The expedition brief

Miles Off: the geography game on a real globe

Right on, or miles off? Up top is the whole game: no install, and no account needed to play. This page is the rest of the expedition kit. It covers what you're signing up for, how the scoring thinks, and a field guide's worth of real geography for getting better at it.

▴ Back to the globe

What is Miles Off?

Miles Off shows you a place name (a capital, a river, a desert, a strait) and gives you 10 seconds to click where it is on a rotatable 3D globe. No borders are labelled and no cities are marked; it's just land, water, and your own mental map. Points scale with how close you land and how fast you commit. When the answer is revealed, a dashed red arc snaps from your pin to the truth and tells you exactly how many miles off you were. Hence the name.

It's built on the conviction that geography is a skill, not trivia. After a few runs you stop reciting facts and start seeing the planet: which coastline that name belongs to, which latitude that climate implies, which hemisphere that city has been hiding in all along.

The campaign

The main mode is an expedition through 12 themed rounds of increasing obscurity, 6 places each drawn from a pool of roughly 800 real locations, from world capitals and famous landmarks out through straits, ancient ruins and remote outposts most atlases mumble over. Clear a rising points bar to advance, 12,100 in the first round and climbing steeply after; fall short and the expedition ends. Several rounds are feature rounds, where the answer is a whole river, lake, desert, sea or strait: pin anywhere on it and it counts, though the giant targets pay less than the small ones. Finish (or fail gloriously) and your total converts to an Explorer IQ between 70 and 200, with a rank title to match.

The Daily Challenge

A new set of 5 places goes live at your local midnight each day, so it is fresh every morning wherever you are: the same 5 for everyone playing that date, one attempt each. The latest is around Daily Nº 11. Scores are re-computed on the server from your raw pins (nobody can hand-edit a total), ranked on the public leaderboard, and folded into your streak. A spoiler-free share grid lets you gloat without giving the answers away.

More ways to play

The Live Showdown runs twice a day at fixed times: everyone who joins the window plays the same five places at the same moment, and the board fills live as runs land (free, with an account). Category packs are timed runs on one slice of the atlas, from the world's rivers to Europe: every pack keeps its own leaderboard and is free to play once a day. The Picture Round shows you a photo and no name at all. Head to Head sends a challenge link to a friend. And because every pin feeds real data, the reveal can tell you that you landed closer than 84 per cent of explorers on a place, while your personal Blind Spots list maps exactly which places you keep missing, and lets you drill precisely those.

Scoring, in one paragraph

Each guess earns distance points on an exponential curve that is generous inside a few hundred kilometres and ruthless past a few thousand, plus a speed bonus for the clock you didn't use. Land within 30 km and it counts as a bullseye for full distance marks. The exact formulas, worked examples and edge cases are all in How scoring works.

The field guide

Half the guides document the game's mechanics; the other half are working notes on the world itself: the anchors, patterns and honest tricks that turn a vague mental map into a sharp one. They're written to be useful whether or not you ever start the clock.

Playing Miles Off

How scoring worksThe exact formulas: distance points, the bullseye, the speed bonus, and how a run becomes an Explorer IQ.Feature rounds, explainedRivers, lakes, deserts, seas and ranges: why pinning anywhere on the Amazon scores zero kilometres.The Daily Challenge & leaderboardsOne shot a day, the same five places for everyone, server-verified scores, and streaks.Getting better: reading the globeAnchors, coastline logic, and the classic mistakes that cost players thousands of kilometres.

Knowing the world

A mental map in twelve anchorsThe dozen cities that pin down the whole planet, and how to place everything else relative to them.Why everyone misplaces AfricaMercator lied to you. True sizes, latitude surprises, and how to recalibrate your inner map.Latitude tells: reading climate into positionDeserts at 25°, vineyards at 40°, taiga at 60°: how a place’s climate leaks its coordinates.The world’s most confusable placesSlovakia or Slovenia? Dakar or Dhaka? The look-alike names that cost players entire hemispheres.Seven straits that explain the mapGibraltar to Malacca: the narrow waters that organise world geography (and a lot of world history).How far is a degree?The 111-kilometre rule, why longitude shrinks toward the poles, and what a great circle really is.The capitals nobody guessesBrasília, Canberra, Astana, Naypyidaw: purpose-built capitals, and why the biggest city is so often wrong.Where the atlas goes sparse: island nationsLearning the arcs of the Pacific, Caribbean and Indian Ocean instead of hunting single pixels.The 10 hardest countries to placeThe -stans, the two Guianas, the Horn micro-states and the Pacific outliers: the countries people miss most, and how to pin each.Why nobody guesses NaypyidawMyanmar's built-from-nothing capital, the moved-capital trap that fools everyone, and how to actually place it.The great circle illusionWhy the shortest path looks bent on a flat map, why flights to Asia arc over the Arctic, and how it warps your guesses.

The hardest places on Earth (measured)

Every anonymous pin feeds a live chart of humanity's geographic blind spots: the places people miss by the most, the spots everyone nails, and the names that freeze players until the timer dies. See the current standings, and the methodology, on The Hardest Places to Find.

Free to play, honestly run

The campaign and the Daily Challenge are free with no account; a free account adds leaderboards, streaks, the Live Showdown, head-to-head challenges and one ranked category run a day. A small premium tier funds the servers and unlocks unlimited packs, the daily archive, untimed practice (including your personal Blind Spots drill) and deeper stats. Leaderboard scores are server-verified, anonymous play stays anonymous, and the full details live in the privacy policy.

Quick answers

When does the daily reset? At your local midnight, so it is fresh each morning. Everyone still gets the same puzzle for a given date.
Do rivers and deserts need an exact point? No. Pin anywhere on the feature and the distance is zero, but bigger features pay fewer points. That's the feature rule.
Do I need an account? Only for leaderboards and streak sync. The campaign plays fully signed-out.
Can scores be faked? Ranked scores are recomputed server-side from raw guesses, so no.

More in the full FAQ, or write to us via the contact page.

▴ To the globe · play Daily Nº 11