Geography & travel

How the distance engine works

These topics do not compare traits. They compare positions. Guess anything and SIXTH measures the great-circle distance between your guess and the hidden answer, then hands you three things: the distance itself, an arrow pointing the direction you need to travel, and a warmth band:

Every guess also drops a coloured pin on the world map above the board, hot colours near, cool colours far. After three guesses you are not reading a list — you are looking at a triangulation. The answer sits where the arrows agree.

Opening strategy

1. Start big and central. A first guess in the middle of a landmass tells you far more than one in a corner. Something like Egypt, Kazakhstan or Peru splits the globe cleanly; Iceland or New Zealand mostly tells you "not here".
2. Second guess: jump, don't step. If guess one says cool with an arrow pointing east, do not move one country east. Move four thousand kilometres east. You are trying to bracket the answer, not creep up on it.
3. Bracket, then bisect. Once you have one guess too far north and one too far south, the answer is between them. Two more halvings and you are inside a single country.
4. Mind the small stuff. Island nations and city-states are the classic trap: a pin can read blazing while you are still staring at the wrong continent's mainland because the answer is a speck offshore.
5. Hints here are geographic. The secret clue on these topics gives you the hemisphere — north or south, east or west of Greenwich — which is worth the most when your pins are scattered and worth almost nothing once they have converged.

The four topics

Countries

Every sovereign country, ordered so the household names come up first and the deeper levels reach into the ones you last thought about in a classroom. This is the topic the game opens with, because the feedback teaches itself: one guess and you already understand the whole game.

Cities

Tighter than Countries by design. Two cities in the same country can sit 3,000 km apart, and two cities in different countries can be blazing to each other. Once you are inside the right region, stop thinking about borders and start thinking about coastlines and rivers — that is where the big cities are.

Famous Landmarks

Towers, temples, statues, bridges and ruins. Landmarks cluster hard: a blazing reading near Paris, Rome, Cairo or Beijing usually means several candidates are still in range, so spend a guess separating the city rather than assuming the most famous one.

Natural Wonders

Canyons, falls, reefs, volcanoes, deserts and glaciers. The trick here is remembering that nature does not respect the map you memorised — a wonder can sit in the middle of an ocean or a continent's empty interior, so your first guess should aim for a landmass, not a capital city.