What's new
Recent improvements to the game, newest first.
August 1, 2026
Rivers, mountains, deserts — and clues about where a country actually is
Fifty-one new clues, and most of them are about the map rather than about facts you either know or don't. Rivers: the Danube, the Nile, the Mekong, the Amazon and six more, counting the countries a river borders as well as the ones it runs through. Mountain ranges: the Andes, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Carpathians, the Caucasus. The Sahara. Six more seas including the North Sea, the Adriatic and the Gulf of Guinea, and — kept separate on purpose, because the game counts their shores as landlocked — the Caspian, Lake Chad and Lake Tanganyika. There are also clues about where a country sits and how far it reaches: whether it lies entirely within the tropics, whether it reaches further north than 45°N, whether it stretches more than 10 or 20 degrees of latitude, and whether it lies further north than mainland France, Japan or Egypt. Those last ones need no facts at all, only a mental picture of the map, which is the point. Reach is measured over a country's territory in its own part of the world, so France ends at the Pyrenees rather than in South America — the clue is meant to be answerable from the map in your head. Four new flag clues too (a cross, a sun, an animal, a triangle), and "is an archipelago" finally gives the island clue a sibling.
Browse the clue pool →August 1, 2026
Eleven new clues about a country's neighbours
The game already knew every land border in the world and had barely asked anything about them. It now does: borders a landlocked country, borders a member of the EU or NATO, borders a country more than ten times its size, every country it borders has a coastline, every one has a higher peak. A few are the kind of fact you keep — only eight countries have more people than all their neighbours put together, and only six have more land borders than any other country in their region, one of which is Guatemala. A board still gets at most one of these, so no puzzle asks you to trace the map three times over.
Browse the clue pool →July 26, 2026
Hard now means a harder puzzle, not a country you've never heard of
Difficulty used to be decided mostly by how obscure the answer was, which had a strange side effect: a famous country could never be the answer to a hard puzzle, and an obscure one could never be the answer to an easy one. Hard had settled into the same seventy-odd countries, and the Bahamas and Equatorial Guinea between them answered one hard puzzle in seven. Difficulty now comes from the board — how much the clues demand and how crowded the near misses are — so France, India and Switzerland can all be hard puzzles, and the answer pool for hard is nearly twice the size. Easy still promises an answer you can name.
How difficulty works →July 26, 2026
New clues: seas, comparisons, and what the neighbours are like
Three kinds of clue that weren't there before. Seas and gulfs — a Mediterranean coastline, a Red Sea coastline, a coastline on the Caribbean — because which water a country touches is how most of us picture the map. Comparisons against countries you can size in your head: larger than France, more people than Spain, a higher peak than anywhere in Japan. And clues about a country's neighbours rather than the country itself: borders a monarchy, borders a country in a different region, every country it borders is larger than it. Meanwhile twenty-one clues left the pool for good — mostly "begins with the letter X" spelling clues, plus four so broad they matched three-quarters of the world and barely narrowed anything.
Browse the clue pool →July 26, 2026
All three clues now do real work — and answers repeat far less
Two of the three clues used to be enough to leave just two candidates on two out of three easy boards, which meant the third circle was decoration and the last step was a coin flip. Every board now keeps at least three candidates alive until the third clue lands. Every board also has at least one clue that tells you roughly where in the world you are, so no puzzle is three pieces of trivia with no way in. And the daily now looks back a month before choosing an answer: a country answering three times in one week used to happen most weeks, and now happens about one week in twenty.
Play today's daily →July 25, 2026
The how-to-play tour fits on one screen, and the board counts its own regions
On a phone the tour filled the first screenful with the diagram and pushed everything else below the fold — so you were reading about circles you had scrolled away from, and the three clues being explained were nowhere in sight. Every step now fits on screen at once: the sentence, the clues and the button stay put while the board takes the space that is left, in a column on a phone and side by side on anything wider (including a phone held sideways). The steps say the same things in fewer words, there is a progress bar and a Back link, and the walkthrough matches the real game more closely. The per-region counts changed too, everywhere: the huge faint numeral hiding behind each cluster of dots is now a small counter beside it, so you can actually read how many countries sit in a region — the hint's fourth circle included.
Take the tour →July 24, 2026
Counting page views, and what that means for you
The game's own counters record no page addresses at all, so there was no way to tell which countries and clues people actually read, or how anyone found the site. It now uses Vercel Web Analytics for that, which is a change worth telling you about because it is a third party. It sets no cookie, stores nothing on your device, builds no profile and follows you nowhere else — a visit is counted with a one-way hash that is thrown away and rotated every day. And as with everything else here, Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control switch it off entirely: the script is never even loaded. The privacy policy has the full detail.
