Guess the Country

The same 195 as every geography game on the site: the 193 members of the United Nations, plus Vatican City and Palestine, which sit in the UN as permanent observers. Taiwan, Kosovo and Western Sahara are not in the list, and neither are territories such as Greenland or Puerto Rico. Six days a week the country comes from the larger and better-known ones, and on Sundays from the small ones.

Continent and area are there from the start. Each wrong guess opens one more: population, then the number of land neighbours and whether the country has a coast, then the currency, then the first letter of the capital, and last the flag. Your sixth guess is made with all six clues on the table.

A guess turns yellow when it shares a land border with the answer, or when the two are within 1,000 km of each other. Otherwise it stays grey. The number is the distance between the two countries' central points, and the arrow points from your guess toward the answer, the way you would move on an ordinary flat map.

Populations are the World Bank's estimates for 2025, which come from the UN World Population Prospects. Vatican City has no World Bank figure and is shown as under 1,000. Areas, borders, coasts and currencies come from the mledoze countries dataset. Areas are for the main territory only, so France is counted without its overseas regions and Denmark without Greenland. Both figures are rounded on screen.

Because the distance runs from the middle of one country to the middle of the other, not from border to border. Russia's central point is in Siberia, so even the countries along its western border are thousands of kilometres from it. That is why a shared border turns a guess yellow whatever the distance says.

Only land borders with other countries in the 195 count. A border with a place outside the list does not, so Morocco has two neighbours rather than three, Serbia seven, and Brazil nine, since French Guiana belongs to France but lies outside the area the clue measures. Sea borders and bridges do not count either: Singapore and Bahrain have no neighbours.

The clue drops the word that names the country, because Jamaican dollar would give the answer away. A currency shared by a group of countries keeps its full name, such as the euro, the East Caribbean dollar or the two CFA francs, and the US dollar keeps its name because more than ten countries use it. Where a country uses two currencies side by side, both are shown.

Those with no coast on a sea or an ocean. Countries on the Caspian Sea, such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, count as landlocked, because the Caspian has no outlet. Countries with no land border at all are described as island countries.

No. The search box only offers the 195, so a name it does not show cannot be the answer. It takes the common other names, so UK, Ivory Coast, Burma, Czech Republic and East Timor all work.