Flags are the quickest way to start a geography habit, and the least forgiving: two stripes in a different order make a different country. This mode works both ways. Either a large flag appears and you choose its country, or a country is named and four flags appear for you to pick from.
On the Hard level the wrong options are not random. They come from the neighbours of the right answer and from the flags whose colour layout is most similar, which is where most mistakes happen. Two pairs are never put side by side because in this flag set they are almost identical: Chad and Romania, and Indonesia and Monaco. All flags are shown in the same 4:3 frame, so proportions are no clue here; colours, order and emblems are.
How it works
- Variants: flag to country, country to flag, or mixed (the default).
- Four options per question; the hint removes two wrong ones and halves the points.
- Flags load only when they are needed, and the next question’s flags are fetched in advance so there is no waiting.
- Every flag is shown in a 4:3 frame.
Tips from the window seat
- Read a flag from the side next to the pole. Several look-alike pairs differ precisely in which colour comes first.
- Look for the small things: a star, a crescent, an emblem in the middle. Plain tricolours are the hard ones, and the details settle most of the others.
- Our guide to telling look-alike flags apart puts the usual suspects side by side.
- Play the country-to-flag direction as well. Picking the right flag among four similar ones trains a different kind of attention from naming a single flag.
Questions travellers ask
Where do the flags come from?
From the open-source flag-icons collection (MIT licence). The licence text is published next to the flag files.
Why do Chad and Romania never appear together?
In this 4:3 flag set they differ only in the shade of blue, so the quiz never offers them as options in the same question. The same goes for Indonesia and Monaco.
What makes the Hard level hard?
The wrong options are neighbours of the right country mixed with the flags most similar in colour layout.
Are flags of territories included?
No. The quiz uses the 193 member states of the United Nations plus Vatican City.