Editorial policy
Every quiz draws a line around what counts. This page documents where ours fall: every contested call, and the reasoning behind it.
What counts as a country
Our world roster has 197 countries: the 193 UN member states, both UN observer states (Vatican City and Palestine), plus Kosovo and Taiwan.
UN membership is the least arguable baseline, so that's the foundation. The observer states hold a formal seat at the UN, so they count. Kosovo and Taiwan hold no UN seat, but each governs its own territory, runs its own elections and currency, and is recognized by a meaningful share of the world; they appear in nearly every serious reference list, and they appear in ours.
The same 197-country roster drives the capitals, flags, and map quizzes, so a country never exists in one quiz and not another.
A part of a country is not that country. England, Scotland and Wales are not accepted for the United Kingdom, and Greenland is not accepted for Denmark, because each is a different place with a different border. Ordinary informal names for the state itself are accepted: Britain and Great Britain both answer to the United Kingdom.
A map quiz also cannot ask for a country it cannot draw. Where that happens the setup card says so and names them, and the numbers on the card always add up to the full roster.
Disputed and partially recognized territories
Every contested entity, and how it behaves in play. The through-line: a place counts as a country when it actually governs itself and a meaningful part of the world says so, and whatever we decide is applied consistently across every quiz, in both directions.
For borders, the rule has two steps. A territory belongs to the state the world recognizes as sovereign, no matter who occupies it or for how long. Where the world recognizes no owner at all, the maps fall back to showing whoever actually administers each part. That one rule decides Crimea, the Golan Heights, Western Sahara, and Kashmir alike.
| Entity | Status | Our call | In play |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vatican City | UN observer state | Included | Counts in every country quiz. Its capital is Vatican City itself. |
| Palestine | UN observer state, recognized by most UN members | Included | Counts in every country quiz. Capital quizzes use Ramallah, the administrative seat. |
| Kosovo | Recognized by roughly half of UN members | Included | Counts in every country quiz. Consistently applied: Serbia subdivision quizzes cover the 25 districts of Serbia proper and exclude the districts of Kosovo, and on every map Kosovo is drawn as its own shape rather than as part of Serbia, so no square of ground is asked about twice. |
| Taiwan | Fully self-governing, limited formal recognition | Included | Counts in every country quiz; Republic of China and ROC are accepted when typing. China subdivision quizzes cover the 31 province-level divisions the PRC administers, and Taiwan is not among them. |
| Western Sahara | Disputed between Morocco and the Polisario Front | Not included | No single government administers the territory, so it does not work as a country answer. Typing it in a world quiz will not count. On maps its area renders as part of Morocco, the de-facto administrator of most of it. |
| Somaliland | Self-declared, recognized by no UN member | Not included | Treated as part of Somalia. Somalia subdivision quizzes include all 18 regions, including the ones Somaliland claims. |
| Northern Cyprus | Recognized only by Turkey | Not included | The whole island counts as Cyprus, whose capital is Nicosia. |
| Abkhazia & South Ossetia | Recognized by a handful of states | Not included | Treated as part of Georgia. |
| Transnistria | Self-declared, recognized by no UN member | Not included | Treated as part of Moldova. |
| Crimea | Occupied by Russia since 2014; Ukrainian under international law | Not included | Not a country, and consistently Ukrainian: on world and Europe maps Crimea fills in when you answer Ukraine, not Russia. Ukraine subdivision quizzes include Crimea and Sevastopol among the 27 first-level units, while Russia subdivision quizzes cover the 83 internationally recognized federal subjects and exclude them. Population is the one place the numbers part ways with the map: Crimea’s roughly two million residents count toward Russia’s population figure, not Ukraine’s, because Ukraine has been unable to census the peninsula since 2014 and the reference datasets count people where they are governed and taxed. |
| West Bank | Occupied Palestinian territory | Not included | Not a country answer. Israel subdivision quizzes cover the six standard districts and deliberately do not draw the West Bank as an Israeli district. |
| Golan Heights | Occupied by Israel since 1967; Syrian under international law | Not included | Not a country, and the same rule as Crimea: the UN Security Council declared the annexation void, and nearly every state agrees, so on world and Asia maps the Golan fills in when you answer Syria, not Israel. How long an occupation has lasted does not change the call. |
| Kashmir | Divided among India, Pakistan, and China; no recognized allocation | Not included | The one case where recognition gives no answer: no international body has ever assigned Kashmir to anyone. So, as with Western Sahara, the maps show who actually administers each part: Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh fill with India, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan with Pakistan, and Aksai Chin with China. India subdivision quizzes include Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh among the 36 units, since India administers them. |
| Cook Islands & Niue | Self-governing in free association with New Zealand | Not included | Not UN members and not counted; they may appear in future territory quizzes. |
| Greenland, Hong Kong, Macau, Puerto Rico & other territories | Dependent or special-status territories | Not included | Never count toward the 197 and never appear as answers in a country quiz. On world maps each fills in with its parent (Greenland with Denmark, Hong Kong and Macau with China, Puerto Rico with the United States). |
Statistics follow their sources. Population and area figures come from the standard reference datasets and keep those datasets' conventions even where they differ from the map: Crimea's roughly two million residents appear in Russia's population figure, because Ukraine has been unable to census the peninsula since 2014 and the statistical agencies count people where they are governed. The map shows who is recognized; the numbers show what is counted. Where a source offers both conventions we prefer the one the reference lists actually print.
