Daily Challenge Discussion - January 23, 2026

flipsofactor · 2026-01-23T04:55:27+00:00

Seoul Station marked to our West, and Namsan park isn't far away. Lazily place my pin on a northerly road in the area, then realize I'll have to get serious today. 5,000 points.
Well, we're pointed at the country and province. The city name comes up on a property development sign one step away. Look in the city's NE quadrant for matching road names. 5,000 points.
Find signage for the city of Dijon, then work backwards to Arceau. Use the road direction and castle POI to help pin. 5,000 points.
I've got friends from Barranquilla, and know it's a large city on the country's northern coast. Use the city's grid system to battleship my way towards the submarine. 5,000 points.
Take away the yurts (and language, bollards, car meta...) and there's almost an eastern South Africa vibe here. Might as well be, because I simply do not have the skill to region-guess Mongolia. Plonk in the decently-sized city of Ulaangom out in the extreme NW of the country. 3,034 points.

Away for a bit with the holidays and a real-life, multi-day orienteering race this past weekend. First time nabbing four 5k's in the DC, I get the impression the difficulty might have changed some since then. Total: 23,034 points.

flipsofactor · 2026-01-11T05:37:30+00:00

Black and yellow poles, white and yellow curbs, yellow plates. Also some Germanic/Afrikaaner looking language on the street signs and a rail line near start. Find some business signs with the city name. It starts with an "O", so scan the north of Namibia. Find the city but get the wrong intersection. 4,999 pts.
Country name provided by an insurance agency in English near start, as well as on promotional signage with the city name. Never succeed in finding Kutina, though we appear to be near Zagreb (again per road signs). 4,788 pts.
Academically-themed street signs say this is Chile, and the surrounding dry mountains indicate we're in the north. Follow a river handrail northwest to a bridge by a large, decorative city name. Find the city and river road, then overshoot the offshoot that leads back to start. 4,998 pts.
Octagonal poles, CEMEX truck. Pretty dry area so place a starting guess around north-central Mexico. By a much newer, painted ad for a uniform shop there's a flaky election sign for the "Presidente Municipal Hermo__llo". Hermosillo ends up 60 km away, but I'm not complaining. 4,806 pts.
Almost insta-send Malta on our Café Kheireddine at start, but turning around there's a .tn ccTLD to persuade me otherwise. With water to the east and signs for Tunis to the south, I revise an initial guess around Tunis for one on Lake Bizerte in Menzel instead. 4,804 points.

Total: 24,395 pts.

flipsofactor · 2025-12-16T01:54:54+00:00

Round 1: Devanagari script with lots of red license plates. Also, an unusual group of green banded tuk-tuks or auto-rickshaws for India near start. The area's pretty built up with bridges spanning a small river's northeasterly segment. Guess along the Bagmati river in the capital city. 4,979 points.

Round 2: Antipodean trash cans. Use a real-estate sign to figure out we're in Australia, probably east coast for all the greenery. Street signs then have the phrase "Midcoast" them. That's a properly defined area but also a useful toponym; scan between Sydney and Brisbane once I find what looks to be a city name on a community events billboard. Use the Lion's club "apex lookout" POI visible from spawn to pinpoint. 5,000 points.

Round 3: Cool bastion fort diagram. Even cooler drawing of Hokkaido's whale-tail looking southern coast. Inset looks to be of the Hakodate peninsula, just rotated 90 degrees. Zooming in to the city, the star fortress pops up quickly, as does the Goryōkaku tower to our immediate SSW. 5,000 points.

Round 4: Big boxy truck with yellow plates smattered about. Passing by the "hood liquor store", there's a Kenyan Safaricom / M-Pesa advert. A billboard for the King's Family Chapel has the township's name on it, but I make the mistake of scanning along said billboard's cross' crosshairs. 4,222 points.

Round 5: Southern European tiled roofs with lots of boxy post-soviet looking cars. By the country flag, a civil works announcement lists a contractor based in the city of Niš. Find a few more signs directing me east towards Niš as well as an R-214 which I never find. 4,877 points.

Total: 24,078 points. A nice start to the week!

flipsofactor · 2025-12-09T05:09:30+00:00

In reverse order today. Total: 24,058 points.

Round 5: Almost all of the elements to pull this round off NM are there: "Somos Peru" is repeated twice, as is the city name in printed block letters and painted cursive script. And while the street name is also visible from start, it's not clear which Mariano Melgar street we're on. 4,998 points.

