Country Outline Quiz

How to play

1. Study the silhouette. Orientation is north-up, and islands that belong to the country are drawn too — an archipelago is itself a clue.
2. Type your guess and pick from the suggestions (common shorthands like USA or Ivory Coast are accepted), then press Guess.
3. Every wrong guess unlocks the next hint in the ladder and stamps your guess with three signals: same continent?, same population class?, same first letter?
4. Find the country within 6 tries. Win or lose, the reveal card shows the continent, capital and population class — and your emoji result never spoils the answer.

Rules

• One mystery country per day, keyed to midnight UTC — identical for every player worldwide.
• The pool holds 128 recognizable countries, and the daily rotation is repeat-free: a country will not return until the whole pool has had its day.
• Guesses must be real countries from the list; typos and unknown names are rejected without costing a try.
• Repeating a country you already guessed is blocked.
• Hints unlock strictly in order — continent, population class, first letter of the name, first letter of the capital, then the capital itself.

Scoring & streaks

Your result is the number of guesses you needed (1–6), plus a spoiler-free emoji strip: red for a miss, yellow for a miss on the right continent, green for the catch. Solving the genuine daily country — not an archive replay — extends your on-device streak.

Strategy tips

• Read the coastline first. A long smooth edge usually means ocean; a jagged, complex border usually means neighbors — landlocked countries tend to look "puzzle-piece" on all sides.
• Islands are a gift: count them and check their spread. A long island chain narrows the world to a handful of candidates.
• Use aspect ratio: extremely tall-and-thin, wide-and-flat, or compact-and-round each eliminate half the map.
• Spend your first guess strategically — even a miss tells you continent, size class and first letter in one stroke.
• After the continent hint, think in neighborhoods: mentally walk the region border by border instead of jumping between random countries.

Difficulty

Rounds take 1–5 minutes. Distinctive shapes (Chile, Italy, Japan) fall in one or two guesses; compact inland countries are genuinely hard and often need the hint ladder. The pool sticks to 128 widely recognizable countries — no microstates whose outline is a featureless dot.

Controls

• Type in the guess box and pick from the built-in suggestion list; press Enter or tap Guess to submit.
• Common alternate names are accepted — USA, UK, Burma, Czech Republic and friends all resolve to the right country.
• The archive picker above the board holds the last two weeks of countries on this same page.

Accessibility

The input works fully with a keyboard, guess feedback is written out in text (continent/size/letter checks rather than color alone), announcements go through a polite screen-reader live region, and the silhouette keeps high contrast in both light and dark themes.