The capitals quiz has three directions. In the first you see a country and choose its capital from four cities. In the second you see a capital and choose the country it belongs to. The mixed version, which is the default, alternates between the two, and that is the one that sticks best: knowing that a city is a capital is only half the job until you can also go the other way.
Capitals come from Wikidata; every English name and a sample in each of the other languages were checked by hand. Where a country has more than one seat of government, the quiz uses one of them and says so in the rules. A few countries are left out of this mode on purpose: Israel and Yemen, because the status of their capital is contested, Nauru, which has no official capital, and the city-states Monaco, Singapore and Vatican City, where the capital is the state itself.
How it works
- Four options per question; the variant decides the direction (country to capital, capital to country, or mixed).
- The hint removes two wrong options and halves the points of that question.
- After each answer the right pair is shown: country and capital together.
- Names follow the page language, so the same quiz in Finnish or Hungarian uses the local forms of the cities.
Tips from the window seat
- Learn capitals in small regional batches. Ten capitals of one subregion stay in memory far better than thirty from around the world.
- Pay attention to the reverse direction. Many people can say the capital of a country but stall when the city comes first.
- Watch for capitals that are not the largest city of their country. They are the ones the Hard level likes to use, with bigger neighbours as wrong options.
- Switch the page to another language now and then. Seeing the local spelling of a capital is a good way to fix it in memory.
Questions travellers ask
Which capital is used when a country has several?
One per country: Sucre for Bolivia, Pretoria for South Africa, Mbabane for Eswatini and Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte for Sri Lanka.
Why are some countries never asked about here?
Israel and Yemen are left out because the status of their capital is contested, Nauru has no official capital, and in Monaco, Singapore and Vatican City the capital is the state itself.
Where do the capital names come from?
From Wikidata (CC0). All English names and a sample in Italian, Hungarian and Finnish were checked by hand before they went into the quiz.
Can I practise only one direction?
Yes. Open New in the toolbar and choose country to capital, capital to country, or mixed.