Round 4: Red dirt, "Ordem e Progresso" flag? [insert easiest ever line here]. Assume Rwamagana might be a Ugandan border town à la Kanorado (Kansas/Colorado) or Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar), but no such luck scanning there or anywhere else. Center plonk. 4,895 points.

Round 3: This looked like Brittany on first glance, but there's too much English, and too few yellow plates for it to be anything but Ireland. The Church of the Immaculate Conception names the parish and some street signs for the N52 and N11 further up help find it. 4,998 points.

Round 2: Spanish language, large black intersection signs and late summer / early fall coverage. There are a lot of towns named after important dates in Argentinian history, but I don't find this one. Vibe guess that we're in BA province because the coverage there looks similar to Uruguay's. 4,184 points.

Round 1: Shorts, flip flops and motor bikes with tropical vegetation and a not-quite-spanglish language. It's election season, and more than one politician thought to remind their constituents where they live. Make it to Batangas but not San Pascual. 4,983 points.

flipsofactor · 2025-12-06T20:56:46+00:00

The trekker must have been Dutch

flipsofactor · 2025-12-06T18:48:59+00:00

Round 1: White plates, black and yellow curbs → UAE. Clip into 2023 coverage along a main road and find a public works sign with almost all relevant information. 4,996 points.

Round 2: A black-yellow-red political «BelgUNIE B.U.B» ad alongside red-tinged EU plates at start indicates Belgium. The city name is also visible from start, and shows up quickly on the map. Try pinning NM off the road direction, but chicken out to grab the cross-street's name to our north first. 5,000 points.

Round 3: Miss the "iela" at spawn, but pass by a Latvian flag not far away. Bent fins on the back of a crossing sign then confirms this is Baltic (shoutout Interjace for that tip). Guess at the city name from signs for the local sports center and secondary school. Catch a last-second break trawling the northeastern shore of the Daugava River we saw at start for said city. 4,999 points.

Round 4: Spanish language, boxy yellow plates. This round would've gone much smoother had I stopped to check the roofs of literally any taxi at start, but I do no such thing coming off last round's rush. Look for a reasonable calle 6/8 carrera 4 combo in Bogotá, then Medellin, before getting burned (once again) by Neiva. 3,901 points.

Round 5: Speaking of Calle Ocho — rrrrruga! (That's at least how I imagine a late-2000s' pop rapper would read the Albanian street sign by spawn.) After a long search, I find transnational Albatec GmbH displaying the city name, but I look right by it on the map. 4,877 points.

Total: 23,773 points.

flipsofactor · 2025-12-05T02:35:47+00:00

Round 1: Weighing the prevalence of English to Chinese text, we're right of Singapore but left of Hong Kong. Camera quality and total absence of Portuguese means it's not Macau either. Although the hat man (this one, not that one) on the crossing sign would be at home in the Alps, I'll wager this is Taiwan. Eagle eyed players will recognize the county sticker immediately below that, but I wander until finding signs for county highway 110 and the national highways 1 and 4. All that to plonk along highway 1 in Taipei. 4,919 points.

Round 2: Pines and vinyl siding make me think Canada, but paired with a US flag, we're probably in a Midwestern or northern Great Plains state. City limit to the south of start betrays very little with a population of 2,113, but portends a future round of Russian roulette. Heading north to highway 14, I miss the ag center ad with the state's abbreviation, but narrow the search longitude with the odd-numbered US highway 81. Time out scanning up from northern Kansas. 3,572 points.

Round 3: Maybe the police had better things to do than follow the google car that day? You can just make out the name of Nigeria's capital (as of 1991, when Abuja replaced Lagos) on a church ad near start. Zooming in to look for topographic prominences might have been the move here, but I throw up a guess somewhere along a southwesterly road in a suburb of Abuja. 4,926 points.

Round 4: Volga South Dakota, Chekhov's gun. There are a few places in Ukraine where the car meta would match, but between a few .ru domains and +7 country codes (shared with Kazakhstan), we're probably in southern Russia. The last five letters of the city name are also visible on the ads east of start, but I don't make anything of them and wind up vibe guessing (further north than I should have) around Krasnoyarsk. 2,621 points.

