📡 Ping
The basics
A world capital is hidden. You have eight pings. Search for any capital and send it, or click a country on the map to select its nearest capital.
Each ping reports the straight line distance to the target and an eight point compass bearing. The signal log on the right keeps every reading.
Two readings beat six
A single ping puts the target somewhere on a circle around your guess. Adding a bearing cuts that circle down to an arc. Adding a second ping from a long way away cuts the arc down to roughly a point.
The mistake is pinging three cities in the same region. Three overlapping circles from nearby points barely narrow anything. Two pings from opposite sides of the world narrow almost everything.
Sanity check your distances
It helps to carry a couple of reference numbers. London to New York is about 3,500 miles. London to Tokyo is about 6,000. Halfway around the world is roughly 12,400.
With those in your head you can turn a raw mileage figure into a mental picture immediately instead of guessing at the scale.
A worked hunt
Ping London. It comes back 5,900 miles, bearing east. That is a huge arc but it rules out all of the Americas and most of Africa.
Now ping something far from London along that bearing, say Canberra. It comes back 5,200 miles, bearing north. You now have a target that is well east of London and well north of Australia, at those two distances. That intersection lands you in eastern Asia, and your third ping should be a capital in that region rather than another exploratory shot.
Tips worth remembering
- Make your first two pings as far apart as possible. Coverage matters more than accuracy early.
- Trust the bearing more than the distance. Direction is easier to reason about on a mental map.
- Clicking the map is the quickest way to ping a region whose capital you cannot name.
- Once two readings agree on a region, stop exploring and start closing in.