World capitals quiz

Thirty capitals a round. Every card names a city; drop it on the country it is the capital of, and the country takes its flag.

Play Thirty capitalsPractice the ones you miss →

How a round goes

The globe is already in flags; thirty countries stand blank. The deck holds thirty cards, and instead of a flag each one carries the name of a capital — Ulaanbaatar, Ottawa, Paramaribo. You drag the card onto its country, or click the country, and a hit paints the country in its flag with the capital shown above its name. Three tries per capital; after the third miss, or Skip, the globe flies to the right country and shows the answer. When the last card lands, the clock stops and the score line appears — capitals placed, accuracy, time.

Hints

The card already carries a name, so the strong hint here is Flag rather than Name: the card turns into the flag of the capital's country, and the capital moves above the deck. Hint opens the three facts about the country — region, coastline and neighbours, language. One Flag, one Hint and one Skip are free for the round; after that each costs a short ad, and three misses still place the card for nothing. The country under the cursor shows no translucent flag in this mode — it would be the answer — only the usual highlight.

Which capitals come up

Countries with a capital of their own and a name that is unmistakably theirs. Nine of the 235 never come up and stay locked under their flags: those with no capital of their own, those whose capital shares its name with another one, and those with a disputed one — with Hong Kong among them. A capital that merely contains a country's name, such as Mexico City or Kuwait City, still comes up.

Practice capitals

The game keeps a list of the capitals you have placed yourself, separate from the list of flags you know. Practice capitals deals only the ones still missing from it, easiest first — thirty at a time, or however many are left — so every round is built from what you do not know yet. There is no best in it, because no two players get the same deck; the card on the home page counts the capitals left to learn instead. The list lives in this browser: an account carries records across devices, not the collection.

Capitals on flat maps

The same round runs on flat maps, with the units of a country or a continent instead of the world: US state capitals, European capitals, Asian capitals, Capitals of the Americas, African capitals, French regional capitals, Spanish regional capitals, Italian regional capitals, Brazilian state capitals, German state capitals, Canadian provincial capitals. A unit whose capital has exactly the same name as a unit on the map — Berlin in Berlin, Luxembourg in Luxembourg — is left out of the round and stays locked under its flag, and so is a unit with two capitals or none. Japan, Switzerland and Ukraine have no capitals round for that reason: too many of their prefectures, cantons and oblasts are named after their capital.

Tips

Hint first, guess second: the region fact alone rules out most of the globe, and the language fact often settles it. When a capital is unfamiliar, the Flag hint is the strongest one — a flag you know is easier to place than a city you have never heard of. On the flat maps, zoom in before dropping on the small units.

FAQ