before the tiles do.
  • Count the tiles before you type. A name of the wrong length is free, but it is also no help.
  • Guess before you reveal. A wrong guess costs 100 and a reveal 150, so a candidate that fits is the cheaper test.
  • Reveal when you have no candidate. One letter in place often names the painter on its own.
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