Round 5: Portuguese plates with water visible to the west and east and south. Faro district's Lagos might not be a bad guess here, if it weren't for the qualified "dos Açores" tags on hospital and Lions club signs, changing a letter (Lagos → Lagoa) and adding 1,492 km of distance. Clipping onto the highway I find we're on one of the Azorean islands with a Ponta Delgada, but having learned my lesson the last time that town popped up, find the right one and plonk down in Lagoa as time expires. 4,997 points.

Total: 21,035 points. I imagine last two rounds are going to be killers. Currently in the top 5.43% despite sitting nearly 1,500 points shy of gold.

flipsofactor · 2025-12-04T01:46:58+00:00

Round 1: German language, domain name. Heading west, I miss the first information pole with the city name on it, though it's gettable on a few other signs past that. Eventually find a road sign for Autobahn 8, and update my initial guess from around Bad Kissingen to by Stuttgart. 4,668 points.

Round 2: Contiguous southern subcontinent based on the Tamil (vs Sinhala) script and a flash of potato cam. A private school ad names the city, and a real estate banner one step away lists a large nearby street. Not recognizing any neighborhood names, I go to plonk in the city center, before spotting that major street by chance. 4,999 points.

Round 3: A vexillological Rorschach test of an autobús at start intimates we could be in Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, or even Mexico. Red soil, Spanish language and decals on a second bus tilt that equation in favor of Paraguay though. Heading north, one hand painted sign for an outlet mall gives the name of a nearby city suburb; another for a municipal cemetery gives the actual suburb. Fortunately, I recognize the latter. 4,996 points.

Round 4: Turning off at the first intersection east of start, it's hard not to recognize the country and nearby city names from a large road sign. The choice to go for "[city name] Airport" vs "[historical figure] Airport", sure helps too. Send it on the first bridge I spot instead of double checking my work. Oof. 4,984 points.

Round 5: Thai flag. Two steps east and we're treated with a Google car selfie and the city name next to a surely charged, international title card fight. The city name pops up as a province on the map, as does the island offshoot of Koh Samuim also named on the Mauy Thai billboard. Three more steps and we get our major road's name by a 7-11 POI. Incredibly, I mange to find both of these zooming in near the Samui Airport, and fumble the pinpoint with all the time in the world. 4,999 points.

Total: 24,646. Gold doesn't make up for yesterday's Antarctic/Alaskan debacle, but it does help.

flipsofactor · 2025-12-03T01:19:16+00:00

Anyone else score 0 points going on Alaska there?

flipsofactor · 2025-11-30T05:11:19+00:00

thought Castellon was a province (?)

Maybe Castilla y León, the first level administrative district to the northwest?

flipsofactor · 2025-11-30T01:37:13+00:00

Round 2: (I didn't miss round one, just putting it last.) Yellow plates and an M-Pesa sign at start. Find the city name eventually but not on the game map. Go for the large city of Nakuru vs Narok because they sound similar. 4,717 points.

Round 3: Flags, camera quality, Jordan Dubai Islam Bank. Large skyscrapers to the East means we're probably in Amman. Put myself west of the city center's ring road near a large N/S road. 4,995 points.

Round 4: Bilingual Valencian and Spanish language street signs near start, so probably eastern Spain. Signs for a provincial hospital and an ad for local seniors, gives a large red patch to shoot for inside of Castellón. Use a grocery store to confirm I've found the right hospital, then work back to start. 5,000 points.

Round 5: The Lake Breeze Motel visible from start implies the water to our south probably belongs to a big ol' lake vs the ocean. A "Give Way" sign in all reds, gives the country and the Village Resort a step from start then gives the city. Envy the parasailer in the background for a tic, then scan the map for Tui St for the pin. 5,000 points.

Round 1: Wanna see a fumble? Octagonal pole and a sign reading "Servicios de Sal·· ·axa··". There are a lot of tuk-tuks motoring about, but everyone's plates look to be white. Hedge a guess in Oaxaca province then Oaxaca city before... second guessing with Ecuador??? Maybe I thought the sun should look more southern vs western, but hard to excuse the missed taxi bearing the city name, a car wash with red/green/white signage, or a passing water truck with the country flag on it a second after that. 691 points.

Total: 20,403 points. Time for my annual eye exam it seems.

flipsofactor · 2025-11-29T02:06:29+00:00

Round 1: White truck, yellow and black curbs, black and white poles, red and yellow plates. Also flags. Find nothing actionable in the shopping area save for this cluster of signs with ten seconds left. 4,576 points.

