How to Play
You start on a map 500 metres across with every label stripped out. All you get is the shape of the place: streets, water, parks, railways.
Type a city and pick it from the list. Wrong or stuck? Skip, and the map zooms out to the next level. Six reveals, from a single block to the whole country.
You start on 12 points. A skip costs 1, a wrong guess costs 2, so guess when you are sure and skip when you are not. Share your grid and the scale you got it at.
The six zoom levels
Each reveal is roughly four times wider than the one before, and each one shows a different kind of clue.
| Reveal | Width | What you can see |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 500 m | A few blocks. Street pattern, a bridge, a canal, the shape of a square. |
| 2 | 2 km | The centre. Grid or tangle, the river bend, the main park, the station. |
| 3 | 10 km | The whole city. Ring roads, the port, the airport, where it stops. |
| 4 | 50 km | The metro area and its terrain. Coast, mountains, the lake it sits on. |
| 5 | 250 km | The region, and the other cities near it. |
| 6 | 1,500 km | The country and its neighbours. If you need this one, it is scraps. |
Today's Leaderboard
The ten best scores on today's city, out of 12. Resets in < 1m.
Zoom Out FAQ
What am I actually looking at?▼
A real map of a real city with every label removed. The streets, coastline, parks, railways and water are exactly where they are in the world, but no name is printed anywhere, so the only way to recognise the place is by its shape.
How many cities are in the game?▼
About 2,400 cities can be typed as an answer. The daily draws from a tighter pool of about 500 well-known ones, so today's city is always something you have a fair chance of naming. Unlimited mode uses the wider pool, and the Europe and USA modes are tighter still.
How is the score worked out?▼
You start on 12 points. A skip costs 1 point, a wrong guess costs 2. Name it on the first look at 500 metres and you keep all 12. That gap is the whole strategy: when you are not sure, skipping is the cheaper way to see more map, and a solve never scores less than 1.
When does the daily reset?▼
At midnight UTC, the same as every other daily on the site. Everyone in the world gets the same city on the same day, so scores are comparable.
Does a wrong guess tell me anything?▼
No. A wrong guess costs you 2 points and zooms the map out one level, but it gives no distance or direction hint. The map is the only clue, which is why a skip at 1 point is often the better move.
Why is the population sometimes lower than I expected?▼
Populations come from GeoNames, which counts the city proper rather than the metro area. Venice reads as about 51,000 because that is the historic centre, not the 250,000 of the wider comune.
Can I play on mobile?▼
Yes, and it is built mobile first. The map is the largest thing on the screen, the answer list opens upward so the keyboard never covers it, and the whole round fits without scrolling.
Where do the maps come from?▼
OpenStreetMap data rendered by OpenFreeMap, with the label layers stripped out before the map is drawn. City names, coordinates and populations come from GeoNames.
City data from GeoNames, licensed CC BY 4.0. Maps rendered from OpenStreetMap data via OpenFreeMap.
