How to play

Geodar is a geography game played on a globe. Each round hides one country behind five clues. The clues start hard and get easier, and the fewer you need, the more you score. There's no clock, and nothing on the screen nudges you toward the answer. What you know is the whole game.

A round

1. 1Read the clue. Every country has five. The first is the hardest. The fifth names the country and says where it is.
2. 2Turn the globe. Drag it until the crosshair in the middle sits on the country you think it is. The LOCK button names the country you're aiming at, so you always know what you're about to lock. Over open sea there's nothing to lock.
3. 3Press LOCK. A ring closes on the crosshair, and then you find out.

If you're right

You score by the clue you were on: 5 points on the first clue, down to 1 point on the fifth.

If you're wrong

You're told how far off you were: the distance from your crosshair to the nearest edge of the right country, in kilometres. A miss of less than 60 km just reads NEXT DOOR. That distance is the only hint you get. Then the next clue opens, and it's about the same country.

The country you tried stays marked on the globe, and you can't lock the same one twice in a round. Miss on the fifth clue and the round is over: you score 0 and the country is shown.

After every round

Found or not, the globe turns to the country and marks the place its story is about. A card shows all five clues, including the ones you never needed, and one thing worth knowing about the country.

Today's five

Every day has five countries, and they're the same five for everyone. They run from easy to hard: two that most people have heard of, two that take more thought and one hard one to finish. Five countries at up to 5 points each makes a day out of 25.

A new day opens at 12:00 UTC, the same moment everywhere in the world. You can leave a day half way through and come back: it picks up where you stopped.

Missed a day? Every past day stays playable in the archive. Your streak counts the days in a row you finished on the day itself, so a day played later from the archive is for fun and doesn't add to it.

The endless run

When five countries aren't enough, the endless run keeps them coming. The rounds work the same way, but instead of points you have a bank of spare clues.

• You start with 10 spare clues.
• Every wrong lock burns one.
• Find a country on its first clue and you win one back. The bank never holds more than 12.
• With none left you're still alive, but the next wrong lock ends the run.
• Your score is the number of countries you found.

A run starts gently and gets harder, with an easy country now and then to give you a chance at winning a spare back. Nothing repeats within one run, and a run never asks any of today's countries, so it can't spoil the day. You can stop whenever you like and keep what you found, and a run you leave unfinished waits for you.

Finding your way around the globe

• Turn it by dragging. On a keyboard the arrow keys turn it and Enter locks.
• Zoom with the plus and minus buttons, a pinch, the mouse wheel, or the + and - keys. Small countries need a closer look.
• The mini-map in the corner is a flat map of the whole world with a mark where your crosshair is. Tap or drag it and the globe turns to that spot.
• Zoomed out, the globe names the continents, so you know which side of the world you're looking at.
• Where you start is never a hint. The first round opens on a view of the whole world, and each later one where the last ended.
• The clue tabs let you look back at the clues you've already opened.

Your atlas

Every country you find goes into your atlas, with its fact and the place its story happens. The ones you haven't found yet stay blank until you do.

Sharing without spoilers

When a day is done you can share how it went. There's a row for each country: a square for every wrong lock, coloured by how far off it was, then 🎯 if you found it or ❌ if you ran out of clues. It never names a country or quotes a clue, so it's safe to post before your friends have played.

The colours: 🟦 2,000 km off or more, 🟨 800 km off or more, 🟧 250 km off or more, 🟥 closer than 250 km.

A run is shared as its one number.

Tips

• A wrong lock isn't wasted. It costs you a point, but it buys a distance, and a distance rules out most of the world.
• The distance runs to the nearest edge of the country, not its middle. A big country can be a short way from places that are nowhere near its capital.
• Zoom in before you lock a small country. Read the LOCK button first: it names exactly what you're about to lock.
• Read the clue twice. Most of them hold more than one fact.
• In a run, the first clue is where spares come from. A confident first guess is the only way to win one back.

Questions

Is it free? Do I need an account?

It's free, and there's no account to make. The game remembers you with a cookie, so your streak and your atlas are there when you come back in the same browser. The privacy page says exactly what's kept, and how to delete it.

Can I start again?

Yes. In the game, open Settings and choose Delete my data. It asks you to confirm, then removes your days, your runs, your streak and your atlas and clears the cookie, so the next time you play you're a new player. It can't be undone.

When does a new day start?

At 12:00 UTC, every day, for everyone at once.

Does everyone get the same countries?

In the day's five, yes. An endless run is different every time.

Why isn't every country in the game?

The game asks about 191 countries at the moment, and more are added as their clues are written and checked. A few are too small to aim at on the globe, such as Vatican City and Monaco. The full list is on the countries page.

The LOCK button names the wrong country. What do I do?

Nudge the globe or zoom in until it names the one you mean. The game locks whatever the button says, and just off a coast it takes the nearest shore, so islands and narrow countries can still be picked.

Where can I see a day's answers?

On the past answers page, once the day has closed. A day's countries are never published while it's still being played.

Is looking things up cheating?

Nobody can stop you, and there's nothing to win but the score. The fun is in finding out what you already knew.

I think a clue is wrong.

Tell us through support@playgeodar.com, and say which country and which line. How we handle mistakes.