How to play Meridian

Meridian is a daily geography game. Each day there is one expedition made of three legs. Each leg is worth up to 1,000 points, so a perfect expedition scores 3,000. Everyone in the world gets the same expedition on the same calendar day, and a new one unlocks at midnight in your local time.

Leg 1: Pin Drop

You are shown a city and its country. Tap or click the blank world map where you think the city is, adjust if you like, then press Lock in pin. You can pinch, scroll or use the + and − buttons to zoom.

Your distance is measured along the curve of the Earth (the great-circle distance). A pin within 25 km earns the full 1,000 points; after that the score falls smoothly — roughly 670 points at 500 km, 440 at 1,000 km and 200 at 2,000 km. Your leg score is the average of the five cities.

Keyboard: focus the map, move it with the arrow keys, zoom with + and −, and press Enter to drop a pin at the crosshair.

Leg 2: Rank It

Five countries must be put in order by the day’s statistic: population, land area, population density, or the latitude or longitude of their capitals. Drag the handle on each row or use the arrow buttons, then pressCheck order.

• Every country in the right place on your first attempt earns 200 points and is locked.
• For the rest, arrows show whether each needs to move up or down. Fix them on your second attempt for 100 points each.
• After your final attempt you see the real figures for every country.

Values are always clearly separated (at least 30% apart, or 4° for capital positions), so there are no coin-flip rankings. Population figures are Natural Earth estimates, mostly from 2019; land areas are calculated from Natural Earth boundaries and may differ slightly from official statistics.

Leg 3: Borderline

One country is highlighted on an unlabelled map. Type its name — suggestions appear as you type, and common alternatives such as “USA”, “Ivory Coast” or “Czech Republic” are recognised. You have six guesses.

• Solving on the first guess scores 1,000 points; each extra guess costs 150.
• Each miss zooms the map out to show more context and reveals a clue: the sub-region, population, number of land neighbours, the capital’s first letter and finally the country’s first letter.
• Wrong guesses are shaded on the map, with their distance from the mystery country.

Streaks and statistics

Finish the daily expedition on its day to extend your streak. Your streak survives until the end of the following day, so you can play at any hour. Expeditions played from the archive count toward games played, averages and your best score, but not your streak.

All progress is saved in your browser’s local storage on this device. There is no account, and nothing about your games is sent to us. If you clear your browser data, your history is reset.

Sharing your result

After finishing, press Share result to copy a spoiler-free summary: your score, coloured markers for each pin and ranking position, and how many guesses Borderline took. It never reveals the answers.

Tips from the map room

• In Pin Drop, place a rough pin first, then zoom in to refine it before locking in.
• Capitals are often not the largest city — think Canberra, Ottawa, Ankara or Abuja.
• For latitude rankings, remember that much of Europe lies further north than you might expect: Rome is roughly level with New York.
• In Borderline, the coastline is your best friend. Landlocked or not narrows things down fast.
• Weak on a continent? Drill it in practice mode.