How Worldspawn works

The basics

Every day there’s a new Round: five Questions about video games and esports. Each Question gives a Clue to a place in the real world. Tap that spot on the globe: that’s your Guess. The Reveal then shows the Answer, how far off you were, and a short Story about the place. Once enough Players have finished the Round, it also shows what share of them you beat on that Question, and a glow on the globe where they Guessed.

A new Round starts at midnight where you are, and everyone gets the same five Questions that day.

Accuracy

Each Guess scores an Accuracy from 0 to 100, from how far it lands from the Answer. Every Answer is a single spot, usually in a city: within 28 km of it is a perfect 100. The curve is steep close in and gentle far out: 300 km off, about as far as the next big city, scores 80; 1,500 km (932 mi) off scores 50; and only a Guess on the far side of the globe scores 0.

Multipliers and Points

Later Questions count for more. Each Question shows its Multiplier before you Guess, and the Points it scores are its Accuracy times its Multiplier.

A perfect Round scores 100 + 100 + 200 + 200 + 400 = 1,000.

The Boss question

The last Question is the Boss question: the hardest of the Round, and the only one worth ×4. A great Boss Guess can turn a Round around, and a wild one can sink it.

The dots

Your results and your Share text show a dot for each Question, by its Accuracy. The Boss question’s dot comes last, set apart. A green dot means a Guess within 110 km of the Answer, and a yellow one within 1,550 km.

• 🟢 Accuracy 90–100
• 🟡 Accuracy 50–89
• 🔴 Accuracy 1–49
• ⚫ Accuracy 0

Your Streak and stats

Your Streak counts the days in a row on which you’ve finished the Round. Miss a day and it starts again with the next Round you finish, unless you hold a Grace day. The home page and the game show your Streak, and until you’ve played today they remind you to play to keep it. The results celebrate 3, 7, 30, 100 and 365 days.

Each time your Streak reaches 7, 14, 21 or any multiple of 7 days, you earn a Grace day, and you can hold one at a time. Miss a single day and the Grace day covers it: your Streak carries on, though the missed day doesn’t add to it. Miss two days in a row and the Streak ends, Grace day or not. Your longest Streak counts Grace days the same way.

Your Streak and Grace day live on this device, since there are no accounts, so a new device or cleared browser data starts them over.

So do Your stats on the results: the Rounds you’ve played, your average and best Round score, whether a Grace day is ready, your longest Streak, and your Round scores over the last 14 days. The results also count down to the next Round, at your midnight.

After the Round

Your results show each Question with its Answer and Story, your Round score, and how you did against the Field: everyone who has finished today’s Round. Once enough Players have finished, you’ll also see what share of the Field you beat, a chart of everyone’s Round scores, the average, and the easiest and toughest Questions.

On a phone, Share opens your phone’s share sheet, so you can send your Share text straight to a chat. On a computer it copies the text, ready to paste.

The link in your Share text carries your Round score as a challenge. A friend who opens it sees “Beat 883 in Round #3” before they start, and the score to beat beside their Round score while they play. Their results say whether they beat it, and by how many Points.

A Round stays open while it’s that date somewhere on Earth, so a challenge opened the next morning still plays the Round it’s for, and its results then offer today’s. Leave that Round partway and come back without the link, and you can go on with it while it’s open, or play today’s instead; once you’re partway through today’s, that comes first. Once that Round has closed, the link opens today’s Round. A challenge for a Round that hasn’t started on your clock waits for it, and you play today’s meanwhile.

Credits

The globe is NASA’s Blue Marble. We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Place names, and the borders seen close up, come from OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap. The borders seen zoomed out, the countries the Reveal shows, and the names of some state and province capitals come from Natural Earth.

Where a browser has no flag emoji of its own, as on Windows, the flags come from Twemoji, © Twitter, Inc and other contributors, under CC BY 4.0, made into a font of just the flags.