About
What this is
A photograph of an engineering part appears, singled out from whatever else is in frame. You name it before the clock runs out. Ten parts a round, faster and more confident answers score higher, and a run of correct calls multiplies what you earn. Pick a category on the way in if you already know what you want: hand tools, fasteners, whatever’s there. Or leave it on All and take whatever comes.
Who it's for
Mechanical engineering students, who are handed this vocabulary in a lecture and then expected to have it on the shop floor. Working engineers, who spec these parts weekly but meet most of them as line items on a drawing rather than objects in a hand. And machinists, technicians and makers, including the kind of hobbyist with a drawer nobody else is allowed to organise. Fasteners, bearings, seals, linkages: the parts you can nearly name on sight but would struggle to define. That’s the level this is pitched at.
Where the parts come from
A mix. Some photographs are our own; others are reviewed contributions sourced from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licences, or sent in by players through the submissions page. Every part, regardless of where the photo came from, is checked by hand before it ever appears in a round: the photo, the name, and the three alternatives it’s shown against. Nothing is published sight unseen. Licensed photographs are credited on the credits page.
On getting it right
We try hard, and a person checks every part before it goes live. But naming is genuinely messy: the same tool is an adjustable wrench in Ohio, an adjustable spanner in Sheffield and a shifter in Brisbane, and trade usage drifts from what the standards say. Sometimes a single photo is honestly ambiguous even to someone who’s handled a thousand of them.
So treat this as a game and a memory jog, not a reference. If you’re specifying, ordering or repairing something where being wrong has consequences, go to the manufacturer’s documentation or the standard. And if you spot a mistake, there’s a report link on every question once you’ve answered. Corrections from people who know the trade are the most useful thing we get. The full disclaimer spells this out properly.
Scoring, roughly
A correct answer is worth more the faster you give it, up to a fixed ceiling, and harder-rated parts are worth more outright. A confident guess on an easy one and a real read on a hard one are not the same thing, and the score reflects that. A wrong answer scores nothing, so there’s no reward for guessing recklessly. Three correct calls in a row starts multiplying your score; seven in a row doubles it. Every round counts toward the leaderboard, whatever category or difficulty you picked for it.
Coming back
Every part you’re served counts against what you’ve already seen, so a round won’t repeat a photo back to you until you’ve genuinely gone through the rest of what’s there. Playing on consecutive days keeps a streak, shown once it’s worth mentioning, on the results screen.
Get in touch
Found a mislabelled part, a broken photo, or just have something to say about it? hello@namethispart.com.