I only got to level 11 just now, but I've played it before when I saw it linked from other blogs and I've won at least once.

The city I got closest to (35km) was Vancouver, BC, Canada. Followed by Amman, Jordan (66km). I'm so going to Gitmo.

(also, using a laptop mouse sucks)

Russia's a bitch -- if you don't know where something is, you can be thousands of miles off. As is Oceania. Everything else, I could usually come within 500K or so. But I didn't make it past 11.

I pooped out at level 10. I really need to learn the geography of Africa. And fucking Australia.

My closest was 18km from Lisbon, Portugal.

You can only win if they don't throw that Pacific Island bullshit at you.

(also, using a laptop mouse sucks)

Totally. I blame my track pad for my consistent failure to get past level 11.

16 km to Cannes, France!

(We'll forget that I flunked out at level 4.)

Ooooh, I'm glad this got linked here. I was hoping it would when I saw it at LGM.

It is quite humbling to realize that my ability to locate countries is not terrible, but my ability to locate cities within those countries is absolutely dismal.

I really need to learn the geography of Africa.

I had a "this is bullshit, I don't know where anything in Africa is" moment a couple of years ago, and started in idle moments playing an online geography quiz to learn African countries and their capitals. I figured the news would start to make sense if I knew where things were. It didn't stick 100%, but I've got most of the big countries, and can locate the little ones in West Africa someplace.

Okay, I played again and won. I nailed Ouagadougou both times I played. The Pacific is the hardest for me.

The cities in little countries are actually pretty easy, even if they're very obscure, as long as you know where the country is. If you just click somewhere in it you'll be close enough to get the points.

It'd be easier with a bigger map. I couldn't get within 100km of things where I knew exactly where they were. (Like the Statue of Liberty.)

11: Yeah, Europe is sweet. If you've got the country, the city almost doesn't matter.

I wish they wouldn't tell you the country, instead of testing your knowledge of cities you've never heard of in Russia.

There are other quizzes linked at the bottom, most of which seem to be of smaller areas with correspondingly bigger maps.

14: Would it be easier to locate those cities if you didn't know they were in Russia?

I didn't make it past level 10 either. Pacific geography kills me every time.

Wow, the North America one is fucking hard. I only got to level 7 (of 9).

Bigger map version, with a versions of the world map, us, europe, etc: here.

It's got all these really obscure places in Canada and Mexico. And for some reason it outlines US states and Canadian provinces but not Mexican states, which makes the Mexican ones even harder.

Like any real American, I totally sucked at this

I've been pissing around this for hours. Everything between Toronto and Vancouver is totally flyover country to me, apparently. And also, that's where Uruguay is? The fuck?

really obscure places in Canada and Mexico

Yeah, I feel like I should learn the Mexican states. I really only know where a few places are, and that is embarrassing.

It is a very good argument for utility, though. The places I know slam-bang well are the ones that a) I've actually been to, or b) I actually know people from.

I'd like rivers, please. At least the internationally known ones.

And also, that's where Uruguay is?

A guy from Uruguay once asked me "Do you know where Uruguay is?" I gave him the correct answer, which was "Who gives a shit?"

Rivers would help. Being able to see the small and smallish islands at all would help. I have missed Iwo Jima about 6 times now because I can't see it.

Yeah, I feel like I should learn the Mexican states.

I actually know them pretty well; cities, not so much. Which is why it was so frustrating that it kept asking for cities without even outlining the states to give me a sense of where the places I know are.

Europe is much easier. I got through all 8 levels without much trouble.

Level 10 on my first try, not too bad.

I also got 5 km from Big Ben.

5 km from Big Ben is more or less luck. Talk to me when you get 5 km from Maldives.

Level 10 on first try

Africa, Pacific Islands

Made it to 11 - would have gone to 12 if not for an errant click several thousand miles from Bogota, Columbia.

I also got 5 km from Big Ben.

