How to play Mapdle
Every day at local midnight, Mapdle picks one of 195 countries — every UN member state plus the Vatican and Palestine. You start with nothing but the country's outline drawn from real Natural Earth map data, and you have six guesses to name it.
- Guess 1: silhouette only. Shape nerds can finish here.
- Guess 2: the continent is revealed.
- Guess 3: a fragment of the national flag appears.
- Guess 4: you get the first letter of the largest city.
- Guess 5: a population band (e.g. "10–50 million").
- Guess 6: the country's land borders — the biggest giveaway of all.
After every wrong guess you also see how far your guess was from the answer (great-circle distance between country centers) and a compass arrow pointing from your guess toward the target, just like Worldle. A proximity percentage tells you how warm you are: 100% means you nailed it, 0% means you are literally on the opposite side of the planet.
Tips from heavy players
Open with a country near the middle of the landmass you suspect — Libya, Iran, or Brazil are popular openers because the distance + direction feedback slices the world in half quickly. Pay attention to the silhouette's orientation: a long thin vertical shape is usually Chile, Norway, Vietnam or Portugal; scattered dots mean an island nation like the Maldives, Kiribati or the Bahamas. Coastline detail matters too — fjords look very different from desert borders drawn with a ruler.
Bonus rounds, badges and practice by continent
Mapdle is more than one guess a day. The moment you name the country, four bonus rounds open up — pick its capital, spot its flag, choose a country that borders it (or its continent if it's an island), and judge which of two countries is larger by area. Every correct answer earns XP that builds your level, so a single daily puzzle quietly teaches you five facts about a place instead of one.
Your play is rewarded with achievement badges: a hole-in-one for a first-guess win, streak medals at 3, 7 and 30 days, an Island Hunter badge for nailing a tricky island nation, and the coveted All Continents and Globetrotter badges for breadth. Open the 📊 statistics panel to track your win rate, guess distribution, level and badge wall. Prefer focused study? The 🌍 region selector turns Practice mode into a single-continent drill — perfect for finally learning the small states of West Africa, the Balkans, the Caribbean or Oceania at your own pace, with zero risk to your daily streak.
Yesterday's answer & recent puzzles
Late to the party? Here are the most recent Mapdle solutions so you can check the one you missed (today's answer is never shown).
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Sign me upFrequently asked questions
What is Mapdle?
Mapdle is a free daily geography puzzle in the Wordle family. You get six tries to identify a mystery country, starting from nothing but its map silhouette. Each wrong guess unlocks a new clue — continent, flag fragment, largest-city initial, population band, and finally its land borders — and every guess is scored with the real great-circle distance and compass direction to the answer.
When does the puzzle reset?
At midnight in your device's local timezone. The rotation is seeded by the calendar date, so everyone playing on the same day gets the same country, and the full 195-country list cycles before any country repeats.
How are distance and direction calculated?
Distance is the great-circle ("as the crow flies") distance between the geographic center points of your guess and the answer, computed with the haversine formula. The arrow shows the initial compass bearing from your guess toward the answer. Since countries are big, treat both as approximate — a guess can be "800 km away" even when the two countries share a border.
Where does the map data come from?
Country outlines are generated from the public-domain Natural Earth 1:10m dataset, simplified for the web. Names, capitals, borders and areas come from the open mledoze/countries dataset, and population bands are based on ~2019 estimates — close enough for a puzzle, but treat them as estimates, not census figures. Flag images load from flagcdn; everything else, including all 195 silhouettes, is embedded in the page and works offline.
Does Mapdle track me or need an account?
No account, no tracking pixels in the game itself. Your streak, stats and today's progress are stored only in your browser's localStorage. Clearing site data resets your stats.
What's the difference between Daily and Practice mode?
Daily mode is the shared puzzle that counts toward your streak and stats. Practice mode (the 🎲 button) serves unlimited random countries with the same rules — perfect for warming up — and is tracked separately so it never touches your daily streak. Use the 🌍 region selector to drill a single continent, which is brilliant for studying a part of the world you keep missing.
What happens after I solve the puzzle?
You unlock four quick bonus rounds about that day's country — its capital, flag, a neighbouring country (or its continent for island nations), and a "which is bigger?" area question. They are just for fun and XP, they feed your level and achievement badges, and they never put your streak at risk. Open 📊 Statistics any time to see your badges, level and guess distribution.
What is Mapdle Pro and do I need it?
No — the entire game is free. Pro is an optional one-time unlock that adds the dated puzzle archive (play or replay any past Mapdle), a CSV export of your game history, a printable PDF stats sheet, and a backup file to move your streak between devices. You can try it instantly with the demo code AV-MAPDLE-DEMO.