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Geography
DAILY CHALLENGES

Match the Country

8 countries · 8 categories

Take the #1 spot

  1. #1 🦓 you 🦓
More about MATCH THE COUNTRY

Match the Country: Eight Countries, Eight Categories

Match the Country is a free daily geography puzzle on Quizebra. You get eight countries and eight fixed categories, and you place each country into one of them. Every placement scores that country’s real world rank in that category, out of 197 countries, and the eight ranks are added up: the lower the total, the better. Everyone gets the same eight countries each day.

How Do You Play Match the Country?

Tap a country, then tap the category where you think it holds its best world rank. Tapping a category first and then a country works just as well. Every country goes into exactly one category and every category takes exactly one country, so a finished board is a complete one-to-one match. Any placement can be taken back with the small × on it, and Submit goes through only once all eight countries are placed; tap it before that and the game tells you so.

How Is Your Score Calculated?

Each of the 197 countries has a world rank from #1 to #197 in every category. India is #1 for Highest Population; Vatican City is #197. A placement scores the rank that country holds in the category you put it in, and your raw score is the sum of the eight ranks. Lower is better.

A country can only take one slot, which is what makes it a puzzle rather than a quiz. China is joint #1 for Highest Peak, sharing Everest with Nepal, and #2 for Highest Population, but it can bank only one of the two.

Ties share a rank, so every landlocked country is joint #1 for Shortest Coastline, usually the cheapest slot on the board. Your percentage then shows where your total sits between the worst and the best arrangement of today’s eight countries: 100% is the best board possible, 0% the worst. Both are found by checking all 40,320 ways of filling the board. After you submit, that best arrangement is shown next to yours, rank by rank.

What Are the Eight Categories?

They are the same every day: four measures, each taken from both ends.

Because every measure appears both ways round, every country is cheap somewhere: Vatican City is #197 for population and for area, but joint #1 for Shortest Coastline. Putting the right country in “largest area” could mean surrendering the one you wanted for “highest peak”, so the board has to work as a whole.

Population, area, coastline and highest point for all 197 countries come from the 2025 edition of the CIA World Factbook.

Tips for a Better Score

Lock in the certain #1s first: a landlocked country in Shortest Coastline, a flat island in Flattest Terrain, the obvious giant in Largest Area. Then look for the countries that are cheap in two categories at once, because those are the ones you can afford to move. Fill whatever slots are left with the country that is least bad there, since a #60 placement costs far less than a #190.

How Are the Eight Countries Chosen?

Countries are grouped into five difficulty levels. Each day’s eight are six from the three better-known levels, two from each, plus one from the fourth level and one from the hardest. Every set also contains at least one coastal country and at least one country with a peak above 1,000 m, so Longest Coastline and Highest Peak always have a real candidate.

When Does the Daily Puzzle Reset?

A new set arrives at midnight London time, with a fresh leaderboard, and everyone in the world gets the same eight countries that day. Once the daily puzzle is done you can play unlimited practice rounds drawn from the other countries. Free, no account, no ads.

Prefer one measure at a time? Order the Country sorts eight countries by a single measure. Find the Country hides one country and gives you four clues per guess.