Guess the country from its clues
A country is hidden. With every guess the game tells you how warm you are: right continent, distance as the crow flies, direction, population gap. Your job is to close in.
How it works
A mystery country is drawn. You name a country, and the game compares. No vague hot-or-cold: each guess returns precise clues.
- The continent — right or wrong, the clue that eliminates fastest;
- The direction to travel from your guess, and the distance as the crow flies;
- Population and area, larger or smaller than the target;
- GDP per capita and life expectancy, which often separate two neighbours;
- Whether it has a coastline, and its number of land borders.
Nine clues in all, recomputed on every attempt. None of them gives the answer alone; it is crossing them that does.
The right strategy is not to guess wildly but to grid-search: start with one country per continent to find the right one, then use direction and distance to close in, and finally population to separate the last candidates. It is exactly the reasoning you apply without thinking when reading a map — the mode makes it explicit.
The fewer guesses you use, the more you score. A player who knows their subregions finds most countries in four or five.
The 24 subregions of the world
The game’s first clue is the continent, but deduction gets efficient at subregion scale: knowing that “Western Africa” holds sixteen countries and which ones beats knowing there are 54 in Africa. Here is the full breakdown, the one the game’s own data uses.
| Subregion | Continent | Countries | Which ones |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australie et Nouvelle-Zélande | Oceania | 2 | Australia, New Zealand |
| Caraïbes | North America | 13 | Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago |
| Amérique centrale | North America | 7 | Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama |
| Asie centrale | Asia | 5 | Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan |
| Europe centrale | Europe | 6 | Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia |
| Afrique de l'Est | Africa | 16 | Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia |
| Asie de l'Est | Asia | 5 | China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea |
| Europe de l'Est | Europe | 4 | Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine |
| Mélanésie | Oceania | 4 | Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu |
| Micronésie | Oceania | 5 | Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau |
| Afrique centrale | Africa | 10 | Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, South Sudan |
| Amérique du Nord (continentale) | North America | 3 | Canada, Mexico, United States |
| Afrique du Nord | Africa | 6 | Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia |
| Europe du Nord | Europe | 10 | Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom |
| Polynésie | Oceania | 3 | Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu |
| Amérique du Sud | South America | 12 | Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela |
| Asie du Sud-Est | Asia | 11 | Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vietnam |
| Europe du Sud-Est | Europe | 8 | Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia |
| Afrique australe | Africa | 6 | Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe |
| Asie du Sud | Asia | 9 | Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka |
| Europe du Sud | Europe | 9 | Andorra, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Vatican City |
| Afrique de l'Ouest | Africa | 16 | Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo |
| Asie de l'Ouest | Asia | 17 | Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Georgia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen |
| Europe de l'Ouest | Europe | 8 | Belgium, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Switzerland |