Now there's a nickname I hadn't heard for w-lfs-n before...

Argh, could only finish up level 11. What really killed me were the former French colonies, as I screw up Guyana and Ghana, and some small island groups that I don't know from scuba diving (whoo hoo for successfully locating the Seychelles, Maldives and Micronesia!).

It gave me a nice string of weird cities I've actually been to in one of the Very Hard rounds, which probably saved me.

I am not so brilliant at geography, but track pad slowness and the occasional complete misfires into the middle of the ocean thanks to lag are not helping.

I couldn't pass this test to save my own life. Partly it's the size of the map (I mean, I do know where Edinburgh is, but I was off by about 200 km), but mostly it's an uncomfortable reminder of my shocking ignorance.

345k, got to level 10 and stalled out.

Also, I never realized just how close Moscow is to the western border of Russia. I really thought it was further in, dammit.

And everyone bitching about obscure Russian and Mexican cities is totally right.

I gave him the correct answer, which was "Who gives a shit?"

Awesome. We'll have you shot as an imperialist, but we'll respect you.

What really killed me were the former French colonies, as I screw up Guyana and Ghana

... neither of which is a former French colony.

12,000 km off on Suriname doesn't help anything.

I was off by about 200 km

That's close in this game. I think if you're consistently 500km off in a reasonable amount of time, you can keep going.

The US test is pretty easy, but I didn't manage to pass the last level. It asked for "Elgin," so I clicked in North Dakota, but it turned out it wanted some place in Illinois or some shit. I blame Emerson.

40: In the future, they will have been French colonies. French is on the comeback. Sarkozy's marrying an ex-model.

I did well with the strategy of seeing a city I didn't know in a country I did, and just quickly clicking the middle of the country to minimize the loss. No amount of pondering is going to bring up facts I don't know. But also, a trackpad is a terrible way to play this game. Touchscreen!

The places I know slam-bang well are the ones that a) I've actually been to

This is obviously the case for all this kind of geography stuff. Which is why it's so deeply unfair.

When it asked for Monterrey I thought that was in California. Whoops. What was I thinking of, West Coasters?

Are all the trackpad complainers on Macs? My trackpad is fine.

You were thinking of Monterey, one "r," in California.

why it's so deeply unfair.

Not of you factor in part b! I've only been to three countries, but I know a lot of folks.

In the North American Famous Places round I just got the Museum of Mummified Citizens! Centralish Mexico.

49: Ah, thanks.

I'm using a Mac, and a trackpad, and I have to say I am doing better (different maps) than when I was doing this on my Windows computer with a mouse the other day. To the extent that I'm failing, it's due to my own ignorance, the size of the map, and my difficulty with timed tests.

I also claim the excuses in 35. I know that Pretoria, South Africa, is not in the Indian Ocean.

50: I know a lot of foreigners too, but who cares where they're from? They're here now.

I can't take it b/c FF seems to block it for some reason. So I can continue to believe that I know where everything important in the world is.

54 is just trolling, and I refuse to be sucked in.

but who cares where they're from?

B., don't you even want to know where you illegal-immigrant Central American poolKoi-pond-boy is sending those remittances?

I did well with the strategy of seeing a city I didn't know in a country I did, and just quickly clicking the middle of the country to minimize the loss.

I've been using this strategy too, and it's served me well. I just took the Asia one, and it kept giving me all these extremely obscure cities in Armenia which I nevertheless did pretty well on because Armenia's a small country. I only made it to level 11 of 12, though. East Asia's a killer.

57: Actually, the guy who does the back yard is a tattooed anglo hipster boy. The owner doesn't trust the Mexicans with the Koi pond.

16: no, but I know most of the capitals in Africa etc. because I am a giant tool & we used to do this for fun in my family.

the clicking in the middle thing is failing me for Brazil, Australia, the South Pacific as a whole, and Mongolia. And I don't know that having been somewhere is even helping me.I lived in Beijing for a long time and I have stuck it in the wrong place, by 500+km, almost every time.

