How many of the 193 UN member states' capitals do you actually know? A four-choice survival quiz that keeps getting more obscure
How it works
A flag and a country name appear; pick its capital from four options. A correct answer is a point, while a wrong one โ or letting the 10 seconds run out โ costs one of three hearts. Lose all three and your run ends with your score.
- Press START. Early questions come from the most populous and best-known countries.
- Every question widens the pool by four more countries, so less familiar names keep arriving. Round 1 draws from the top 28; by round 20 it is over a hundred.
- Wrong options are drawn from countries on the same continent with similar name recognition, so you cannot win by spotting the odd continent out.
- No country repeats within a single run.
- When the hearts run out you reach the result screen, where a nickname puts you on the global leaderboard.
Rules and scoring
| Start | 3 hearts, score 0 |
|---|---|
| Time limit | 10 seconds per question; a timeout counts as a miss |
| Question pool | 193 UN member states (Taiwan excluded) |
| Countries with several capitals | One primary capital is used: Pretoria for South Africa, Sucre for Bolivia, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte for Sri Lanka |
| Score | Total correct answers. You need 5 to submit |
| Grades | 40+ "geography nerd", 25-39 "top tier", 15-24 "above average", below that "average" |
The capitals people get wrong
- Biggest city is not the capital. Tรผrkiye is Ankara, not Istanbul; the USA is Washington, D.C., not New York; Australia is Canberra, not Sydney; Brazil is Brasรญlia, not Rio; Canada is Ottawa, not Toronto; Switzerland is Bern, not Zurich.
- Capitals that moved. Myanmar went from Yangon to Naypyidaw, Kazakhstan from Almaty to Astana, Nigeria from Lagos to Abuja, Tanzania from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma.
- More than one capital. South Africa splits executive Pretoria, legislative Cape Town and judicial Bloemfontein; Bolivia has constitutional Sucre alongside administrative La Paz.
- Capital shares the country's name. Djibouti, Luxembourg, Monaco, San Marino, Singapore and Andorra (Andorra la Vella) all do.
How to score higher
- Learn by region. West Africa or Central Asia as a block holds up even when all four options share a continent.
- Listen for patterns. Central Asian capitals ending in -kent or -bat share a sound; regions have a phonetic flavour.
- Pair it with the flag. Each question shows the flag too, so alternating with the flag quiz makes both stick.
- Do not stall. Running out the clock is still a miss, so guess and save your attention for the next one.
Frequently asked questions
How are multi-capital countries handled?
Only one primary capital appears as the correct option: Pretoria (South Africa), Sucre (Bolivia), Sanaa (Yemen), Mbabane (Eswatini), Islamabad (Pakistan).
Why is Taiwan missing?
The question pool is defined as UN member states, for consistency.
Can the same country come up twice?
Not within one run. Starting again reshuffles everything.
Where does the data come from?
Countries, capitals and populations come from Wikidata (September 2026), and the flags are SVGs from the open-source flag-icons project (MIT).
Related quizzes
- Flag Quiz โ the same 193 countries, identified by their flags.
- Country Size Ranking Quiz โ guess which country is larger.
- World Population Ranking Quiz โ population orders that defy intuition.
- Average Height by Country Quiz โ another ranking quiz with surprises.