Capitals on the Map
Pick a map, then click the countries in any order and type each capital. A right answer turns the country green, a wrong one red, and the round ends when the map has no empty country left. Spelling is forgiven within reason. Accents never matter.
Before you argue with the map
Do I have to spell the capital exactly?
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Do I have to spell the capital exactly?
›No. Capital letters, accents, hyphens and apostrophes are ignored, so Bogota, port au prince and Nukualofa all count. One wrong or swapped letter is forgiven in names of five to eight letters and two in longer ones, which covers most typos in Ouagadougou. Names of four letters or fewer have to be exact, because one letter off Rome or Riga is a different word. St and Saint are treated as the same, and a trailing City is optional, so Kuwait is enough for Kuwait City.
Which answer counts for a country with two capitals?
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Which answer counts for a country with two capitals?
›Any capital the country names itself. For South Africa that is Pretoria, Cape Town or Bloemfontein, for Bolivia Sucre or La Paz, and for Eswatini Mbabane or Lobamba. The Hague does not count for the Netherlands: the constitution names Amsterdam, and The Hague is the seat of government. For Palestine both Ramallah and East Jerusalem are taken. A wrong answer always shows why the game expected the city it did.
How do I click the tiny countries?
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How do I click the tiny countries?
›Every country too small to tap gets a ring, and the ring is the target. If what you click is small enough to miss, the map zooms in on it, and the country you picked turns yellow. On the world map, the buttons above it jump to each region. You can also zoom with the buttons in the corner, the mouse wheel or two fingers, then drag to move around. When only a few are left and you cannot find them, Pick one for me selects an empty country at random.
Why can I not click some land on the map?
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Why can I not click some land on the map?
›The game covers the 195 countries that are UN members or permanent observers. Land outside that list is drawn in grey: Greenland, Western Sahara, Taiwan, Kosovo, and territories such as Puerto Rico and New Caledonia. On a continent map, neighbours from other continents are grey too, so Turkey is grey on the Europe map and playable on the Asia one.
How is this different from Capitals of the World?
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How is this different from Capitals of the World?
›That quiz names the country and gives you four capitals to choose from. Here nothing is suggested: you find the country on the map yourself and type the city from memory, in whatever order you like. It is the harder of the two, and the one to play once the multiple choice version feels easy.
What the map shows, and what it leaves out
A map of 195 countries has to settle questions a list never meets: what to do with a country smaller than a fingertip, whose colour an overseas island takes, and where to draw a border that only some governments recognise. These are the answers this one gives.
The 32 countries you play as a ring
On the continent maps, a country gets a ring when its outline is smaller than a tap. Most are islands, but not all: Europe's rings are the microstates, and two of them, Vatican City and San Marino, sit entirely inside Italy. On the world map the list is longer and zooming in is part of the game.
- Africa
- Cabo Verde, Comoros, Mauritius, Seychelles, São Tomé and Príncipe
- Asia
- Bahrain, Brunei, Maldives, Palestine, Singapore
- Europe
- Andorra, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City
- North America
- Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago
- Oceania
- Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu
Three countries inside another one
Only three countries are surrounded on every side by a single neighbour. Lesotho lies wholly inside South Africa, and Vatican City and San Marino inside Italy. Lesotho is large enough to click directly. The other two are rings drawn over Italy, a few millimetres apart on the Europe map.
Countries that reach other continents
France's overseas departments are part of France in the same way as Brittany, so the map draws French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and Mayotte inside France's outline. On the world map, clicking French Guiana selects France. On the South America map it is grey, because France is played on the Europe one.
The Netherlands works the same way for Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, which are Dutch municipalities. Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are not: they are countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, outside the 195, and grey. Norway's outline takes in Svalbard.
Borders the map does not draw
Somaliland declared independence in 1991 and Northern Cyprus in 1983. Neither is a UN member, and Turkey is the only country that recognises Northern Cyprus. The map follows the UN list the game is built on and draws both inside Somalia and Cyprus, with no line between. Kosovo, recognised by around half the UN, is outside the 195 and drawn in grey, as are Taiwan and Western Sahara.
Outlines from Natural Earth at 1:50 million, which is in the public domain.