Oh, boy, a new map-geography based game!

Here is a challenging, interesting, time-sink game based on maps, geoguessr

Basically the site drops you on a page with (1) a view (done by the Google Map's car photographers) showing what you would see if you were driving there. It can be anywhere in the world where Google has done that mapping and street photographing. (2) A world map for designating/guessing where you think you are. (3) A box in the lower right with the status and score so far.

The idea is to come as close as you can to zeroing in on the location where they dropped you in the first view shot using the world map. The closest I have gotten is 0.153 kilometers away from ground zero and got 6466 points (I'd guess that you get 6500 points if you're right on; almost impossible due to coarseness of the maps and tools).

You can move up and down the streets, etc, similar to the way you can using Google Map's little yellow guy.

It's really interesting and easiest if you're in a town or city (because of signs, business IDs, language, cars or other transportation, architecture, etc). If you're plopped in the middle of rural nowhere without any stores, street or road signs or other identification, it's very tough. That's particularly true if it's a long walk to a town. Once or twice, I just guessed. I couldn't walk further.

You get 5 different location starts in each game, one after another as you do them. After you do all five, you get a total score. You can also challenge someone else to duplicate your five trips and compare scores. The game is pretty intuitive after you fool with it a little.

Hint: Liberal use of Google search and Google Maps in separate windows will help you zero in.

So much fun (we all in the LT office were completely distracted by this one afternoon!). We played where you could only spin around in place, but not move about (harder, but we decided a bit more fun). Really addictive, and absolutely fascinating!

#2 Isn't it fun though? I've "been in" the US, Britain, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Denmark, Canada Italy and, for good measure, Andorra and Botswana. Actually and surprisingly, I nailed Botswana and, unfortunately, guessed Spain instead of Andorra. As the old and tasteless saying goes, "Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades."

Great site Bookblotter. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, but I am now wasting far too much time exploring remote corners of the planet when I should be working!

I got sucked in too. I'm amazed at how much the Northwest Territories of Canada look like my native Appalachians. I've been fooled several times now.

I can't even get on the right continent.

Well that was addictive. Thanks for the link.

I'm in big trouble. I need to get some sleep tonight!

Oh dear...

It is addictive, but it's frustrating that even when you can work out which country it is, it turns out to be somewhere like Russia, Canada, or the US, where sticking a pin in the map at random doesn't help much. The only stroke of luck I had was landing in the Azores (also the only place so far that looked like somewhere nice to visit; I don't think I'll be going to Tomsk any time soon...).

I got the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. That looked pretty nice.

#10

At least you can have a good go at that. Empty road with trees is a bit harder to guess.

11: so true, though I've learned a lot about road markings on various continents.

A Challenge!

Why don't we try out a challenge with geoguessr? I just did one game that turned out to be - gasp - all very rural. The score was considerably better than I would have expected (At 12515 points) because of (1) memory and (2) one pretty clever find and use of a one word clue, if I do say so myself, and, more pertinently, (3) dumb luck.

On the clever find of a clue, in round 3 at one partly legible sign where I could read one 4 letter word, I used Google Translate and found out the language for that one word was from a small country and took a stab at it there and was within 91 km.

I also remembered that the article where I first read of geoguessr had a line expressing surprise that one country was used fairly frequently in the author's experience. True here in this game...

Are you up to a challenge? If you click on this link you should get the same game that I played.

Let us know how you did!

I only got 7244. :(

15417. Caught a few telltale clues here and there. And dogged persistence never hurt!

challenge result url available upon request -- I don't want to spoil the game for other players.

A bit over 11000. One of the places in that game was one that came up for me in another game last night (so it's obviously not completely random), but I still managed to forget where it was. What's worse is that I've a feeling I visited that very spot during a holiday about 20 years ago...

If no one has an objection, I'll post a sum-up on Saturday morning, May 25th as close as I come to 10 am Eastern Time in the US. We have three guests at home, so I could be off a bit on timing, I don't want to be overly or overtly rude. :)

I'd like to suggest that whoever has the high score then, and it obviously won't be me given the above, post another challenge round link for the rest of us.

Continue to post your scores, good, bad or indifferent, if you would, and any comments you wish that don't give away help. I think that this game is about the most challenging I've seen on geoguessr; all five being remote and rural without a lot of "tells" as poker players say (I think).

>17 bookblotter: Great idea. Could you just go over the procedure in the game for starting a challenge? Thanks.

7940 for that one.

#18 The winner at 10 am Eastern Time in the USA tomorrow should run a new game. On the last screen of their new game it will say "Game finished..." at the top. Don't go past this point until you get the url for the new challenge based on your game! There are two white boxes for url info. The first is for sharing. I've not done this, so I don't really know the deal here, nor is it pertinent here.

The lead in for the second white box says, "Let others challenge your score with the url" information that appears immediately to the right of that text and which you need for your purpose in challenging others here.

Put your cursor at the start of the url (i.e. left of the start of "http"), hold it down and sweep it to the right until the end of a very long url. In other words, highlight the url. Copy it and then paste it in a message here the way you might do any url insertion in a message.

It's critical that you not leave the "Game finished" page until you know you have copied the entire url. If you leave the page and you haven't copied the entire url, the url is gone, history, kaput... And, you would have to start over with an entire new game and try to copy the resulting url.

If this isn't clear, feel free to leave a question under comments on my page at LT.

I hope that more people play and post their score and any comments. It doesn't matter; win, lose or draw. Stellarexplorer's score is very good in my opinion for the toughest geoguessr game I've played. I really lucked out to get the score I got. Luck is sometimes more productive than smarts, speaking for myself!