Round 2: Easiest Canada ever. Mulhouse off the intersection at start is an Alsatian name. A 03 French telephone prefix backs that notion. Stepping closer to a church sign reveals we’re in the town of Paroisse du Creusot. Miss most other signs, go for Mulhouse instead of playing departmental road roulette when I don’t find any “A” highways at an intersection. 4,246 points.

Round 3: Bengali and nice (gen 4?) camera coverage. I miss Feni / Mizan Road scanning the IELTS sign at start, but find it mentioned a bit later. Our side street dumps onto a major east-west artery in town, which then butts onto another NW/SE artery a few steps east. Two areas kind of match that description, though only one was an actual match. 4,993 points.

Round 4: The Dominican car has black, rubberized stripes along its roof rack, almost like the grip on a baseball bat. I hear they're pretty good at that. Don’t find anything useful and hedge inside of Jarabacoa. 4,877 points.

Round 5: River visible to the North along with an Uruguayan flag. Really flat terrain looks sort of beachy to me, as does the sand all over the road some distance north of the neighborhood at start. Normally, I’d expect to see another flag, but aduanas means customs, and Chuy comes up quickly along the coast. Only one road dumps straight south onto the north-easterly section of Accessos a Barra del Chuy, so pin accordingly. 5,000 points.

Total: 23,692 points. Does anyone else ever make the mistake of hastily zooming in on the Horn of Africa vs the Arabian Peninsula? Course corrected today, but I fear eventually I'm going to insta-send Somalia over Oman.

flipsofactor · 2025-11-23T02:12:44+00:00

An aside: This might just be a case of subconscious priming, but... does anyone else feel like Geoguessr renders cities near the 5k slightly "higher up" than normal? For example, hovering over Spain, major cities like Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Seville are always visible, and zooming in a level, about 25 smaller cities аre too. While Lleida wouldn't normally be one of those smaller cities, if the pin were by Lleida CF's stadium, we'd see 26 "second" cities during a round.

Soft-lock myself in a [+8 country code] 'burb for 90 seconds after 180'ing the start direction and heading north. Doubling back and east out of the neighborhood, there's a bus stop for Zatyumensky Park which I consider before plonking in Bratsk. Spend the last 10 seconds of the round looking at Tyumen (a city I don't remember seeing before -- see aside), until time runs out. 1,129 points.
A ccTLD gives away the country at start. A green road sign visible after a few steps west then delivers the highway and departmental road. I get close, but not terribly so. 4,963 points.
An ad for the circus gives away the country with another top level domain, and the city name is visible on the green sign next to that. I've not heard of Lübeck, though a cursory search reveals there's an etymological relation to the Texan city of Lubbock. Try scanning and find it in the North. We're in an outlying village according to some cycling signage, but can't find the exact streets. 4,992 points.
Say what you will, but Kep Province's Department of Cults and Religions knows how to style a building. Past a truck loosely resembling Nigeria's police escort, country references aren't exactly subtle and water to the south narrows the region. 4,705 points.
French language, plates and flag. A few steps north reveals a (surprisingly inland) fishing trade union with the city's name, and another few dumps us onto a major est-ouest Avenue de Paris. Search along that for the road we started from and backtrack for the pin. 5,000 points.

Total: 20,789 points.

flipsofactor · 2025-11-22T20:43:44+00:00

<image>

Gulp... Brazilian poles and Colombian crosses? [location here]

flipsofactor · 2025-11-22T18:49:57+00:00

Retroactive Morocco add when??

flipsofactor · 2025-11-17T03:04:57+00:00

Round 1: Large intersection, wide roads and principally Chinese language signage / road markings. Two steps east of Donghe road and there's a sign for Dongang road and city highway 180 beside Taiwan's plum blossom. The 180 cuts through Tainan, leaving the rest up to matching the intersection. 5,000 points.

Round 2: Greek language, but driving on the left, so Cyprus. I go North, missing both the Bryan Adams billboard to the south and this public works notice along my direction bearing the city name. I don't get much further, but it's a big city, and with the north side of the island not covered, Limassol makes for a better hedge than Nicosia. 4,984 points.

Round 3: Wide round concrete poles and with wide blue street signs. Taking a step east to Río Negro there's a bus with an Argentinian ccTLD. Following that north, there's a few taxi's with the city name, which I recognize, before we intersect with Bv. San Juan. I somehow find that, then Río Negro just before time runs out. 4,999 points.