One continent per country
Continent quizzes place every country in exactly one continent, so the six continents sum to the same 197. The transcontinental calls: Russia is in Europe. Turkey, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan are in Asia. Egypt is in Africa despite the Sinai. Timor-Leste is in Asia; Papua New Guinea is in Oceania.
Area and population figures are each country's total, not the share that sits inside the continent. So Russia enters the European rankings at its full 17 million square kilometres, and Turkey and Kazakhstan bring their whole area to Asia. Splitting a country at the continental divide would mean publishing a number no atlas prints, and would make the two halves of the same country compete against each other.
States, provinces, and regions
Subdivision quizzes use each country's internationally recognized first-level units, under the name an English-speaking quizzer actually knows: provinces, states, and regions in most places; oblasts, prefectures, cantons, voivodeships, governorates, and emirates where those are the established English terms. Notable cases:
- Russia: The 83 internationally recognized federal subjects. Crimea, Sevastopol, and the regions annexed in 2022 are Ukrainian and are not included.
- Ukraine: All 27 first-level units: 24 oblasts, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol. Occupation does not change what a place is.
- France: The 13 metropolitan regions (and, in the départements quizzes, the 96 metropolitan départements). Overseas regions and collectivities are territories with their own future home, not rows to pad a list with.
- United States: The 50 states. Washington, D.C. is not a state and is not one of the answers.
- China: The 31 province-level divisions the PRC administers: 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau are not among them.
- United Kingdom: England is quizzed on its 48 ceremonial counties, the historic set people actually know, rather than the shifting administrative map.
- Australia: The 6 states plus the Northern Territory and the ACT, eight answers in all, because leaving the territories out would surprise more people than including them.
- India: All 36 first-level units: 28 states and 8 union territories.
- Vietnam: The long-standing 63-province set. Vietnam merged provinces in 2025; we test the map the world learned, and will move when the new one settles into common knowledge.
- Norway: The 15 mainland counties. Svalbard and Jan Mayen are territories, not counties.
Some units have no consistent set of official flags (French regions, Chinese provinces, English counties), so those sets ship without a flags mode rather than inventing one.
Capitals
Where a country has more than one capital, the constitutional or official capital is the canonical answer, and the other defensible answers are accepted when you type them. Bolivia shows Sucre and accepts La Paz. South Africa shows Pretoria and accepts Cape Town and Bloemfontein. The Netherlands shows Amsterdam and accepts The Hague. Sri Lanka shows Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte and accepts Colombo. Tanzania shows Dodoma and accepts Dar es Salaam; Myanmar shows Naypyidaw and accepts Yangon. Israel is Jerusalem; Palestine is Ramallah.
Where one capital simply goes by two names, both are accepted whichever one the quiz prints: Monaco and Monaco City, Yaren and Yaren District, Tarawa and South Tarawa.
Untimed runs
Untimed is practice. Nothing from an untimed run is saved: no best, no time, no play count, no medal, no leaderboard place. It is there so you can learn a set without the clock, and it stays out of the records so nobody can farm a medal by taking all day. Every untimed run says so before you start, while you play, and on the results.
Beyond geography
The same discipline applies outside the atlas: every quiz states its inclusion rule, and the rule is applied strictly.
- Music: an artist's discography quiz covers solo studio albums only. Live albums, EPs, compilations, mixtapes, and soundtracks don't count, and neither does work with a band; the band gets its own quiz. Gwen Stefani's quiz has five albums; No Doubt's records live on No Doubt's quiz.
- Film: a franchise quiz covers the mainline theatrical films. Harry Potter is eight films, and Fantastic Beasts is a different franchise. Cast quizzes cover the principal billed cast, not cameos.
