Country Game

Distance

The shortest great-circle gap between the countries’ land boundaries or coastlines. A shared land border is exactly zero. Maritime neighbors can still be kilometers apart. “Farthest” means the largest of the three shortest gaps.

Distances are approximate, derived from Natural Earth’s 1:10 million map. For two nonzero distances, a gap of 10 km or less is a game tie: accept either answer. This is a house rule, not a guarantee of survey accuracy. Known land borders take precedence over a small water gap.

Main regions, consistently

USA includes Alaska and Hawaii. France means European France and Corsica; UK means Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Denmark excludes Greenland and the Faroes. Norway excludes Svalbard and Jan Mayen. Portugal means mainland Portugal; Spain includes the Balearics but excludes the Canaries and North African enclaves.

Other countries retain their main map units, including archipelagos. Dependencies and distant overseas regions are excluded. These are gameplay conventions, not statements about sovereignty.

Border chain

Check any of 197 entries: 193 UN members, Palestine, Vatican City, Taiwan and Kosovo. Entries are included for gameplay without taking a position on recognition.

A documented land border or an accepted maritime boundary counts. Agreed boundaries, court rulings and joint regimes are included. Disputed claims and calculated maritime median lines alone are unresolved; skip them. If another segment proves a connection, it still counts. “No connection” means none recorded in this version of the ruleset.

Enter A and B, then tap Add to chain. After that, A follows the last country automatically. Previously used countries cannot be added. Undo corrects a mistaken addition; Clear all starts fresh.

Fixed facts, quick answers

Population uses the World Bank’s 2024 country estimates. Taiwan is absent from that series, so its value is the official end-2024 household-registration total (23,400,220); this has a different reporting basis. National population totals follow that source’s reporting coverage; they are not recalculated for the distance rules.

All answers come from the deck edition dated October 31, 2026. Once loaded, checking an answer needs no network request. A reload still needs the page available.

Sources: World Bank population · Natural Earth (public domain) · Marine Regions / Flanders Marine Institute (CC BY 4.0). Geographic records are filtered and derived for the rules above. View this edition’s data.