Country Clues: a daily country guessing game
Country Clues is a free daily geography game from Read the World, built from Wikipedia. There is one mystery country every day and you get eight guesses to find it. You start with one sentence from its Wikipedia article, with the country's name blacked out. Every wrong guess unlocks another sentence, each easier than the last.
Every guess, right or wrong, also shows how it compares with the answer: the continent, population, land area and Readers (how many people read its English Wikipedia article that day), plus how far away the mystery country is and in which direction.
How to play Country Clues
- Read the blacked-out sentence from the mystery country's Wikipedia article.
- Guess any country. A wrong guess unlocks the next sentence.
- Read the clues: the continent, and arrows for population, area and Wikipedia readers. ↑ means the mystery country's figure is higher, ↓ lower. Colours show how close you are.
- Use the distance and the compass direction to head the right way.
- Find the country in eight guesses or fewer. A new mystery country comes out every day at 00:00 UTC.
More daily games: guess the country from what it read on Wikipedia in Read the World, or pin yesterday's events on a map in Yesterday on Earth.
Frequently asked questions
What is Country Clues?
Country Clues is a free daily country guessing game built from Wikipedia. There is one mystery country a day and you have eight guesses. You start with a sentence from its Wikipedia article with the name blacked out, and every wrong guess unlocks another, easier one. Each guess also tells you how it compares with the answer: the continent, the population, the land area and how many people read its Wikipedia article, plus the distance and compass direction.
How do the clues work?
Read the blacked-out Wikipedia sentence first: the opening clues are the hardest, and the last one is usually the start of the article. Then each number clue shows an arrow: ↑ means the mystery country's figure is higher than your guess, ↓ means lower and = means about the same. Colours tell you how close you are.
What does Readers mean?
Readers is how many people read a country's English Wikipedia article on one day, two days before the puzzle (the day is shown in the game). It counts human readers only, from Wikimedia's public pageview statistics. When a country is in the news its readers jump, so the arrow is a hint about what the world is reading as well as how big the country is.
Why eight guesses?
Eight guesses unlock all eight Wikipedia clues, and with the number clues and the compass that is enough to close in on any country, but still tight enough that reading the first clue carefully matters.
Where does the country data come from?
Area, continent and capital coordinates come from the open mledoze/countries dataset (ODbL). Population comes from the World Bank World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0). The written clues are sentences from the introduction of each country's English Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0), and Readers come from Wikimedia pageviews (CC0). Both are saved once a day, so every player gets the same clues.
Is Country Clues free?
Yes. It is free, needs no account, and keeps your streak and stats on your device. A free account adds leaderboards and private friend groups. It is part of Read the World, alongside Yesterday on Earth.