World Geography Quiz

Geography is one of the few subjects where a map does most of the teaching. Seeing where Paraguay actually sits, or how small the distance is between Europe and Africa at Gibraltar, sticks in a way a list of names never does. Every mode here is built around that: you answer on the map, and the map answers back.

Start with a continent rather than the whole world. Forty-odd countries is a set you can genuinely learn in a sitting; the whole world at once is a set you bounce off.

Capitals are asked as typed answers, so you have to recall them rather than recognise them from four options. Spelling is forgiving: accents are optional, so Bogota is accepted for Bogotá and Brasilia for Brasília, and every genuine alternative is marked correct.

Countries with more than one capital accept all of them. South Africa has three by function — Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein — and any of them counts. Bolivia takes Sucre or La Paz, and the Netherlands takes Amsterdam or The Hague.

Flags run both ways: name the country from its flag, or pick the flag from a named country. The alternatives are drawn from the same continent wherever possible, because guessing between Chad, Romania and Andorra is a real test and guessing between Chad, Japan and Canada is not.

The map is a real map: zoom in, drag it around, and reset it when you get lost. Small island nations get a generous circular target so they can actually be tapped — Nauru is eight square miles, and no amount of zooming makes a fair click target out of it on a phone.

Prefer not to use the map at all? Every map question has a searchable country list beside it that answers the same question.

The border questions come from the map data itself rather than a hand-typed list, and the alternatives are always countries that do not border the target — so there is exactly one right answer and no chance of being marked wrong for picking a second correct one.

Boundaries and capitals come from Natural Earth, which is in the public domain, and the flags are the MIT-licensed flag-icons set. Nothing is scraped and nothing is fetched from a third party while you play.

Several capitals were corrected by hand against the source, which is out of date in a handful of places. The full record — sources, licences, every transformation, and how the country list is defined — is kept in the project rather than summarised here.

How many countries are in the quiz?

196 sovereign states, plus 39 territories and dependencies you can switch on as an optional set. Which places count is decided by one mechanical rule — whether ISO 3166-1 has assigned a country code — rather than by anyone here judging who counts as a country.

How do you decide the borders and the country list?

The map is Natural Earth data, used in its default view. Natural Earth also publishes around thirty alternative national viewpoints of disputed boundaries; adopting any one of them would be taking a side, so none is used. Places without an ISO country code are still drawn on the map but are never quiz answers — not a judgement about their status, simply that the standard defining the list has not assigned them a code.

Which continent model do you use?

The seven-continent model, with Europe and Asia counted separately and North and South America counted separately. Other models are taught in different countries, so it is stated plainly rather than left implicit, and it is applied consistently everywhere in the quiz.

Do I have to use the map?

No. Every map question can also be answered from a searchable country list, which works with a keyboard and a screen reader. Correct and incorrect answers are always shown with a tick or a cross and in words, never by colour alone.

Why does the map look different from the one I am used to?

It uses the Equal Earth projection, which shows every country at its true relative size. The familiar Mercator map stretches places near the poles badly — Greenland appears about the size of Africa, when Africa is roughly fourteen times larger. A geography quiz that teaches a false sense of scale is failing at its job.

Are the capitals up to date?

Yes, and several were corrected by hand. Widely-used map data still lists Dar es Salaam for Tanzania (it has been Dodoma since 1996), Bujumbura for Burundi (Gitega since 2019) and Nur-Sultan for Kazakhstan (renamed back to Astana in 2022). Where a country has more than one capital, such as Bolivia or South Africa, every genuine answer is accepted.

What is the Daily Geography?

Ten mixed questions — countries, capitals, flags and map locations — that are the same for everyone on a given day and change at midnight UTC. There is no leaderboard and no account; nothing you do is sent anywhere.

Is anything uploaded or tracked?

No. The whole quiz runs in your browser. There is no account, no score submission and no global leaderboard.

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