December 04, 2004

The geography Olympics

Remember my earlier post on geography and maps? Now there is a worldwide geography quiz, where you can enter and play for your country. You just have to locate 10 countries on a world map and your score affects the world ranking of your country.
Of course, humility never being my forte, I scored a perfect 100% (twice!), and helped New Zealand improve its standing by 0.02%. (A score addition to the average helps less and less as the number of participants grows) But it's still a paltry 56% overall, and a placing at 105th. Australia is 4% behind us in 134th place. So get playing! It's free.
As an aside: Vatican City scores 63% with 233 participants so far. Since it only has 1,000 inhabitants, you have to wonder whether those priests, monks and, more intriguingly, the Swiss Guards have nothing else to do. I guess the Holy Papa scored 100% too with a little help from his supernatural friends (with a steadier hand than his).

UPDATE: I've played it half a dozen times now - still with an intact 100% score each - but the system is flawed: you can play for a country different from your own as they don't check IP sources. This means you can bring a disliked country's score down by playing really badly, or alternatively, play really well for a country listed just below the country you want to bring down in the ranking (as I did with Australia by playing for Luxembourg) - choose a country to play for with a low participant count, then your average will make a bigger difference.

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