How to play
- Press Start. You have 3 minutes and 20 city shapes, a new set every game.
- Type the name of the selected city. It counts as soon as it’s right, and the next one is selected. Tap a shape, or press Tab, to switch.
- Name the wrong city and you’re told it isn’t that one, and which country the selected city is in.
- When time is up, the shapes you missed show their name in red. Tap any shape to see it larger, and practise the ones you missed.
About the shapes
Any of 57 cities can come up, from every continent but Antarctica. Each shape is the city’s official boundary, cut where it meets the sea, so a port city keeps its coastline and its islands.
A city’s boundary is often not the city you picture. London is Greater London: the 32 boroughs and the City. New York is its five boroughs, so Staten Island and the Bronx come with Manhattan. Beijing and Shanghai are as big as a province, Tokyo is its whole prefecture, and Washington, D.C. is the District of Columbia, a diamond with one side cut by the Potomac.
Each shape is drawn on its own scale, as big as its tile allows, so the size won’t help you.
Questions
Which names count?
The city’s English name, and common other names: Bombay for Mumbai, Saigon for Ho Chi Minh City, NYC for New York. Capitals, accents and punctuation don’t matter.
Can I stop and come back later?
Yes. Pause, or close the page: the game is saved in this browser with the same shapes, and comes back paused.
Do I see the same shapes every game?
Each game is dealt at random, and the cities from your last three games are held back while there are enough others.
Where do the outlines come from?
City boundaries and coastlines from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License.
More to play
- Countries of the World: Type every country you can before the clock runs out.
- Capitals of the World: Name the capital of every country before the clock runs out.
- Periodic Table: Name every chemical element before the clock runs out.
- Element Symbols: Name the chemical element behind every symbol.
- Flags of the World: Name the country from its flag.
- Scrambled Countries: Unscramble the letters to find the country.
- Scrambled Capitals: Unscramble the letters to find the capital city.
- Greek Alphabet: Name all 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, from their shapes.
- NATO Phonetic Alphabet: Name the code word for every letter, A to Z.
- 100 Most Common English Words: Name the 100 words that turn up most often in classic novels.
- Planets: Name the eight planets of the solar system in one minute.
- Olympian Gods: Name the twelve gods of Mount Olympus from what they ruled.
- English Monarchs: Name every king and queen of England since 1066.
- Zodiac Signs: Name the twelve signs of the zodiac from their dates.
- Best Picture Winners: Name every film that has won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
- All quizzes
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