Where in the World? is a free daily geography game with one simple, addictive question: given a famous place, can you point to it on the map? You are shown a well-known city or landmark — no country, no clues — and you tap the world map to drop a single pin where you think it is. The closer your pin lands, the more points you keep.

Every guess is scored by great-circle distance (“as the crow flies”): a perfect pin is worth 5,000 points, and the score tapers off the further you are. Five rounds a day means a perfect run is 25,000 points. There are no multiple-choice options and no typing — just your mental map of the world against everyone else’s.

The daily challenge is the same five places for every player worldwide, so your score is directly comparable with your friends’. Finished today? Switch to endless Practice mode and keep dropping pins — filter by difficulty and chase your best distance. Play it below.

How to play

Read the place name at the top — it’s a famous city (🏙️) or landmark (🏛️). The country is hidden.
Tap or click anywhere on the world map to drop your guess pin. Tap again to move it.
Press Submit guess. The true location appears with a line to your pin, your distance, and your points.
Hit Next for the following round. After five rounds you get your total score and a shareable result card.
Tap Share result to copy a spoiler-free emoji score you can paste to friends — no answers given away.

Game modes

Daily challenge

Five fixed places, one attempt, scored out of 25,000. The line-up is seeded from the date in UTC, so everyone in the world gets the exact same five places each day — and a new set appears at midnight UTC. Your result is saved, so you can come back and see your scorecard any time that day.

Practice (endless)

No daily limit — random places, one at a time, for as long as you like. Pick a difficulty (Easy, Medium or Hard) to focus on iconic capitals and landmarks or push yourself with the trickier, out-of-the-way spots. Practice is the fastest way to sharpen your mental map before the next daily.

The geography behind it

Your score is based on the great-circle distance between your pin and the real location — the shortest path over the curved surface of the Earth, the same “as the crow flies” measure used by pilots and by other map-guessing games. A bullseye (under about 30 km) is worth the full 5,000 points; the reward falls away smoothly with distance, so even a rough guess in the right region earns something.

The places that trip people up are rarely the famous ones — they’re the ones we misremember. Reykjavík sits further north than most people pin it. Rio de Janeiro is on the Atlantic coast, not the Pacific. Cape Town is at the very bottom of Africa, not the middle. Playing daily quietly rebuilds your sense of where things really are — which continents are further east or west than they feel, and just how big the Pacific really is.

Frequently asked questions

Is it the same five places for everyone today?

Yes. The daily line-up is generated from the date in UTC, so every player worldwide gets the identical five places, and it changes at 00:00 UTC. That’s what makes scores worth comparing.

How is my score calculated?

Each round is worth up to 5,000 points based on how close your pin is to the true location (great-circle distance). A perfect daily of five rounds is 25,000 points. The closer you pin, the more you keep.

Do I need to know the country?

No — you don’t type anything or pick a country. You just pin the map. The country is revealed after you submit, so the game also teaches you as you go.

Can I switch between kilometres and miles?

Yes, there’s a km/mi toggle in the top bar. Your points are the same either way — the unit only changes how the distance is displayed.

Where do the places and the map come from?

The game uses a curated deck of world-famous cities and landmarks with public-record coordinates (from Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap). The world map is drawn from Natural Earth data (via world-atlas). Everything runs in your browser — there’s no sign-up and it’s completely free.