Worldle Is Like Wordle, But For Geography (cnet.com) 44
Worldle, the latest spinoff of the viral online word game Wordle, gives players six chances to guess a country outlined in black. CNET reports: As with Wordle, which was recently purchased by The New York Times, Worldle flashes green, gray and yellow squares. The difference is, here the more green squares you see the closer you are geographically to the right nation. Worldle also shows the distance in kilometers your guess was to the actual location. (You can change that measurement to miles in the Settings section, or even hide the country image for more of a challenge.)
Tough one (Score:5, Funny)
That's going to be a tough one for Americans.
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True, a fair number wouldn't know the closest communities to the internal borders let alone other countries. Or in other words a Bosnywashout.
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Re: Tough one (Score:1)
Re:Tough one (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing about Americans being bad at geography may be overblown. There are too many stories of Europeans thinking they can tour NYC and Disney World in one day for me to accept that we're any worse than they are. What's made some of the Worldles hard for this American is the fact that the maps have changed since I was a youth. Some of these countries didn't exist or were provinces of larger countries that broke up. Their shapes are not known to me for that reason.
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Most things about 'Americans' are out of context or just plain wrong.
Most of the world really suffers on knowledge of other countries.
The USA is a huge population over a vast land area. Some areas are really intelligent and educated. Others, not so much. Europe is split into countries, whereas the USA is one big blob. Germany is in Europe, but so are Greece, Romania, Croatia..
Even things like 'for-profit' healthcare are not as true as people perceive. Most hospitals and what not in the USA are non-profit.
Th
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Those geography mistakes are a matter of not correctly understanding scale, not a complete lack of knowledge. Just as an anecdote, I saw a video of a bunch of (presumably) ordinary Brits trying to fill in the names of US states on a map, and most of them got a lot of them right. Whereas plenty of Americans can't even find Europe (or even the US) on a world map.
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The thing about Americans being bad at geography may be overblown. There are too many stories of Europeans thinking they can tour NYC and Disney World in one day for me to accept that we're any worse than they are.
Really? You are equating someone who has an underappreciation for the size of Disney World to someone who doesn't know what continent Somalia is on?
Let's address that. Someone who underestimates the size of Disney World, or how much time it will take to tour New York, likely still knows where those places actually are. And underestimating the size of Disney World may also simply be the inability to comprehend wasting that much money and resources on something that excessively, bombastically, Americanly l
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The thing about Americans being bad at geography may be overblown. There are too many stories of Europeans thinking they can tour NYC and Disney World in one day for me to accept that we're any worse than they are.
Really? You are equating someone who has an underappreciation for the size of Disney World to someone who doesn't know what continent Somalia is on?
Let's address that. Someone who underestimates the size of Disney World, or how much time it will take to tour New York, likely still knows where those places actually are. And underestimating the size of Disney World may also simply be the inability to comprehend wasting that much money and resources on something that excessively, bombastically, Americanly large.
Americans, on the other hand, simply have world blinders on. Who cares about the world because 'Merca. Which is why the president literally has to make Ukraine warnings daily. It's so that the idea there is a problem in another part of the world can percolate through the collective consciousness long enough to prod people out of their bi-party knife fights and twig onto the concept that other places in the world actually exist.
No, it's about the distance between NYC (New York, NY) and Disney World (Orlando, FL), which depending on your mode of travel, is over 1,000mi (over 1,600km).
Given your whole long tirade about their individual sizes and not the distance between then, I can only guess "you're one of them".
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True. I have German cousins that came to visit, and were expecting to "see the US" in a month long vacation. And, one of them is a teacher! I had to help manage their expectations. FWIW, I lived in Germany for several years and had a part time job escorting tours...it was great fun away from my day job in the USAF.
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Seeing the US in a month is really not that ridiculous if you're just going to hit big cities and signature national parks. Let's be honest. They won't return to Europe and be hit with, "What do you mean, you didn't visit Nebraska?". I was going to make a list of the lower-48 states you could skip; but I think I'll just offend the one.
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Sorry, no. I've been to 49 of them, and lived in about ten. You narrowed down to the continental US, but Alaska and Hawaii are must see places. At a minimum, you need to visit...