Read the privacy policy →July 24, 2026
A few anonymous counters, and a promise about them
The game now counts things like how often a hard puzzle gets solved, so difficulty and scoring can be tuned against reality instead of guesswork. It is deliberately the weakest version of that: the server stores a date, an event and a number, with nothing stored per player, per session or per device — no account, no IP, no page addresses and no cookies. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, nothing is sent at all. The privacy policy spells it out.
Read the privacy policy →July 24, 2026
Leaderboards for the week, the month and all time
The leaderboard used to be today and nothing else, which meant one lucky run outranked a month of steady play and missing a day left you nothing to come back to. There are now week, month and all-time boards alongside it. All-time ranks on your average score once you have played five dailies, so it rewards playing well rather than simply playing first — someone who starts today can still reach the top.
See the boards →July 24, 2026
Share your result as a picture
Alongside the emoji grid there is now a Share as an image button, which turns your result into a proper card — score, grid and all — ready for a story or a post. On phones it opens the normal share sheet; everywhere else it downloads. A league invite link now unfurls with the league's name too, so a group chat can see what it is being invited to.
Finish today's daily →July 24, 2026
Your streak survives one bad day — and a new phone
Every ten dailies you finish now earns a streak freeze, banked up to three. Miss a single day and one is spent automatically to bridge it, so a flight or a busy week no longer wipes out months of play. And if you are signed in, your history now follows your account: open the game on another device and your streak, stats and record are all there.
Check your streak →July 24, 2026
A 20-second tour for newcomers
First time here? The game now walks you through one real puzzle a step at a time — what the circles mean, why every country is a dot, what the gold one is — and ends with a guess you make yourself, all before spending your day's only attempt. There is a link to take the tour again on the start screen whenever you want it.
Or read the rules →July 24, 2026
Free play grows four modes — and you can challenge a friend
Free play is no longer just endless puzzles. Marathon gives you three lives and gets harder the longer you last; Speedrun is five puzzles against one clock; Drill lets you practise one kind of clue on purpose — flags, capitals, borders. And every result now offers a link that reproduces that exact board, with your guess count attached, so you can send someone the puzzle you just solved and see if they beat you.
Pick a mode →July 24, 2026
Reverse: name the clues, not the country
A new way to play the same game backwards. You get a country and six clues that are all true of it, and you pick the three that narrow the world down to only that one. No clue is ever a wrong fact — the wrong picks are the ones that leave too many countries standing, which turns out to be a very different kind of thinking.
Try reverse mode →July 24, 2026
Every past daily, playable
Missed a day, or arrived late? The archive now holds every daily ever published, playable any time with the same puzzles, guess limits and hints as the real thing. Archive runs are unranked and never touch your streak, so they are the best practice there is. Each one also has a page with its answers, once it has finished everywhere in the world.
Browse the archive →July 24, 2026
Fairer guesses, more thinking time, and a second hint
Scoring now matches what each puzzle actually asks. Hard puzzles give you six guesses and easy ones four, instead of five for everything, and harder puzzles get proportionally longer before the speed bonus runs out — the old timer punished you for reading the board on exactly the puzzles the board is for. Giving up now scores a little instead of nothing, so there is no reason to fire off a random last guess. And there is a second, cheaper hint: for half a guess, the game names the answer's continent.
See how scoring works →July 24, 2026
The board counts itself — and can be read aloud
Each region of the diagram now shows how many countries are in it, so working out that only two countries fit two of the three clues no longer means counting dots by eye. The clue chips are numbered to match. And the whole board now has a text version for screen readers, announcing where each wrong guess landed and how many countries still fit — the game was previously unplayable without sight, which for a game about reading a board it should never have been.
See the board →July 24, 2026
Records, ready-made lists, and how to play
Three new corners of the site. Records collects the extremes — most land borders, highest peak, most time zones — all computed from the same facts the clues are built on. Lists answers the two-part questions, like landlocked countries in Africa or island nations of Oceania. And How to play finally puts the rules, the scoring and the strategy on a page you can send someone. Country pages now also show how each country ranks, and answer the questions people actually ask about it.
