Zoomout
Zoomout is a daily geography game played on a map with every name removed. You start with a tiny, zoomed-in piece of the world — a few borders, a stretch of coast, a faint grid — and one country shaded in. Name it. Every wrong guess zooms the map out one step, so the clues get wider and easier. You have six tries, and everyone gets the same map each day.
How to play Zoomout
- Look at the highlighted country. Step 1 is the closest view: usually a border or a bit of coastline and nothing else.
- Type a country name in the search box and pick it from the list. Only countries on the list can be submitted, so there are no typos to worry about; common short names, other spellings and abbreviations such as UK or USA all find the right entry.
- Press Guess. If it is wrong, the map zooms out and the guess is marked with two small labels: whether the country is on the same continent as the answer, and whether it shares a border with it.
- Press ⏩ to skip a step without guessing. It zooms out just the same, but it uses up one of your six tries.
- From step 5 the neighboring countries are named on the map. At step 6 you see the widest view. If you run out of tries, the answer is revealed.
How to read the clues
- Coastline. A coast tells you the country touches the sea. The shape of bays, peninsulas and islands is often enough to recognize a country on its own.
- Borders. Straight borders usually come from old colonial or treaty lines (think of Africa, the Middle East, the Americas); wiggly borders follow rivers and mountain ranges (think of Europe and Southeast Asia).
- Scale bar. The bar in the corner shows a real distance. A 100 km bar across a quarter of the map means a small country; a 1,000 km bar means a very large one. Check it every time the map zooms out.
- The grid. The faint curved lines are latitude and longitude. When the lines bend strongly toward the top of the map you are looking at a place far from the equator; nearly straight lines suggest the tropics.
- Neighbor names. From step 5 the biggest neighboring countries are labeled in your language. The answer is never labeled.
Five strategies for guessing the country
- Start with the continent. If your first guess is on the wrong continent, you have learned a lot. Pick a well-known country that is central to a region rather than a random one.
- Use the two labels together. "Same continent" plus "no shared border" means the answer is close but not touching. "Borders the answer" is the strongest clue in the game: think about which countries lie around that guess.
- Do not skip too early. A skip costs a try without teaching you anything about continents or borders. Skip only when you are sure a guess would be wasted.
- Study the shape of the highlighted country. Long and thin, a notch in the border, a coast on one side only: these survive every zoom level, so compare them with what you remember of the atlas.
- Wait for the labels. At step 5 the neighbors are named, which often settles the answer in one look. If you are stuck on steps 1–4, a sensible guess is still better than a skip, because the feedback narrows the search.
Sharing your result
Your result is a short line of emoji that spoils nothing. Each guess becomes one symbol, in order:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 🔴 | Guess on a different continent |
| 🟠 | Same continent, but no shared border with the answer |
| 🟡 | A neighbor: shares a border with the answer |
| ⏩ | Skipped step |
| 🎯 | Correct answer |
If you do not solve it, the score shows X/6 and all six guesses are listed without the 🎯.
About the map data
Maps are drawn from Natural Earth, a public-domain dataset, and country names come from Wikidata (CC0). Boundaries are approximate and express no position on any territory. Disputed regions are never the answer and are not named on the map. Very small countries (under about 2,500 km²) and countries whose zoomed-in view would show almost no border or coast are not used as answers.
- How is the daily country chosen?
- Each day's country is picked by a fixed schedule: familiar countries early in the week, harder ones toward the weekend. The same country never returns within 120 days.
- Can I zoom or move the map myself?
- No. The map is a still picture on purpose, so everyone sees exactly the same clues at every step.
- Why can I only pick from a list?
- It removes typing mistakes and spelling differences. The search understands accents, other names (such as Ivory Coast or Côte d'Ivoire), abbreviations and small typos.
- Is the game playable with a screen reader?
- The game is visual, so a full text replacement is not possible. Each step comes with a short text summary of what is in view (coastline, borders, scale), and the whole interface works with a keyboard.
- What does the skip button do?
- It zooms the map out one step without a guess. It still counts as one of your six tries.
- Can I play earlier days?
- Yes, from the archive. Archive games do not count toward your streak.