- Television: cast quizzes cover the series regulars, not guest or recurring players, however memorable the arc. A season-long villain billed as a guest star is still a guest star. Revivals, sequels, and prequels are separate shows: a quiz about an original series covers that series only, and anyone who only appears in a follow-up show is out of scope. When a revival is officially a later season of the same series, the quiz states which era it covers and holds that line: a set covering a show's original run does not include actors who joined for the revival. The line runs both ways: 24 covers the original eight seasons plus Live Another Day, the event season that continues the same story with the same lead, while 24: Legacy shares the title and the real time format but is a separate show with its own cast. The same rule covers remakes across countries: Euphoria is the American series, and the Israeli series it adapts is a separate show whose cast is never an answer here. Standalone special episodes count when the show itself bills them as part of the run: Euphoria's two bridge specials are in scope, and an actor billed only in them is a full answer. A cast list also needs two independent records to agree before a name ships: the show's own billed cast list and the public cast database. A performer listed in one source but not the other stays out until the records agree.
- Sports: rosters are season snapshots. Each season is its own quiz, so a player traded mid-career appears exactly where history put them.
- History: lists of rulers and office-holders use the standard roster and count each person once. US Presidents covers all 45 in order, so someone who served two non-consecutive terms is still one president. English and British monarchs run from the Norman Conquest of 1066. Roman emperor quizzes name the principal rulers, not every short-lived usurper.
- Awards: the Oscars, the Grammys, and league championships follow the official winner record, in chronological order.
- Sales and chart quizzes: best-seller quizzes rank by units the industry bodies have certified, not by the round numbers labels announce. Certifications only cover countries that publish them, so a total is a floor rather than a world figure. Chart quizzes follow the published year-end rankings for the chart named in the question.
Answers have to be knowledge, not arithmetic
A quiz only ships if getting the answers requires knowing something. Some game series name their releases by year, so a quiz asking you to type the games was really asking you to count: Madden NFL 18, 19, 20, and on. We removed every quiz with that shape, across fifteen game series, and the rule is now checked automatically before anything new goes live. Where the series has a better question we ask that instead: Madden's quizzes are now about its cover athletes, a different real person nearly every year. Where the titles were the only hook, the series keeps its trivia and drops the recital.
The same standard covers pictures: we will not ask you to name a game from its own box cover, because the cover prints the title. A crest or a character can be a fair clue; a picture of the answer's name cannot.
Wrong answers you could reasonably believe
A wrong option should be one you can rule out if you know the subject. Sometimes a record is missing from a published list for a reason no amount of knowledge would tell you: a cut-off falls in an awkward place, or the figures only count certain countries. Offering that record as a wrong answer punishes the people who know the most, so we leave it out of the options entirely, even when the list technically backs us up.
The case that set the rule: Blinding Lights is not in either published decade top ten, because the 2020s list stops just above it on certified units. It is also the most-streamed song ever recorded. Anyone tapping it would have had every reason to. It is not offered.
Difficulty settings and clues
A difficulty setting only appears when there is enough behind each one to be worth choosing. A quiz under sixteen questions offers no choice at all, up to twenty-four it offers two, and above that it offers three, and no single setting is allowed to hold fewer than eight questions. An Easy setting with two questions in it is not an easier quiz, it is a different and much shorter one, so we would rather offer nothing than offer that.
On quizzes that show every row at once and use difficulty to control how much help you get, the hardest setting still has to leave you something to work from. Naming the number-one album of every year is hard; being shown seventy blank rows is not hard, it is unanswerable. The year stays visible on every setting, and the easier settings add the artist and a first letter on top of it. We also do not show a decade next to an exact year, which tells you nothing you can't already see.
Spelling, aliases, and typos
It's a knowledge test, not a spelling test. Type-in quizzes accept the names people actually use: USA, Britain, Czechia, Ivory Coast, and Holy See all land. Accents are optional; cote d'ivoire works fine. Leading "the" is ignored.
Honest misspellings count when they can only mean one answer: "nigiria" gets you Nigeria because nothing else is close. But when two answers are near neighbors, like Slovakia and Slovenia, we ask for precision, because guessing the midpoint shouldn't pay.
Sports teams accept their official three-letter code and their nickname on its own, so NYI, Islanders and Isles all land for the New York Islanders. What we deliberately do not accept is a city that two teams share: bare "NY" could be the Islanders or the Rangers, and picking one for you would mark the other wrong.
Albums and songs accept their famous alternate titles, not just the name on the sleeve. Dr. Dre's 2001 lands as The Chronic 2001, and the Beatles' self-titled record lands as The White Album. Where a record is widely known by more than one name, we accept the names people actually say.
Help on the Daily Cross
The mini crossword is built from everyday words, so it should be finishable most days without help. When it isn’t, Check is free and unlimited: it marks the letters you have wrong and costs you nothing. Reveal fills in a letter, a word, or the whole grid.
Revealing finishes the puzzle and keeps your daily streak alive, but it doesn’t count as a clean solve, so a revealed grid stays off the fastest-times board. A puzzle you never reveal anything on is timed and ranked normally.
Disagree?
Reasonable people draw these lines differently, and some of these calls are genuinely close. If you think we got one wrong, email contact@3r.app and make the case. More about the site on the about page.