Geography quiz
Country Outline Quiz — Guess the Country by Its Shape
One true-projection silhouette, one search box, six guesses — every miss tells you how far and which way. Baked from Natural Earth boundaries at build time; the same open data as every GlobeVS tool.
Five silhouettes. Six guesses each.
A country's true outline is on the table — guess it by name from the full country list. Every wrong guess pays a hint: how far you are, which way to look, and how hot you are. No options to eliminate, just the shape and your memory of the map.
How this tool works
- Press start — the quiz deals five countries and shows you one true-projection silhouette at a time, straight from the same Natural Earth boundary data every GlobeVS tool computes with.
- Guess freely with the country search box — every country in the pool is a legal guess, there are no multiple-choice options to eliminate.
- Every wrong guess pays a hint: the great-circle distance from your guess to the target, an arrow pointing where to look (the initial bearing, north = up), and a proximity percentage that heats up as you close in — guessing the country itself reads 100%, the opposite side of the planet reads 0%.
- You get six wrong guesses per country before it is revealed; a repeat guess is marked but costs nothing. Each reveal brings the flag, the continent, the capital and the area, with a link into the country data.
Data & method
The silhouettes are baked at build time from the same committed Natural Earth 1:110m country boundaries (public domain) every GlobeVS tool uses: rings crossing the antimeridian are split (Russia, Fiji and Antarctica render as real shapes, never map-spanning streaks), projected with the plain equirectangular (plate carrée) projection, and normalized into a 100×100 box that preserves each country's true aspect ratio. All 174 silhouettes ship as one ~100 KB JSON file — one request, cached for the whole session, no runtime projection math and no third-party images. The hint math runs on the shared geo-core computation core: great-circle centroid distances and initial bearings from the same functions the distance tool answers with, so a number you see here is the number every other surface computes. The game itself is a JavaScript enhancement — without it you can still read the guide, the data note and the FAQ on this page, and the start panel above shows exactly what a game deals.
Sources
Embed this tool
Add the country outline quiz to your own site: paste the snippet below into your HTML and it loads the same interactive quiz inside an iframe, with a small non-removable “Powered by” attribution link back to this page. The embed is available in English.
<iframe src="https://globevs.com/embed/outline-quiz" width="800" height="600" title="Country Outline Quiz — GlobeVS" loading="lazy" style="border:0;max-width:100%" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups"></iframe>FAQ
Why the equirectangular projection for the silhouettes?
Because it is honest about shape without a projection agenda. The silhouettes are baked at build time from Natural Earth's degree geometry with the plain plate carrée projection — the same flat basis as the site's blank-map coloring tool. Unlike the Mercator projection, which inflates high-latitude countries by up to several times (the distortion the true-size comparison tool exists to correct), equirectangular keeps every degree the same size in both directions, so each country's outline keeps its true aspect ratio inside its 100×100 box.
How are the hints after a wrong guess computed?
Three numbers, all from the great-circle geometry of the country centroids. Distance: the shortest path over the Earth's surface, in kilometres. Direction: the initial bearing from your guess to the target (the arrow; north is up). Proximity: the distance negatively mapped over half of the Earth's circumference — an exact hit reads 100%, a guess at the antipode (the exact opposite side of the planet) reads 0%, and everything in between is linear. You get 6 wrong guesses per country, and repeating a guess is free.
Which countries are in the pool?
174 of the 176 countries in the dataset — every one that carries a valid ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code. The two exceptions are N. Cyprus and Somaliland: the boundary dataset lists them as country-like features, but they have no ISO code, so the reveal step could not show their flag (the same rule the flag quiz documents). Each game deals 5 of them at random; the seed in the address bar (?round=…) reproduces the exact same five countries for anyone you share the link with.
How does this relate to the coloring map and the metric maps?
They are three different jobs on one dataset. The World Map Coloring tool is for making something (color a blank map, export it); the metric maps color countries by an indicator's value; this quiz is for recognizing a country from nothing but its true projected shape. And when a silhouette surprises you — Canada looks smaller than you think, France turns out to span the Atlantic — that is the same Mercator-vs-reality lesson the true-size tool teaches interactively.
Where is my best score stored?
Only in your own browser, in localStorage — no account, no server, nothing leaves your device. Clearing the site's data resets it. A game is 5 countries; guessing one on the first try or within the 6 wrong guesses counts as solved, and the end screen shows which of them you hit.
Related
Prefer flags? The Flag Quiz names the country behind ten flags, lookalikes included →
The Capital Quiz asks for ten capitals — the globe flies to every answer →
Open any two countries side by side in the Country Compare tool →
Curious why a silhouette looked bigger than you thought? See the countries at their true size →