Browse the records →July 24, 2026
Claims are now clues
The three statements that pin down each mystery country are now called clues everywhere — on the board, in the menus, and on the study pages. The clue index now lives at /clues (old /claims links still get you there). Nothing about the game itself changed, just the word.
Browse the clue index →July 24, 2026
A new look for letters and numbers
The game speaks in two new voices: headings and the site name now use Oxanium, a squared-off technical typeface, and every score, timer, and streak counts itself out in Bitcount, a dot-matrix scoreboard font. Your final daily score now lights up like a stadium display.
July 24, 2026
The daily, out of its box
The daily challenge's start and results screens no longer sit inside a bordered card — the intro, your score, the globe tour and the breakdown now live directly on the page. Same content, less chrome.
See today's daily →July 24, 2026
Footer stays put
On short pages — a quiet leaderboard, a brief clue page — the footer used to float awkwardly in the middle of the screen. It now sits at the bottom of the window where footers belong.
July 24, 2026
Private leagues: compete with your people
You can now start a private league, name it, and invite friends with a single link or code — no emails, no setup. Everyone plays the same daily challenge as always, but the league shows just your group's standings: today's board plus an all-time points table, so the season-long bragging rights are tracked too. Sign in, create a league, and send the link.
Start a league →July 23, 2026
whatthecountry has a face
The game now has its own logo: the three clue circles, with the answer glowing gold right where they all overlap. You'll see it in your browser tab, next to the site name in the menu bar, and as the app icon if you add the game to your home screen.
July 23, 2026
About, privacy, and one-click account deletion
The site now explains itself: an About page covers how puzzles are built and how to get in touch, and a privacy policy spells out exactly what's stored where (short version: nothing leaves your device unless you sign in). And if you ever want out, your account — and every saved result — can now be deleted permanently from account settings, no email required.
Read the About page →July 23, 2026
Your daily record, at a glance
The daily challenge now shows your personal stats — dailies played, puzzles solved, current and best streak, and your best score — on the start screen and again with your result. Everything is counted on your device from the dailies you've already played, so your history is there from day one.
See your stats →July 23, 2026
What's new (this page!)
The site now keeps player-facing release notes. Whenever something changes — a new feature, a rule tweak, a fix you'd notice — it gets an entry here, and a badge on the menu bar lets you know there's something you haven't seen.
Browse the changelog →July 23, 2026
One navigation bar, everywhere
Every page — game screens included — now shares a single sticky navigation bar with the daily, free play, the leaderboard, the country index and the clue index, plus your account menu. On phones it folds into a proper menu. It mirrors whattheday's navigation, so the two games feel like one family.
July 22, 2026
Accounts and a daily leaderboard
You can now sign in — with Google or an email and password, the same accounts system as whattheday — and your daily score lands on a leaderboard ranked against everyone who played today's six puzzles. Playing without an account works exactly as before; signing in is only needed to be ranked.
See today's leaderboard →July 19, 2026
The facts behind every clue
When a round ends, each clue now unfolds into the actual fact it was built on — the answer's real population, its actual borders, the flag in question — so every reveal teaches you something concrete instead of just marking you right or wrong.
July 19, 2026
Type it your way
The guess box now forgives diacritics, common aliases and small typos: Turkiye finds Türkiye, Ivory Coast finds Côte d'Ivoire, and "Khazakstan" still gets you Kazakhstan. Less time fighting the spelling, more time deducing.
Try it in free play →July 16, 2026
Study pages for all 195 countries and every clue
New learning layer: every country has a profile page — key facts, land borders, flag colors, and every clue in the game that's true of it, rarest first — and every clue has a page listing exactly which countries satisfy it. Reveal screens link straight to the answer's profile, so every game can end in a rabbit hole.
Browse the countries →July 16, 2026
One hint per daily: a fourth circle
Stuck on a daily puzzle? You can now spend one hint per day on any one puzzle. A fourth, dashed circle lands on the board and every dot glides into its finer region — a whole extra clue's worth of information. It costs the same as one wrong guess, so use it where it hurts.
July 15, 2026
The reveal is now a living planet
Finish a round and a hand-built WebGL globe replays your game: it visits each wrong guess in order, launches an arc on departure, then swoops to the answer, which pulses gold under a beacon. Real-time day and night, city lights, drifting clouds and auroras included.
July 15, 2026
The daily challenge
The home page is now a Wordle-style daily: six mystery countries — two easy, two medium, two hard — identical for every player on the same date, one attempt per day, with streaks and an emoji share grid. Free play with unlimited puzzles lives on at /play.
Play today's six →