Secret country
Secret Country: Africa
One African country is secret. Type any country in Africa and follow the distances, arrows and colours on the map to find it within 60 seconds.
- Guesses
- 0
- Closest
- –
- Time
- Time left: 1:00
One country of Africa is secret. Type any country of Africa: it is coloured on the map from freezing blue (far) to burning red (close), and your guesses are listed closest first, each with its distance to the secret country and an arrow pointing the way. Neighbours are 0 km away.
Loading map…
- Freezing
- Cold
- Cool
- Warm
- Hot
- Burning
Your guesses, closest first
No guesses yet: type any country to start.
Finding your next challenge…
How it works, distances and sources
Every round hides one country. Type any country: it is coloured on the map from freezing blue (far) to burning red (close), and listed with its distance to the secret country and an arrow pointing the way. The list is sorted closest first. Rounds last 60 seconds; tick “Relaxed” before you start for a round with no clock. A challenge link replays the same secret country, in the same mode.
Continent rounds hide and accept only the continent’s countries, as in our other continent quizzes: Europe includes Russia, Turkey, Cyprus and Kosovo; Asia includes Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; the Americas are North, Central and South America and the Caribbean.
Distances are the shortest distance between the two countries’ land, islands included, measured on the Natural Earth 1:50m country shapes and rounded to 10 km. Countries that share a land border are 0 km apart and shown as neighbours; a country across a narrow strait can be less than 10 km away. We use land rather than the distance between centres, which makes big countries look far from their own neighbours (Russia’s centre is over 3,000 km from Finland’s). France and the Netherlands are measured from their European land, and Somaliland and Northern Cyprus count as part of Somalia and Cyprus.
The arrow and compass point show the direction from the centre of your guess (of its largest landmass) to the centre of the secret country, as a straight line on the map. For a neighbour, it tells you which side to look on.
Finding the secret country with your first guess scores 10 points, and every extra guess costs a point (a find always scores at least 1). Give up or run out of time and the round scores 0. Your time is shown too, and breaks ties with a friend. The colours follow our Hot or Cold quizzes: in the world, Asia and the Americas, burning is under 100 km, hot under 500 km, warm under 1,000 km, cool under 2,000 km and cold under 3,500 km; in Europe 50/250/500/900/1,500 km; in Africa 50/300/700/1,300/2,200 km. Anything farther is freezing.