A country's outline appears on screen. Type your guess: if it is wrong, you will see how far away and in which direction the mystery country lies. You have six tries.
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How to use the Guess the Country by Shape
Choose Daily country or Unlimited. The outline of the mystery country appears.
Type a country name and pick it from the suggestions, then press Guess.
Read the hints: the distance between the two countries, an arrow toward the answer and a proximity score.
Use the arrow to zero in. Neighbouring countries often give a short distance and a high percentage.
Solve it within six guesses, then see it on the world map and copy your result.
How to read the hints
Hint
What it tells you
Example (answer Portugal, guess Italy)
Distance
Great-circle distance between the centres of the two countries
Roughly 1,750 km (1,090 mi)
Arrow
The direction you would travel from your guess to reach the answer
Pointing west
Proximity
100% minus the distance as a share of 20,000 km (half the Earth's circumference)
About 91%
The proximity formula is proximity = (1 − distance ÷ 20,037.5 km) × 100, rounded to the nearest whole percent. Distance uses the haversine formula on a sphere with radius 6,371 km.
Tips for recognising country shapes
Look for coastlines. A long, smooth edge is often a desert border drawn with a ruler (Egypt, Libya, much of the Sahara), while a jagged edge is usually a coastline or a river.
Count the pieces. Several islands point to places like Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand or the United Kingdom.
Watch for holes. A hole inside the outline means a whole country sits inside it: South Africa surrounds Lesotho, and Italy surrounds San Marino and Vatican City.
Use your first guess wisely. Guessing a large, central country such as Kazakhstan, Chad or Brazil gives a useful direction even if it is wrong.
Remember long and thin shapes. Chile, Norway, Malawi, Vietnam and Panama are much longer than they are wide.
Frequently asked questions
How does the country shape game work?
It is a Worldle-style geography puzzle. You see the outline of a country, with no map around it, and have six guesses to name it. After each wrong guess the game shows how far your guess is from the mystery country, an arrow pointing toward it and a proximity percentage.
How is the distance calculated?
The game finds the geographic centre of the main landmass of each country and measures the great-circle distance between the two centres with the haversine formula, using an Earth radius of 6,371 km. Neighbouring countries can therefore show a few hundred kilometres even though they share a border.
What does the proximity percentage mean?
Proximity is 100% minus the distance as a share of the largest possible distance on Earth (about 20,000 km, half the circumference). A guess on the exact opposite side of the planet scores 0%, a neighbour usually scores above 90%, and the right answer scores 100%.
Why do some countries look different from a map?
Each outline is drawn on its own projection centred on that country, so it is not stretched like countries near the poles on a world map. Far-away overseas territories and remote islands are left out of the silhouette, so France appears without French Guiana and the United States shows only the lower 48 states.
Which countries can be the answer?
About 160 independent countries with recognisable outlines can come up. Very small countries and island states are left out because their outlines are hard to recognise, but you can still type any country or territory on the map as a guess.
Is there a new puzzle every day?
Yes. The daily country changes at midnight in your local time and is the same for everyone. Unlimited mode lets you play as many random countries as you like, with separate statistics.
Does it work offline?
The game downloads a public world map file (Natural Earth data from the world-atlas package) the first time you play. After that the game runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Are all the tools on FreeToolCabin tested for quality and accuracy?
Yes! Every tool on our site undergoes automated Q/A testing in real browser environments to ensure high precision, correct output, and zero errors. If you happen to spot a bug or have a suggestion, please contact us at [email protected] and our team will review it right away.