Rankle: ranking countries by a criterion
Eight countries, eight criteria, one slot each. For every country you have to find where it shines — not where it is good, where it is best.
How it works
Rankle is GeoG's original mode, and the only one that needs no map knowledge at all. Eight countries are shown one at a time, against eight ranking criteria: population, area, GDP, coastline length, alcohol consumption, passport power…
For each country you pick the criterion where its world rank is closest to first place. Each criterion is used only once, so you have to spread eight countries across eight slots — which turns the round into an assignment problem rather than a sequence of independent questions.
At the end your total is compared to the optimal placement — the best possible arrangement for those eight countries. The score is expressed as an efficiency percentage: 100 % means no other combination could have done better.
That is where the difficulty lies. Putting Russia on “area” looks obvious, until you realise no other country in the round could have taken that slot, and you should have saved it for last. Rankle rewards seeing the whole board.
Two variants come from it: Streak, where a single country appears with four criteria and one mistake ends the run, and Higher or Lower, which compares two countries on one criterion.
All 41 ranking criteria
Every criterion used by Rankle, Streak and Higher or Lower. They come from public sources — the World Bank, the UN, UNESCO, international sports federations — and are refreshed with the game data.
| Icon | Ranking criterion |
|---|---|
| 🌾 | Agricultural land |
| 🛫 | Air passengers |
| 🍷 | Alcohol consumption |
| 📏 | Area |
| 🪖 | Armed forces |
| 🌡️ | Average temperature |
| 👶 | Birth rate |
| 🏭 | CO₂ per capita |
| 🌊 | Coastline length |
| 💡 | Electricity access |
| 🔌 | Electricity use |
| 🏀 | FIBA ranking |
| ⚽ | FIFA ranking |
| 🌲 | Forest cover |
| 📊 | GDP growth |
| 💵 | GDP per capita |
| 💊 | Health spending |
| 🏔️ | Highest point |
| 🔪 | Homicide rate |
| 📈 | Inflation rate |
| 🌐 | Internet users |
| 🏥 | Life expectancy |
| 📚 | Literacy rate |
| 🎖️ | Military spending |
| 📱 | Mobile subscriptions |
| 🍔 | Obesity rate |
| 🏅 | Olympic medals |
| 🛂 | Passport power |
| 👨⚕️ | Physicians / 1k |
| 👥 | Population |
| 🧱 | Population density |
| 🔬 | R&D spending |
| 🌿 | Renewable energy |
| 🧠 | Suicide rate |
| 💰 | Total GDP |
| ✈️ | Tourist arrivals |
| 💼 | Unemployment rate |
| 🏛️ | UNESCO sites |
| 🏙️ | Urban population |
| 🗳️ | Women in parliament |
| 🏉 | World Rugby ranking |