🌍 Countries
The basics
One country per day, six guesses, and five clue signs that unlock as you go. You start with one clue visible and earn another with each wrong answer.
You can search by name or click a country directly on the map to fill in your guess, which is handy when you know the shape but not the spelling.
What the clues tell you
The five clues appear in a fixed order and each one does a different job.
- Population, given as a rounded figure. Good for separating giants from small states.
- Continent. The single biggest cut available.
- Region, such as Western Europe or Southern Africa. This is usually the clue that decides the round.
- The flag itself, which for most players ends the puzzle immediately.
- Official language or languages, which is the tiebreaker when several neighbours look alike.
Spending guesses well
Because clues unlock on misses, a wrong guess is not wasted. It buys information. The mistake most players make is guessing a country they already suspect is wrong just to unlock the next clue, when a more informative wrong guess costs exactly the same.
If the continent clue has landed and you still have four guesses, you can afford one deliberate probe into an ambiguous region before you commit.
A worked round
The population clue says roughly 10 million. That alone leaves well over thirty candidates, so guess something and take the continent.
Continent comes back as Africa. Now the 10 million figure is doing real work, because it rules out both Nigeria at the top and the microstates at the bottom. One more miss gives you the region, and Eastern Africa plus 10 million is a very short list. You have solved it in three guesses without ever seeing the flag.
Tips worth remembering
- Read population as a band, not a number. Countries near the boundary of a band are the ones worth double checking.
- The region clue is worth more than the flag for narrowing. The flag is worth more for finishing.
- Use the map to click rather than type when a name has an awkward spelling.
- If two neighbours both fit, the language clue almost always separates them.