Well, the contest is over and the winner (or, given geoguessr's name, the "winnr") is stellarexplorer. So hopefully, they will set us up with a new challenge contest, with a projected end time (Eastern USA) & day a 2 or 3 days out from when they post.

Re: My comments in regard to #13 above... "Use of a one word clue..." On Round 3 there was a sign which I could only read one word of - saying "Kovo." After searching Google translate using their facility for detecting the input language, it detected Lithuanian which turned out to be correct. Luckily, a geographically small country... Since the views were rural I picked a spot away from towns near the middle of the country and ended up only 91 km from the goal. Hence the term "dumb luck."

The other item in #13 that I mentioned was the article where I first read of geoguessr had a line expressing surprise that one country was used so frequently. The country was Australia and in this game three of the five rounds ended in Australia. I was, however, reduced to pretty much taking a stab at the three targets here. I ended doing fairly poorly at 900, 1,400 and 1,700 km. from the targets. Quite ironically, although I didn't appreciate the latent humor at the time, had the two highest km. guesses been reversed, it would have been a very good score. Hence the term "dumb (not so good) luck."

The first round ended in Canada a bit east of Sault Ste. Marie.

stellarexplorer, take it away!

I too used a phrase detected as Lithuanian, and then was able to narrow it a bit from there. I made a mistake I've made before in confusing South Africa for Australia, but made up for it with a bullseye by identifying the Australian national park from a sign. For the Canadian one, I was able to get close by utilizing the name of a Canadian lakeside lodge.

I'll be back with a new challenge as soon as I have a good one.

OK, I'm not presenting this as incredibly difficult (though it has its challenges), but rather that I just did it, and so here it is. I scored 28036.

Have a go!

Why don't we arbitrarily set an end time of 12 noon Eastern US time Monday May 27.

A little checking reveals that (shocking!) there are already strongly held opinions on the game. There are those who insist it is wrong to do any googling to help, no looking up names or signs, etc. There are even those who argue that you ought to just look at the static first image and guess based on vegetation, terrain and instinct. Then there are those (like me) who feel that it is most fun to use all means to attempt to narrow down the location as precisely as possible.

I've tried it all ways, and there is satisfaction in just guessing rather than ensuring. But I like it best in utilizing all means.

#23 Okay, Stellar Explorer, you mopped me up. I got 21,515, a respectable score, I thought. Did pretty well on numbers, 1, 2 & 3; although on 3 I had 0.424 km and you got 0.027 km. Have pity, will you?

On #5 I did so-so. On #4, I had an awful time. The "roads" were grass with a little bit of stone on what I would regard as "paths" shooting off in all directions. I wandered around like a lost aimless waif. The only real clue I saw was what I took to be an old XYZ church and picked a random spot in Lower Slobovia. Unfortunately, I wasn't even in the right country. Actually, it wasn't Lower Slobovia, I just don't want to give anything away on that or the church.

Well, thanks for the challenge. I think that I'll cry myself to sleep.

#24 I'm in the use Google camp. It's helpful, of course. And, I've gained even more respect for Google's (search, maps, translate) usefulness.

>25 bookblotter: Well, first of all I am thankful to you for introducing me to this addictive game of exotic travel and problem-solving.

As to #3, well its location was right there, so I figured, hey, why not be precise?

I have to mention what happened to me on #4. Really left me banging my head against the wall. I agree, it was very confusing, I wasn't quite able to make enough of the few signs to make use of those. I worked on it for a while. Finally, success! This was actually a place I knew. I had studied it (in a brief way. A famous person who I will not mention made a visit there centuries ago to visit a lover as part of a longer and also famous voyage.) I love history.

Anyway, I had the place. It had a complicated name. I looked for it on google maps. Very pleased! I had the spot! I couldn't believe it when I found that I was off by 400 km or so. In my excitement, I had failed to notice that this country had two places with exactly the same name. Without thinking, I selected the wrong one.

Pain.

I got 12546. A respectable score for me. I'm generally happy if I get the right part of a continent. I'm not as patient with searching Google as some of you.

So that was fun, but I'm not sure given that it was the three of us only, whether you want to continue this game, or stop here. I'm playing a lot so I'm happy to continue, or call it a day...?

>28 stellarexplorer: Well, that's a good question and I was wondering about that myself. I've really found geoguessr very interesting, stimulating and challenging. And, the challenge aspect is fun and interesting in hearing how others coped with or reacted to the game. But, I would hope, more would be interested in joining.

Perhaps temporarily, we should cut it to once a week on, say, Thursday evening (or, as close as we can get to that with schedules and all) with the play results due not over 72 hours after posting the challenge. And, for the time being, just alternate setting up the challenge which, if we go ahead, would mean it's aulsmith's challenge to deliver. As and if folks join, we could add them to the circle.

One alternative is to set up another discussion group just for geoguessr and just post a game notice in Maps and Atlases, say, once a month or so. This seems premature now.

Any thoughts?

I like the weekly idea. And that it's aulsmith's turn, should he/she/they choose to accept it.

My internet connect is currently flaky, but I'd love to play. But I can't guarantee I'll be able to post on Thursday.

I think setting up a new discussion group is a good idea. I set one up here here

Hope to see you folks Thursday.

This from Atlantic Magazine's "In Focus:

"Inspired in part by the great geography game GeoGuessr, I spent some time recently in Google Maps, finding the edges of their Street View image coverage. I've always been drawn to the end of the road, to the edges of where one might be allowed to travel, whether blocked by geographic features, international borders, or simply the lack of any further road. Gathered below is a virtual visit to a few of these road ends around the world -- borders, shorelines, dead ends and overlooks from New Zealand to Svalbard, from Alaska to South Africa."

Very fun link - thanks bb!