Place & Name: find it, then name it
The map shows nothing but land, water, streets and buildings, on a pale background: no names, no borders, not even the countries. Your goal is a list, such as every urban unit of more than 10 million people in the world, or the regions of Italy. Click where one of them is, then type its name.
How to play
- Read the goal at the top of the panel: the zone and the list, for example World · Urban units · more than 10 million. The counter shows how many you have found.
- Click on the map where you think a place of the list is. A box opens.
- Type its name and press Enter. If the name belongs to the list and your click was in the right place, the place turns green and its name appears.
- Go on until the list is complete, or give up to see what you missed. Each missing place is listed; click a name to fly to it.
What counts as right
- The place: for a country, a region or any territory, your click must fall inside it, or within 3 km of its border. For a city, it must fall near its centre: within 50 km, more for the largest cities, whose margin grows with their area.
- The name: the same rules as in Name. Accents, capitals, hyphens and spaces do not count, "St" reads as "Saint", and every language of the site is accepted.
- The messages tell you what went wrong: the right name in the wrong place, a place you have already found, or a name that is not in the list.
Build your goal
- Zone
- The whole world, a continent, a country, any of its divisions, or your own selection drawn on the map.
- List
- Countries, the divisions of any level (regions, departments, states, counties, provinces), or cities at one definition: municipalities, urban units, metro areas or dense centres.
- Criteria
- A minimum or maximum population, area or density: cities of more than 1 million, countries smaller than 50,000 km², districts denser than 1,000 people per km².
Leave the goal open and one is drawn for you: the countries of a continent, the largest cities of the world, or the first-level divisions of a well-known country.
An example: the world's 10-million cities
With urban units, our list of the world holds 30 cities of more than 10 million people. The largest is Shanghai; then come Jakarta, Seoul, Manila, Cairo, Shenzhen, Dhaka, Kolkata, Beijing and Bangkok. Africa has four: Cairo, Kinshasa, Lagos and Luanda. Bogotá closes the list at 10.0 million. The figures follow the national statistics where they define urban units (INSEE for Paris, the Census Bureau for New York) and the GHSL elsewhere, with the same rule of 200 m between buildings.
Tips
- Look for the grey patches. Even with no names, large cities stand out as dense grey patches of streets and buildings when you zoom in.
- Follow the water. Coasts, deltas and great rivers carry most of the world's big cities.
- No borders, no help. For territories, picture the borders before you click: a click 5 km on the wrong side does not count.
Every game can be shared: the link holds the same goal, so a friend plays exactly your list and sees your score.