Farflung Unlimited: Pin the Rarest Country on the Map

How to play Farflung Unlimited

Farflung Unlimited is a geography game played on a world map. Each prompt describes a kind of country, and you answer by pinning one country that fits. Most prompts have several right answers, and that is the whole game: the obvious country counts, but a less obvious one flies you much further. A Farflung Unlimited trip has 5 prompts, and your score is the total distance you cover.

1. Read the prompt, for example Pin a country where German is an official language.
2. Tap or click a country on the map. Drag to move around, pinch or scroll to zoom, or type the country’s name in the box under the map.
3. Check the name under the map, then press Drop pin. You get one pin per prompt, and there is no clock.
4. A right country adds between 10 and 1,000 km. A wrong one adds nothing.
5. The map then colours every right answer by how far it would have taken you, so you see what you missed.

You can pin the same country for more than one prompt, as long as it fits each one.

Distance bands

Every right answer is worth 10 to 1,000 km. A perfect daily trip covers 5,000 km, which almost never happens, because it would mean finding the least-known right country five times in a row.

How rarity works in Farflung Unlimited

We do not survey players, and we do not show made-up percentages. Rarity comes from real data: for each country we take how often its English Wikipedia article is read in a typical month (the median month over the last two years, so a one-off spike such as a World Cup run does not count). Within a prompt, a country’s distance is the share of all those readers who went to a better-known right answer. The best-known country scores almost nothing; the least-read one scores close to 1,000 km.

Pin a country where German is an official language (6 answers)

Pin a country that borders Germany (9 answers)

The same country can be a short hop in one prompt and a long haul in another, because it is only compared with the other right answers to that prompt.

Farflung Unlimited prompt types

There are 130 prompts with 1,497 right answers between them. A daily trip never uses two prompts of the same type, so you will not get two border questions on one day. Unlimited and Endless draw from all of them.

• Borders: a country that borders Germany, Brazil, China and more (54 prompts)
• Official languages (9 prompts)
• Money: the euro, dollars, francs, pesos, dinars (6 prompts)
• Regions of the world (UN regions) (18 prompts)
• Lines on the globe: the Equator, the tropics, the Arctic Circle, Greenwich, 180° (6 prompts)
• Hemispheres (2 prompts)
• Landlocked, island and one-neighbour countries (4 prompts)
• Coasts: the Mediterranean and the Caspian (2 prompts)
• Clubs: the European Union and NATO (2 prompts)
• Monarchies and driving on the left (2 prompts)
• Olympic and World Cup hosts (3 prompts)
• Population (2 prompts)
• First letters of country names (10 prompts)
• Name puzzles: -stan, -land, four letters, double letters (10 prompts)

Borders, lines of latitude and hemispheres are worked out from the map itself. Languages, money, memberships, monarchies, driving side and sports hosts are lists we wrote by hand and checked against Wikipedia. Population figures are the UN’s 2024 estimates, and the regions are the UN’s statistical regions, so Czechia counts as Eastern Europe and Cyprus as Western Asia.

The map and what counts

The map shows 197 countries: the 193 members of the United Nations plus the Vatican, Palestine, Kosovo and Taiwan. Borders come from Natural Earth, a public-domain map dataset, drawn in the Equal Earth projection so that countries keep their true relative size. Antarctica is left out.

• Territories count for their country. Greenland is Denmark, Guam and Puerto Rico are the United States, the Falkland Islands are the United Kingdom. That is why France borders Brazil here: French Guiana is part of France.
• Facts about a country mean the country itself. For languages, money, memberships, monarchies and driving side we use the country, not its overseas territories. Hong Kong drives on the left, but China does not.
• Two places belong to no country. Western Sahara and the Siachen Glacier are drawn with dashed borders. Move your pin off them.
• Small countries get a dot. Island nations and microstates such as Tuvalu, Malta or San Marino have a round marker you can tap, and tapping the sea right next to one picks it.

Farflung tips for going further

• Skip the first country you think of. If it came to you instantly, it is probably the best-known answer and worth very little.
• Look small. Microstates and island nations are rarely read about, so when they fit a prompt they are usually the furthest pick. Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and San Marino are regulars.
• Remember the territories. A country with overseas land can fit a border or latitude prompt you would not expect, such as France bordering the Netherlands on the island of Saint Martin.
• Use the colours. After every pin the map shows all the right answers, coloured from grey (best known) to purple (furthest). It is the quickest way to learn which countries pay off.
• Be sure before you drop. There is no clock, so zoom in and check the name under the map. In Endless, a wrong pin costs one of your 3 lives.

Daily, Unlimited and Endless trips

Daily trip

5 prompts a day, the same for every player. Finish them to keep your streak going and copy your result, a row of coloured squares, to compare distances with friends.

Farflung Unlimited

A fresh set of 5 prompts every time you start, with no daily limit.

Endless

Prompts keep coming and your distance keeps adding up until you have dropped 3 wrong pins. Your best endless distance is saved separately, on your device only.

Like the idea but prefer typing? Krillion Unlimited scores rare answers to everyday categories the same way, and Noillirk Unlimited flips it so the most common answer wins.

How this differs from the original Farflung

Farflung is a daily geography game in which each prompt has several right countries and rarer ones take you further. Farflung Unlimited is PlayAnytime’s own version of that idea, with our own prompts, map, distance bands and design, scoring from Wikipedia page views, a box for typing countries, and unlimited and endless modes.

PlayAnytime is not affiliated with or endorsed by Farflung or its makers. Play the original at farflung.game. Map data: Natural Earth (public domain).

Farflung questions

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