Yeah, definitely tattooed hipsters are more reliable than wogs.

I hated the game because it was timed and involved mousing. I'd have loved to have taken it untimed. I only got to level 3 or 4 and then got sick of it.

Latin America: also difficult.

Level 10; 360,852 points; geography IQ 110.

This puts me at the low end of the people on Unfogged who admit their score.

I lost points on both Africa and South America (and, like everyone else, obscure island nations.)

I went with the strategy that if I didn't know where in a country a city is, pick something near a coast.

Africa: very hard.

Oceania/Australia: also very hard.

I had no idea the capital city of the Falkland Islands Islas Malvinas was Stanley.

I thought of you when I saw that one.

Though I suppose the capital of the Malvinas is actually Estanley.

I don't think I've gotten past level 6, rob. It is the nature of my genius that I can get something wrong in exactly the same dramatic way in successive games.

OT bitching: I'm starting to think that I'm not going to get this draft done by tomorrow morning like I promised. Whoops.

Though I suppose the capital of the Malvinas is actually Estanley.

I was totally gonna make that joke, but figured, "Nah, too obscure." Teo: you rock.

70: There was a lot of world geography in Family Circus.

I find South Asia the hardest, followed by the fucking post-Soviet wastelands.

Teo: you rock.

Thanks. Let this be a lesson: at Unfogged, no joke is too obscure.

Speaking of post-Soviet wastelands, I recommend that everyone read Absurdistan. It even contains a joke about Absurdis (whose country is next door to Iran) being indistinguishable from Mexicans.

I tried to get Ogged to read it, but he can't be bothered.

I noticed that apart from Beijing I was asked no cities in China, which is just as well. China! Home of approximately fifteen cities with a larger population than the country I grew up in. Name three!

I got a couple of other countries in China, not that I could locate them accurately.

Cities, not countries.

You can only win if they don't throw that Pacific Island bullshit at you.

Seriously, fuck that. It's all going underwater soon, why bother?

I was doing well with the Canada quiz (within 22 km of Green Gables, for example), but after all, I'm a daughter of that home and native land, so it hardly counts at all and is almost like cheating. But anyway, I gave up out of boredom. This quiz really isn't fun for the whole family, is what I suspect, unless you come from a clan of pedants.

Thanks to too much time in Australia, I got my Pacific Islands cold. South America, not so much.

This quiz really isn't fun for the whole family, is what I suspect, unless you come from a clan of pedants.

... like so many of us here at Unfogged.

Actually the rest of my family would hate this quiz. But I like it.

fifteen cities with a larger population than the country I grew up in

America just rounding error to China.

It's all going underwater soon, why bother?

That is so fucking creepy. If the sea level rises, Tonga, for example, is just going to be gone. It doesn't have any high ground really. Samoa will be there, but everyplace anyone's ever lived, mostly, is right on the beach. It's so weird thinking of countries, with languages, disappearing.

It's all going underwater soon, why bother?

This is why I can't be bothered to find my way around Florida or the Bay Area.

It's so weird thinking of countries, with languages, disappearing.

The people will evacuate, of course, before the sea eats the countries. Presumably most of them will go to Australia and New Zealand. The languages will die later, as they assimilate.

... neither of which is a former French colony.

You're not helping, Teo!

(Upon reviewing Wikipedia, it seems that I very stupidly confused the histories of Guyana and French Guiana. Also, it seems that Ghana is damn near the only place along that stretch of the West African coast that didn't belong to France. I not only suck at the geography, I'm unlucky in my semi-educated guesses)

87: If the ice-melt really gets going, you can include NYC

If the ice-melt really gets going, you can include NYC

But, but, they have tall buildings. It'll be like Venice. Boats! Plus: a submarine-based subway! If we don't run out of money first.

