Guess the Capital

How to play the world capitals quiz

Match a country to its listed capital, then put the country in geographical context. The country name and flag are your starting point; four capital names are your choices.

1. Start a question. Read the country name carefully before comparing the four capitals. Take your time; there is no countdown.
2. Choose one answer. Your first selection locks the options. The game shows the correct choice whether your answer was right or wrong.
3. Find the country. After answering, the globe turns toward a country reference point. Drag it to explore the surrounding region. The marker locates the country, rather than its borders or capital.
4. Continue when ready. Press Next question after reviewing the result, or use Skip before answering. A skipped question does not affect your totals.

Turn a wrong answer into a useful connection

Before looking through the choices, try recalling a capital on your own. Then compare that memory with the available answers. This gives you a way to notice whether you recalled the pair or recognised a familiar name.

After a mistake, say the country and correct capital together. Use the globe to place the country in a region, and note which city you confused with the answer. A familiar or large city is not automatically the capital the question asks for.

For another short activity, write down a few country names from your session. Later, try supplying their capitals without the choices. Keep your own notes for this exercise: the site’s running score is a record of answers in the current visit, not a saved study list.

Capitals that are not the largest city

A common mistake is choosing a country’s biggest or best-known city. In these well-known cases, the capital is a different city:

• Australia: Canberra — Sydney and Melbourne are both larger.
• Brazil: Brasília — São Paulo is the largest city.
• Canada: Ottawa — Toronto is the largest city.
• Ivory Coast: Yamoussoukro — Abidjan is the largest city and economic centre.
• Nigeria: Abuja — Lagos is the largest city.
• Pakistan: Islamabad — Karachi is the largest city.
• Turkey: Ankara — Istanbul is the largest city.
• United States: Washington, D.C. — New York City is the largest city.

To study capitals of Europe, Asia or another region before a round, use the capital column in the list of countries by continent. Start with European capitals or Asian capitals, then test yourself here; the quiz itself draws from the worldwide pool.

Which countries and capitals are included?

There are 200 eligible entries with a capital in the current local dataset. Entries without a listed capital are left out. Each question uses that entry’s stored capital name; the quiz does not try to resolve multiple-capital or recognition questions during play.

Each question has four different answer labels. The immediately previous target is left out of the next question, but an earlier country can return later. Questions are drawn for practice rather than as a checklist that works through the whole pool.

What your score means

Correct counts successful answers; Answered counts all submitted answers. For example, 6 correct from 10 answered means four submitted answers were incorrect. Skips add to neither total. There is no time bonus, penalty for thinking longer or fixed number of questions to finish.

The totals reset when you reload or leave the game. Professor Kogi’s prompts accompany your round; the result message supplies the answer. Quiz questions need JavaScript. The live globe uses WebGL, with a static Earth image as a fallback.

Keep discovering

Switch from city names to visual recognition in Guess the Flag. Browse every listed capital by continent in the country list, visit the geography quiz hub to choose a format, or use the random country generator to explore a place without a scored question.