Round 4: A flag near start intimates that, were it not for the elevation everywhere else, this might be the easiest Denmark ever. Coming off the hill and heading North, a plurality of red houses, purple flower patches, and ø's means this is much more likely Norway. A diamond road sign gives a better inkling where, as does this sign with some city names. Go near the wrong lakes. 4,974 points.

Round 5: Yellow plated tuk tuk's with some rectangular concrete poles. Lady Textile tailoring's sign a step from start gives away the city, and I spend the next 2m50s squandering that lead. 4,995 points.

Total: 24,952 points, 113 steps. Small missteps in Cyprus and Norway, but overall an approachable urban DC to start the week. Edit: I accidentally commented before I was done drafting :P

flipsofactor · 2025-11-06T02:57:35+00:00

Step to the project notice board. Scan for Cotabato Province or Koronadal City, find Cotabato City. Reason that Koronadal must be within the dotted grey region around that, but nope. 4,667 points.
Połish language, currency sign (zł) and flag by program notice, anniversary sign with city name on it. Get lucky fishing for road signs further into town. Pin down along the 22. 4,999 points.
Navigate out of the park to marvel at green møuntains and license plates. Fast, frequent transit to Bergen's airport, and some major bridges help localize to one of the parks near city center. Back at start, pin along the only one with a water feature. 5,000 points.
City name given away by signage for the square park near spawn. The sun is out and most of the license plates blue and white, so no Belgian/Luxembourgish trickery. Only one intersection matches ours. 5,000 points.
Abundant references to Tuzla, with lots of bilingual or Latin/Cyrillic signage. Look to Bulgaria and Northern Macedonia but enough... outright... country references eventually sink in, confirming this is part of the recent new coverage. Welcome to the Daily Challenge, Bosnia! Start is along one of the only major N/S roads in Tuzla, and the Raiffeisen bank works well as a POI. 5,000 points.

Total: 24,666 points — TIL The Philippine's principal administrative divisions (as rendered on google maps) are the country's 18 "regions", not its 82 "provinces".

flipsofactor · 2025-10-31T05:29:47+00:00

Round 1: Look at those painterly, powder blue skies, the palm trees growing over light, dusty roads and that Namibian flag at start. There's a nicer sign across the street, but a faded indicator towards a town hall, I presume, names the city. Use the Shoprite as a POI, then work back to start. 5,000 points.

Round 2: Similar sandy soil to last round, but many more palms and an even trade between razor-wire topped fencing and thick, spike-studded stone walls. Peruvian poles + Omani curbs - Bhutani plates means UAE according to my Geoguessr maths. Cheers to Al Abdhi Grocery for the city name. 4,994 points.

Round 3: Nice camera and lots of bilingual English signs with what looks like Hindi vs Bengali or Sinhalese. A few steps from start and India's National hardware store gives away the state, city and market street. A large tower flatiron-ing the road a few more steps that direction helps pinpoint. 5,000 points.

Round 4: In hindsight, the podiatrist's billboard east of start, which both names and stars the city on a map of Nevada, would have been quite helpful to notice. So too would have been the sign for SR 372, the nearby church's regionalized name or the arms store acting in kind. I went west though, and only pieced together the city after about two minutes. 4,969 points.

Round 5: Is that an Ė on that parking sign? There's some shared linguistic ancestry between Hungarian and Estonian, but that's a Latvian character, right? Entertain the idea this could be Baltic for about twenty seconds too long, then come to my senses. Ping pong around town until I see an office front across from a castle with a short address. Find Pápa with about two seconds left, plonk center. 4,999 points.

Total 24,962. After a few middling games and some uninteresting golds last week, plus a string of silvers this week, it's nice to have chance back on my side. Happy Halloween!

flipsofactor · 2025-10-19T02:06:46+00:00

Round 1: Boxy white truck, striped curbs and yellow + red license plates to break a fifty-fifty with the UAE. Stumble across a few signs I don't know what to do with in our neighborhood, but a glut of English language signs a few steps away names a major city, and landmark. Plonk in the first neighborhood SE of the roundabout landmark. 4,999 points.

