Chart № 08 · Questions from the crew
Frequently Asked Questions
Short answers to the questions that reach the contact desk most. For the deeper mechanics there is a whole shelf of guides.
What is Miles Off?
Miles Off is a free browser game about knowing where things are. You get a place name (a city, river, desert or landmark) and ten seconds to pin it on an unlabelled 3D globe. Points scale with how close and how fast you are. There is a twelve-round campaign drawn from over 800 real places, plus a five-place Daily Challenge shared by every player in the world.
When does the Daily Challenge reset?
At your local midnight, every day, so it is fresh each morning wherever you are (no waiting for some fixed hour in another timezone). Everyone still plays the same puzzle for a given date; it just unlocks at each player’s own midnight. The start screen shows a live countdown to your next daily.
Why do I only get one attempt at the daily?
Because everyone plays the same five places, a second attempt would just be a memory test. One shot keeps the leaderboard honest and the share grids meaningful. If you miss a day, the archive (a premium feature) lets you play past dailies casually, without affecting leaderboards or streaks.
How does scoring work?
Each guess earns distance points on a sharp curve (the score halves roughly every 450 km, so being close matters a lot) plus a speed bonus for unused clock. Landing within 30 km is a bullseye worth full distance marks. A campaign run converts to an Explorer IQ between 70 and 200. The full formulas are in the "How scoring works" guide.
How exact do I need to be for rivers, lakes and deserts?
Not exact at all: those are feature rounds. Pin anywhere on the river, lake, desert, sea or mountain range and your distance counts as zero. The catch is size: a hit on a huge feature like the Sahara pays about half the points of a hit on a small one, because the giant is so much easier to land on. For misses, distance is measured to the nearest point of the feature, not its centre.
Do I need an account to play?
No. The campaign and the Picture Round run fully signed out, and your history stays in your browser. A free account adds the ranked Daily Challenge, the Live Showdown, head-to-head challenges, one ranked category run a day, leaderboards, and streak sync across devices.
What is the Live Showdown?
Twice a day, at fixed times, a fifteen-minute window opens: everyone who joins plays the same five places, and the board fills live as runs land. One shot per showdown, free with an account. The lobby on the start screen counts down to the next one.
What is the Picture Round?
A photo and no name: you are shown a real photograph of a famous place and pin where you think it is. Five places per round, free to play a few times a day, unlimited with premium.
How are leaderboard scores verified?
Your device submits raw guesses (coordinates and timing), and the server recomputes the score itself; a client-reported total is never trusted. Sessions are also time-boxed server-side. That is why daily ranks are labelled server-verified.
How do streaks work?
Play the daily on consecutive days (by your local date) and the streak counts up. Missing a day resets it. Replaying old dailies from the archive does not extend a streak; only today’s puzzle counts. Signed in, your streak syncs across devices.
What does premium include?
Unlimited Category Challenge runs (free accounts get one ranked pack run a day), unlimited Picture Rounds, the daily archive (play any past daily), untimed practice for every round including your personal Blind Spots drill (the places you keep missing, dealt back to you worst first), a deeper stats page, a second-chance retry in failed campaign runs, and no ads if ads are ever shown. It is priced as a small monthly or yearly subscription and can be managed or cancelled any time from your account page.
What data do you collect?
As little as the features need. Signed-out play stores history in your own browser; anonymous guess events (place, pin location, distance, timing, with no account identifier) feed the public difficulty charts. Signed-in daily submissions store your account id, display name and raw guesses. Full details, including deletion, are in the privacy policy.
A place seems wrong or unfair. How do I report it?
Email hello@miles-off.com via the contact page. Include the place name and, for daily issues, the Daily number from the result screen. Reports genuinely shape the location pools.
What does it run on? Do I need to install anything?
Nothing to install: Miles Off runs in any modern browser with WebGL, on desktop or phone. The globe is MapLibre GL rendering OpenFreeMap tiles, with all labels stripped so the map never spoils an answer.
Still curious?
Write to hello@miles-off.com, or start with today's five places and let the reveal arcs do the explaining.