Hey, for the first time ever, I think I found my school in Samoa on Google Maps! Vaipouli College, everyone.

But, but, they have tall buildings.

There's a New Yorker short story -- it's in the Wonderful Town anthology -- that is about people in NY skyscrapers watching the water rise around them. Nothing is explained, and it's written in this detached sort of tone that is at once absurd and sort of chilling. Like the Titanic in reverse, with the waters rising up rather than the ship sinking down.

92: Looks like a terrorist compound to me. Call in an airstrike.

Myself, I live on the eighth floor of a building on a high hill. We drown last.

86-91: WTF is wrong with you people? Don't you know that Al Gore is a robot a liar crazy all three?

The sad thing is that I think my house has fallen into disrepair. You can still barely see it, a rectangle southwest of the starshaped building, but the roof isn't bright tin like the other roofs. Pity.

The wiring was always fucked up -- maybe it burned down.

Samoans like to BURN SHIT DOWN.

So green!

That's very cool LB.

Canada: IA, I am an even bigger hoser than you are, as the only places I got dead on were Love, Saskatchewan (lucky guess) and The Original Tim Horton's (you know, the historic site).

As the names sounded more like Innuktituk, I kept clicking further North. Dismal, dismal.

Cool re: 92, not cool that it might have burned down.

I could also be dead wrong -- I can get pretty close to it by following the shape of the coastline, and this is the first time I've found something that looks right in the right position, but if someone's built a similar compound 15 miles away, I could easily be deceived.

Did anyone get to level 12? Is it harder than level 11?

So green!

You got your verdant tropical green, and you got your moss-covered atlantic green.

Urgh...571898. Level 11. Might have gotten to Level 12 if I hadn't clicked on Spain for all four things in France. Otherwise I got at least the country right in every case except Micronesia.

I did well with the strategy of seeing a city I didn't know in a country I did, and just quickly clicking the middle of the country to minimize the loss. No amount of pondering is going to bring up facts I don't know.

Very true, although in some places it seems more likely that the capital will be on the coast. Also, the first time they asked for a place in Mauritius was helpful the second time Mauritius came up.

Grew up on Clifton Estate, did you?

Not this one.

IA, I am an even bigger hoser than you are, as the only places I got dead on were Love, Saskatchewan (lucky guess) and The Original Tim Horton's (you know, the historic site).

By da jaysus, but now yer cookin' wit gas. Emerson says women can't really be hosers, but he's never been to Renfrew Co., Ontario.

I don't know Love, Saskatchewan, but I got cousins in Hamilton.

103: I have not found level 12 to be noticeably different than Level 11. Mix of islands (a few South Atlantics that are tough), Russian wastelands and enough small countries to bail you out (Bhutan, Djibouti & Macedonia.)

Everything in Australia is on the east coast except Perth and Ayers Rock.

I know nothing about Africa, it turns out.

Apparently Africa is that thing right in the middle of the map that you don't click on until level 7.

110: That is until you get Geraldton, Darwin, Christmas I , Cocos I or Norfolk I. Or others that I might not have hit.

Some of the answers are just plain wrong, though.

Moscow is not in fact due south of the Gulf of Finland; the capital of East Timor is located in East Timor (hint: the half of New Guinea, a large island, that is not coloured the same as Indonesia) and not on some flyspeck in the middle of the indonesian archepelago. I gave up after that.

Some of the answers are just plain wrong, though.

Hm. I noticed that it seemed to be locating DC somewhere around Edison, NJ, but I thought maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me/not enough coffee. Now I wonder.

New York will not be underwater, because the city and state have the money to build dams. Think The Netherlands, not Venice.

The real reason the small island nations are fucked is poverty. And really they are no more fucked than Bangladesh.

The link in 85 is racist.

113: No. East Timor is located on the eastern half of Timor. An island that is of a size to show up as a flyspeck on the scale of the map in the exact place it shows up. And Moscow never showed up directly south of the Gulf of Finland for me.