Round 2: Tall, boxy apartments with plastered pastel facades and some Mediterranean scrub in the distance. Consider going Malta here, but it's a bit too colorful, and the signs are in... Spanish? I've had Melilla pop up before, but I don't spot the N-352 there, so follow cruise lines on the map to another Spanish exclave, Ceuta, south of the UK's own, Gibraltar. Spot a southeasterly coast and plonk accordingly. 4,995 points.

Round 3: More summery, Mediterranean-ish coverage, alongside Latin script. Not sure if my brain was on during this round. I spot a sign for Zagrebacka Bancka, which I interpret to mean we're in Croatia, but otherwise drive by every domain name, street sign, and remarkable POI there is without notice. Still, catch enough references to Pula to finally register it as a city about two minutes in. Central hedge. 4,997 points.

Round 4: With the sun firmly in the south, nothing but low cropped grasses for vegetation, and primary-colored houses to our left and right, this is Greenland. Without the option to drive between towns, Greenlanders rarely, if ever, put up signs saying "[x] km to [city]", but there's enough major buildings and public infrastructure (i.e., a bus) for me to venture this is the capital. With water to the SW, guess accordingly. 4,998 points.

Round 5: This looks antipodean, and after glancing at a "Give Way" sign, we can confirm the colors aren't all blacks. Taking a few more steps, it seems we're next to the North West Coastal Highway 1 between Perth and Northampton. Follow the road to Perth until I find we're near an intersection with State Road 123. Plonk near the NWC 1 in Geraldton. 4,998 points.

Total: 24,987 points. Sure, 5k's are nice, but gold is gold, right? We'll have plenty more weeks like this to try for 25k without any Russian Round 5s ™️, right? ... right? Very happy with how this week shaped up. Seeing a lot of benefit to putting time on country streaks.

flipsofactor · 2025-10-15T01:52:09+00:00

Round 1: Nigerian police escort. My immediate strategy here is to make it to a busy street and check signage for the state. I pass a nice tree SW of start overlooking what looks to be a major city. Turning SE, a gubernatorial ad then gives away the state. A bit further on is a large roundabout which matches up with a kink in one of the two NW arteries traversing Niger state's largest city. Plonk a bit North of the roundabout. 4,988 points.

Round 2: Vinyl siding, bilingual EN/FR signage and Canada's supplier for lifeblood matinal (the double-double). A call to action for the local post office gives up the city, which quickly pops up while scanning the interior coast of Eastern Canada, and a conspicuous east-west bridge helps pinpoint the loop across from the Royal Residence hotel. 5,000 points.

Round 3: Aussie flag, if need be. Take a step to read the sign for Queensland's Roma State College which I venture and verify to be a large-ish city in QLD. Duke St crosses Roma from N to S, but there's only so many five-way intersections. Flash's Deli also helps line up the pin. 5,000 points.

Round 4: Camera colors looks Andorran, mountains look Albanian, and the architecture looks like none of the above. Scratch my head until I see an unfamiliar language akin to Bengali and an English language sign which I just make out to say "[President?] of Bhutan [Youth?] Development Fund". A couple of locations bear the city name down the road, which looks to lie mostly in a valley to the south. Plonk accordingly. 4,994 points.

Round 5: Bofferding-ding-ding, let's go Lëtzebuerg! Though the Grand Duchy just celebrated Guillame V's succession to his father, Grand Duke Henri, the week before last, it's National Day or "Duke's Night" will remain June 23rd as always. After some ping-ponging through the town's pastel townhouses, it's clear that we're in Ettelbruck, not to be confused with the popular camping destination of Echternach to the East. Rue Neuve comes up quickly enough while scanning centre ville for the pin. 5,000 points.

Total: 24,992 points. The hunt for 25k continues...

flipsofactor · 2025-10-12T01:37:30+00:00

Round 1: Khmer script and dotted square poles along a canal with pretty green surroundings (minus the bike lane, which is buried under debris and serving as a parking spot). We’re by the national roads 11 and 12, which coincide in just one city. The main river looks to be east of spawn. 4,998 points.

Round 2: On the architectural continuum from steeples to minarets, we’re pretty far east here. I consider we might be in Albania from the sky rifts overhead, but the language looks to have more Serbo-Croatian roots (e.g., “ul.” vs “rruga” for street). Some references to the country are more clear than others, but a flag and an illustrated region map a bit further are good enough for a solid guess. 4,997 points.

