Guess the Country: Hot or Cold Geography Game

Type any country and see how far away the mystery country is, which way to go and whether it shares a border. Eight guesses, clues as you miss, unlimited rounds.

A Wordle-style geography game with no daily limit. Type any country: you see how many kilometres it is from the mystery country, an arrow pointing the way, a hot-or-cold score and whether the two share a land border. Find it in eight guesses, with clues opening as you miss.

How to play Guess the Country

Type the name of any of the 197 countries and press Guess. Each guess gets a row with four pieces of information:

Distance in kilometres from your guess to the mystery country.
An arrow pointing from your guess towards the answer: north, north-east, east and so on.
A proximity score from 0 to 99%. 0% is the far side of the planet (about 20,000 km away); the closer you get, the higher it climbs.
Next door: the row turns orange when your guess shares a land border with the mystery country.

You have eight guesses. After three misses the continent is revealed, after five the number of land neighbours, after six the first letter and after seven the flag. Then the next country is one tap away: there is no daily limit.

Choose your countries

Easy draws the mystery country from the 60 most populous countries.
Medium uses the 120 most populous.
Hard can be any of the 197, from Tuvalu to Liechtenstein.

You can always guess any country on every level.

Strategy: how to find the country in four guesses

Open with a central guess. A country near the middle of a big landmass (Chad, Kazakhstan, Brazil) gives a useful distance whichever way the answer lies.
Follow the arrow, but jump by the distance. If you are 6,000 km away pointing south-east, go about that far in that direction, not one country over.
Use the border hint. An orange row means the answer is a neighbour of that guess. Name its neighbours one by one.
Islands have no neighbours. If the clue says no land neighbours, think island nations: Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Japan, the Caribbean or the Pacific.

How the distance is measured

Every country has one reference point, the geographic coordinates listed in the CIA World Factbook (via the open world-countries dataset). Distances are measured between those points along the curve of the Earth. Big countries can surprise you: Russia's point is in Siberia at 60°N 100°E, so Russia scores as far from Western Europe even though the two touch. When a giant shows up, trust the border hint more than the percentage.

Borders follow the same dataset, with French Guiana counted as part of France, so France borders Brazil and Suriname.

Daily or unlimited?

The Daily Country gives everyone the same country each day in six guesses. This game is the unlimited version with clues and border hints, for practice or a classroom race. For more guessing games, try Guess the Country by clues, the Country Silhouette Quiz and our list of free GeoGuessr alternatives.

Frequently asked questions

Is this like Wordle or Worldle?

It is the same idea for countries: guess, read the distance and direction, and close in. Unlike the daily games, you can play as many rounds as you like, every row also tells you whether your guess borders the answer, and clues open after misses.

How is the proximity percentage worked out?

It is the distance between your guess and the answer as a share of the farthest two places can be on Earth, about 20,000 km. A guess 2,000 km away scores 90%. The right answer is 100%.

Why does a neighbouring country show a big distance?

Distances run between one reference point per country. Large countries like Russia, Canada or Brazil have their point deep inside, so a neighbour can be thousands of kilometres from it. The orange next door row tells you the two share a border.

How many guesses do I get?

Eight. The continent appears after three misses, the number of land neighbours after five, the first letter after six and the flag after seven.

Is it free and does it work at school?

Yes. It runs in the browser with no download or sign-up, and your stats and streak are saved in this browser only.