How to play Find the City
Play Find the City
The rules
- Find the hidden city in six guesses.
- Every guess is a city picked from the list.
- After each guess you see the distance to the hidden city in kilometres and an arrow that points from your guess toward it. North is up.
- After each wrong guess, one clue opens, in this order: region, population, number of letters in the name, country, first letter.
- If the sixth guess is wrong, the board shows the answer.
How to play here
- Type at least two letters of a city name. Suggestions show under the box, the biggest cities first.
- Tap a suggestion, or use the Up and Down arrow keys and press Enter. Enter alone picks the first suggestion.
- Your guesses are listed newest first, with the distance and the arrow.
Difficulty levels
| Level |
The city population of the hidden city |
| Easy |
2 million people or more |
| Medium |
500,000 to 2 million |
| Hard |
150,000 to 500,000 |
| Expert |
fewer than 150,000 |
Strategy
- Start big and central: a well-known city near the middle of a continent tells you a lot with its arrow.
- Use two arrows: the hidden city is where the lines from two guesses cross.
- Read the clues together: region plus population plus the number of letters can leave only a few names.
FAQ
- How is the level decided?
- By the city population of the hidden city: the people who live in the city itself, not in its whole metropolitan area (Paris counts about 2.1 million). Easy cities have 2 million people or more, medium 500,000 or more, hard 150,000 or more, and expert cities are smaller.
- Which cities can I guess?
- Any city in the list, at every level: about 5,800 cities around the world with 100,000 people or more. Pick your guess from the suggestions under the box.
- How are distance and direction measured?
- The distance is the great-circle distance between the two cities, in kilometres. The arrow shows the direction you would set off in from your guess to reach the hidden city, to the nearest of 8 compass points.
- Is there a new city every day?
- Yes. At each level a city does not come back until every city of that level was played: after 208 days at easy, 952 at medium, 2,679 at hard and 1,972 at expert. Earlier cities are in the archive.
- Where does the city data come from?
- From GeoNames and Wikidata.
- Do I need an account to play?
- No. You play right in your browser, with no sign-up and no cookies. Your progress is saved in your browser.
