Friday, November 14, 2008

How Many Countries Can You Find?


So, recently I have become addicted to this game. I like to go to "custom" under the "hard" mode and set the first option to 162/162 and the rest to 0. Then I can practice locating 162 different countries. I think the first time I did it I missed about 30...I'm down to 13, mostly groups of islands that I can't keep straight (and a few countries in west Africa). Among the ones I can keep straight: Fiji, French Polynesia, the Maldives, Cape Verde, Seychelles, the Bahamas, and the Northern Mariana Islands (the Maldives being the only one I could locate before I started playing this game). Among the ones I can't keep straight: Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Dominica, Kiribati, Guadeloupe, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Solomon Islands. Anyone have a trick to help remember where those are?

The game does have a few drawbacks: 1) a few things are misplaced, like Albania. For anyone who's wondering, it's south of Montenegro and north of Greece, and west of Macedonia (which isn't on the game). Even when you click on the correct place it tells you you're wrong. 2) I haven't spent much time on the "landmarks" section, but apparently they have Mt. McKinley on the East Coast instead of in Alaska. Hmm. 3) There are quite a few countries missing...countries I could locate if they were asked for (Azerbaijan, Belize, Dominican Republic, Moldova, Macedonia, Togo, Ivory Coast), others that I see the spot there, know it's a country but don't know its name (French Guiana, Brunei, Bhutan), and others I've heard of but couldn't place if asked (Rwanda, Djibouti, Qatar, Swaziland, Bahrain). Nicaragua is only on "easy" mode. 4) And, even when I only missed 13 out of 162 (let's face it, that's not too bad) it ranks me as a "Hobo" or "Local Expert"...probably because I'm on a laptop and it's harder to click on the right place in less than 3 seconds. But overall, it's way fun, educational, and...I'm Addicted! Try the game and let me know how you do...practice for a week and let us know how much better you've become!

2 comments:

  1. The game said I am a local expert, but personally I am shamed and embarrassed. Sigh. Guess I'll need to practice...

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  2. Funny I am going to Bahrain on Wednesday, maybe if I am there, you can locate it :) Try the Arabian Gulf. Qatar is the country that sticks out like a thumb off of the Arabian Peninsula into the Arabian Gulf. Okay so in your part of the world you refer to it as the Persian Gulf. When you live on the Arabian Peninsula, everything centers around Arabia.

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