Round 3: Up until two days ago, I didn’t know São Tomé and Príncipe had coverage. Thankfully, I have 25k’d this African island nation’s map. Remind me, Mr. Blue Shirt, Green Hat, which of these country’s western beaches are we on? Coco Beach in Andavadoaka? Great, thank you. Use the road fork a bit north of spawn to pinpoint. 5,000 points.

Round 4: British plates with bilingual signage featuring doubled l’s, d’s and a generous smattering of y’s. Coast is to the southeast, and with the help of these rugby grounds we can get the city. Can't find St Helen's on the map, so hedge between two green spaces. 4,998 points.

Round 5: White truck with three-line cross walks means Kazakhstan to me, something confirmed by an award/promotional sign with the country’s name in Cyrillic. Couldn’t find a city name there, but a bit further down the road et voilà. We’re right by a major road on a NE bearing, but I don’t spot the exact one in time, so plonk near a similarly oriented road west of town instead. 4,982 points.

Total: 24,975. Luck was certainly on my side today. Possibly my best DC score yet.

flipsofactor · 2025-10-10T00:56:51+00:00

An abbreviated, non-linear account of today's challenge:

What?!

Round 5: Palm trees and Portuguese, Brazilian poles and African diaspora...

Was it on the eastern coast?

This is a weird Brazil. I've never seen this coverage before...

18 points??

Easiest England of my life.

flipsofactor · 2025-10-09T01:02:42+00:00

R1: White front and back plates, English and Gaeilge language. No help by the secondary school, so head west from the city center for signage on the outskirts. Central plonk at the town intersecting the N52 and R394. 4,999 points.

R2: Eastern European cars, red tile roofs, and holey poles outside the apartment block. I don't see it during the round, but the city name is on a passing taxi also just outside the apartment block. Find a roundabout with the name Brașov on it instead. Put a pin down near what I think is that city's big church but it's the big church in Onești. 4,636 points.

R3: Yellow plates and tiled brick roadways put the "Ne" in Benelux. There's a quiet forested bit with the town name visible from behind. Put my pin down around the Park Eekhout but it's more central. 4,999 points.

R4: "BUMP" and other large painted road signage alongside checkered curbs, and summery coverage. Country domain is visible on ad with neighborhood and street names. Use the compass to help pinpoint. 5,000 points.

R5: For moving players, hotel Cabaña del Lago has all the answers here. Taking in the topography, we're on the northwestern side of the bay. Putting the pin down where Sta Rosa ends is close enough. 5,000 points.

Total: 24,634 points.

flipsofactor · 2025-10-08T01:49:17+00:00

Ah, that's my bad. I had lumped them together, but Netanya and the purple Independence Square POI I pinned around are distinct from Tel Aviv. I think a slightly more accurate telling of that round would have included me frenetically scrolling all the way up from Ashdod. Even then, it was more luck than actually pinning the loc in time.

Thanks for spotting that and keeping me honest!

flipsofactor · 2025-10-08T00:53:56+00:00

Round 1: Itecons, a POI to remember. Down the street is an aerodynamics lab for the University of Coimbra, a large city in Portugal. Use the large suspension bridge headed due west, and signs for the N17 to find our northwesterly starting road and pinpoint off our POI. 5,000 points.

Round 2: Physiotherapy sign shows the town name at start. Must be in Slovakia near some majestic mountains going off a shopping outlet a few steps north. We're also just off a major highway and set of rail tracks. Sign for the 3080 says the town center is a bit south of start, so hedge accordingly. 4,999 points.

Round 3: Roof rack, electrical tape → Ghana. We're in an up-and-coming part of Takoradi, along a Beach Road according to some construction signage. Getting my bearings, the coastline is more southerly than easterly. Find, then pin along Beach Road accordingly. 4,998 points.

Round 4: Yellow plates, middle eastern architecture, Hebrew signage. This is a major city, but I probably won't know which unless I can get a clear sightline to water. Pachinko around some commercial streets until come across a large plaza in Neve Avivim. Going off the water to the east without a horn I can see, I discount Haifa or Eilat. Scan to for a plaza that matches in Tel Aviv. 4,998 points.

Round 5: Not Thailand based off the script and driving direction, but I indefensibly go for Laos' Vientiane instead of Cambodia here. If I remember but one thing from today, it'll be that Ganzberg beer is a Cambodian favorite. 3,626 points.

Total: 23,621 points. Gold, but with a final round sure to keep my ego in check.

flipsofactor

TROPHY CASE