Daily geography puzzle

How to play the Dead Drop

A handler sends you five coded dispatches about one real, well-known place, hardest first. The first dispatch decodes on screen, a scramble that resolves letter by letter. At any time you can do one of two things. Name it: type the place and pick it from the list. Or pin it: drag the brass pin onto the world map and press it in. A pressed pin is your final answer.

• The sooner you crack it, the more it is worth: 100 points on dispatch 1, then 80, 60, 40 and 20.
• A wrong name opens the next dispatch, so the case drops one band. A cross lands on the map with the distance to the real place.
• A place right next door to the answer earns a warm nudge and costs nothing.
• A pin scores by distance. Land inside the drop's zone for the full band, and the points fall away to nothing at 4,000 km.

Verdicts

Name it right, or pin it inside the zone, and the case is Recovered. A pin within 500 km is a Close call, and anything further is Wide of the mark. If you run out of dispatches and ask the Locksmith to show you, the case goes Gone dark. Every outcome still counts toward your streak.

Tips for geography puzzles

• Do not name the place on dispatch 1 unless you are sure. It is the hardest dispatch and worth the most, but a wrong name costs a band.
• Place it on the map first. Even a rough pin on the right continent tells you which names to rule out.
• Use every kind of clue: climate, language, a date, a river, a building style. Each dispatch narrows the world.
• Pin when you are close but not certain. A pin 500 km off still scores about half, and a wrong name costs you a whole dispatch.
• The list of places is the same every day, so it never gives the answer away. Scroll it for ideas.

What makes our geography puzzle different

You are not guessing from a photo. Every fact in a dispatch is sourced, and the answer is always a well-known place with a documented story. The map is an old sea chart drawn in code from public-domain Natural Earth data: parchment land, a deep blue-ink sea, a brass compass rose, no country names and no borders, so it never draws a disputed line. The pin is a heavy brass one that leans as you drag and sinks into the paper as you press. When you finish, the dead drop itself, a sealed envelope, slides onto the table at the spot, its seal cracks and a brass gauge sweeps to your distance. It runs in the browser, works with a keyboard and a screen reader, and has a 2D fallback for older devices.

A new case at your midnight

Each player gets the case for their own local date. One spare key covers a single missed day. The share card shows how many dispatches you read and your points, and never the place.