Washington DC, LA, NYC, Vegas, Chicago, San Fran., Miami, Boston, Nashville, New Orleans, Key West,...and probably others. There are different things to see and do in each, and many you could easily spend a week or more exploring. I'd like to add a lot more, not to mention...
Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Tahoe, Outer Banks, Great
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I think this depends a lot on what you mean by "seeing the US". I personally felt like one day was not enough to see the Metropolitan museum, and that's just *one thing* in one city. OTOH, plenty of people would spend a day or two in New York, same for LA, skip Chicago, Drive through various regions for that month making stops on a whim, and I think they've legit "seen the US".
If you have to leave the 48, see Chicago and see New Orleans to see the US, then by that definition I haven't seen the US and I'
Re: Tough one (Score:2)
Yeah...unlike the Europeans who can somehow always find their way into someone else's pocket for some money.
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What is the point of cheating at a game like this?
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I don't think fazig is suggesting cheating. I think fazig is suggesting that there's no need to have any understanding of geography to win at this game; you can simply memorize the shapes of the countries without every developing an understanding of where they are in relation to each other.
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Ah I see, by "image recognition" I thought they meant something like google image search. Memorizing the shapes of all the countries would be much harder than just learning enough geography to make good guesses, IMO.
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After all you're only presented with a silhouette that's defined by boarders that are more or less arbitrarily drawn lines that may or may not line up with geological and or cultural data. There's no geographical information that could help you narrow it down other than a distance and direction if you guess it wrong.
In other words, I'm being pedantic here, pointing out that calling this "geography" is perhaps a bit too generous if yo
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It's definitely geography. If you guess Botswana, and it's 4000 miles away, that won't do you any good if you don't know where Botswana is and some countries that might be about 4000 miles away from it.
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I get it, but to be fair, I went to public school in Detroit back in the 60s, and we had to memorize the names of every state, and every country in 5th grade geography.
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Unplayable (Score:2, Flamebait)
The screen is blank unless you allow cookies. Inexcusable.
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I know better (Score:2)
Bad name (Score:3)
Yeah...it's. It like this is going to lead to confusion and a lawsuit or anything.
Limited (Score:4, Insightful)
With only 200 countries to choose from, this seems like a game that quickly ceases being fun as you start to recognize countries.
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With only 200 countries to choose from, this seems like a game that quickly ceases being fun as you start to recognize countries.
When the fun stops, stop.
You come out with a knowledge of the outline shapes of countries, which might be useful. umm. in a re-entry situation (for islands anyway). Or a school quiz.
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You’re complaining that the game will not be fun once it succeeds at its educational outcomes? The fact that it builds you up and then forces you to look elsewhere for more seems like a win to me, not a fail, and I would expect that the world would be a better place if more people are able to use a newfound knowledge of geography to better understand the world and its interconnectedness.
Taiwan (Score:2)
I wonder if Taiwan will be included.
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On the other hand, England is not. (According to Worldle.)
I'm... (Score:2)
I'm in the control group.
Guyana.. who knew! (Score:2)
It's really hard. Guyana. Didn't know that one! Basically either you know it or you are clueless and it devolves to geographical binary search.
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I had narrowed it down to the northern coast of South America and was fairly confident for my final guess that it was "one of those Guinea countries", except I can't keep Guinea, French Guinea, and Guyana straight. I picked the wrong one.
And before anyone points out that I forgot about Equatorial Guinea or Papua New Guinea in that list of "Guinea"-like countries I get confused, I didn't. I can actually keep EG and PNG straight. I had a family member who used to travel to EG for work on a regular basis, and
I don't play Wordle (Score:2)
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For anyone not getting the reference: https://xkcd.com/2576/ [xkcd.com]
I'mle checkingle outle nowle (Score:2)
Dole wele reallyle needle everyle wordlele clonele tole endle inle 'le'le?
Turdle (Score:2)
Turdle is like wordle, but for turds. Nothing but copycats everywhere.
"Typical" American here (Score:1)
I didn't do bad on 02-15-22's country. Guyana in 3 guesses. At first glance I thought "Thailand" while busy at work.
I had to really push my geographical memory though. I'm admittedly more familiar with European countries, most of Asia, some of Africa, and most of the "larger countries of Central and South America. I almost resorted to Google. I had watched Yakko's "Countries of the World" song from Animaniacs a lot as a child and again recently with my 8 year old.
So maybe I'm not a "typical" American. A "we