How Far? is a free daily geography game that asks one deceptively simple question: how far apart are these two cities? Each round shows you two world cities, from Athens and Skopje to Melbourne and Bratislava, and you lock in a single distance estimate. The closer your guess is to the real great-circle distance, the more points you keep.

Every day at midnight UTC, five new city pairs go live, and every player in the world gets the same five. Your daily score out of 5,000 is instantly comparable with friends, which is exactly what the copy-and-paste share card is for. There is also an endless streak mode with three lives for when one daily round is not enough.

What makes it a Mappr game: after every guess, the map tells the truth. Both cities drop onto a world map and the real shortest route draws itself between them, so you see exactly why Madrid to Tokyo is so much farther than it feels. You will be surprised how quickly your sense of the planet sharpens.

Play How Far?

How to play

Look at the two cities in the round. Their country names and flags are shown, but no map yet, since pins on a map would give the distance away.
Estimate the distance between them. Drag the slider or type a number, in kilometers or miles.
Lock in your guess. One guess per pair, so make it count.
Watch the reveal: the actual distance counts up, both cities appear on the world map, and the real great-circle route draws itself between them.
Score points for accuracy. A perfect guess is worth 1,000 points, and even 25 percent off still keeps 563.
Finish all five rounds, then share your emoji scorecard and come back tomorrow to protect your streak.

Game modes

Daily challenge

Five city pairs per UTC day, identical for every player worldwide. The pairs are drawn across five distance bands, from a short regional hop under 1,500 km up to a near-antipodal haul beyond 13,000 km, so every daily spans the whole planet. Your total out of 5,000 feeds your streak, average and best score, all stored privately in your browser.

Endless streak

Random pairs, three lives. Stay within 30 percent of the true distance and your streak keeps climbing; miss by more and you lose a heart. It is the one-more-go arcade version of the game, and your best streak is saved so you always have a number to beat.

The geography behind it

How Far? measures great-circle distance: the shortest path between two points on the surface of the Earth, often called the distance as the crow flies. Because the Earth is a sphere, that shortest path rarely looks straight on a flat map. Routes between cities at similar latitudes bow toward the poles, which is why flights from Europe to East Asia pass over Siberia and why the route the game draws after each guess is a curve, not a line.

Human distance intuition is famously bad at this. We remember flight times, which include headwinds and detours; we picture the Mercator map, which stretches everything near the poles; and we underestimate just how vast the Pacific is. Playing a few dailies recalibrates all three instincts, and the map reveal after every guess shows you exactly where your mental map was stretched or squashed.

The game plays across roughly 330 recognizable world cities, from every megacity to national capitals on all continents, with distances computed city center to city center. The city coordinates come from the public-domain Natural Earth dataset, the same cartographic source used across Mappr’s tools.

Frequently asked questions

Is it the same puzzle for everyone today?

Yes. The five daily pairs are generated from the UTC date, so everyone on the planet plays the same challenge on the same day. New pairs appear at midnight UTC, and your share card carries the puzzle number so friends can compare scores on the exact same cities.

How is my score calculated?

Each round scores your percentage error. The formula is accuracy squared: 1,000 points times (1 minus your error percentage, squared). Guessing within 5 percent earns about 903 points and a bullseye emoji; 25 percent off keeps 563; more than double the real distance scores zero. Five rounds make a 5,000-point day.

Why does the shortest route look curved on the map?

Because the Earth is round and the map is flat. The game draws the true great-circle route, which is a straight line on the globe but appears curved when projected onto a flat world map. The farther the two cities are from the equator, the more dramatic the curve.

Does the game use driving distance or straight-line distance?

Straight-line, or more precisely great-circle distance, measured city center to city center using the haversine formula. Road, rail and flight routes are always somewhat longer, so if you find yourself anchoring on flight times, aim a little lower.

Where does the city data come from?

City locations and populations come from the public-domain Natural Earth populated places dataset, and the world map is drawn from the open world-atlas package. Everything is bundled into the game at build time: no accounts, no tracking, and the game runs entirely in your browser.

Can I play in miles instead of kilometers?

Yes. Tap the km/mi toggle next to the input. Your choice is remembered for future visits, and scoring is identical either way since points depend only on percentage error.