113 That would be Papua New Guinea.
This thing's been on Facebook for ages. I find that I don't know much about obscure US cities (which is about as much as I need to know), and western Africa consistently remains a puzzle. Also the Caribbean has too many islands.

I used to think the same as 113 (I'm not even sure how I ever learned I had it wrong). I'm surprised I'm not the only one to make this mistake.

I just figured out why: Indonesia annexed parts of Timor _and_ parts of New Guinea. Bad Indonesia.

Geraldton

Holy crap. This is a pretty small town in an already unpopulated state (outside Perth, that is). They're asking about cities that aren't capitals and have 30,000 people? Fuck that noise. At least Darwin is a state capital.

(This really struck me because I know Australian cities pretty well, so long as they're state capitals or major secondary cities like Cairns or Coober Pedy (which covers about all freestanding cities w/populations over 100,000), and Geraldton didn't ring a single bell. Not even a tiny triangle.)

121: Yes. I go to Perth on business and yet had no idea about Geraldton. I forgot that it also did ask Coober Pedy once.

I thought maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me

With things like DC, I assumed my mental map was shortening distances based on the importance of regions to me. And based on a few corrections above, this might be the right interpretation.

There are definitely errors in the placement of certain sites, although at the world-wide scale it can be hard to tell.

Level 11, IQ 121, Score 463,411. Though it's sad to think how much better I would have done when I was 12. I mixed up all my Indian island chains, I put Cameroon on the wrong side of Nigeria, I swapped Guatamala and Honduras, and I swapped Birsbane with Adelaide. But those pacific island questions, anything small and carribean, and the small cities in large countries (China, Canada, Australia) are just damn hard.

watching the video in 85 has made me feel strange

Teo, I am impressed that you got through level 6 on North America. I was just guessing blind if it wasn't a large island. I barely got half what the next level required. (As opposed to level 11 on the world where I was pretty close.)

I was kind of lucky in that I just happened to know some of the more obscure US places it gave me. One was Aztec Ruins National Monument. Another was The Original Starbucks (not obscure so much as ridiculous). The Canadian ones were hard, and the Mexican ones were impossible, especially since it didn't give the state boundaries that I could have used to orient myself.

Map's too frigging small. And I have a fairly large screen. Tho' I did nail one of my father's archaeological sites within 16 kms - comes of a childhood of being shown a map of [[redacted]] and asked where Daddy was...

However, I missed Boston by miles, not because I do not know my homeland, but because I couldn't see fucking Massachusetts on the map.

Finally broke through on the North America one. Goes to level 9 (and the last level is relatively easy, or at least it mixes in easy with the impossible ones.) Historical Events had some doozies. (And the freaking "CNN Center" in Atlanta was a famous site!)

1) The Mercator projection makes it harder to pinpoint places the further you get from the equator.
2) I call bullshit on the nicknames in the USA game.
3) Kilometers? Please. Everyone knows the metric system is the work of the devil.

Emerson says women can't really be hosers

In Taiwan they're way stricter with the laydeez.

My Mum's from Hamilton. My Xmas symbols include seeing the flame at Stelco at night, from the bridge on the way into town.

I call bullshit on the nicknames in the USA game.

Seriously. Does anyone actually call Memphis "The Bluff City"?

The Latin America game has a round with clues, where you have to figure out what the place is, then pinpoint it. Unbelievably hard.

The Africa game has a round where the cities are identified by the names of their soccer teams. Luckily that one's a bonus round where you don't have to hit a target number of points to go on.

134.2 Is that what that was? I had no idea what I was looking at. But now that you say it - makes sense.

For a larger map, see 19.

Level 10, 378872 points, IQ 112. But I can do better.

Hit Munich right on the nose - zero kilometers off! Must celebrate with appropriate beverage!

I keep failing to complete level 11 by about 5000 points. Damn it.