How to play Terra
Terra is a free daily geography game. You’re shown a famous landmark and have to find it on a globe. No account or download needed, and a round takes about three minutes.
Play today’s game →The basics
- Read the landmark. Each round names a world landmark, with a short description and the country it’s in.
- Find it on the globe. Drag to spin the globe. Zoom in with the mouse wheel, pinching, double-tapping, the + / − buttons or the slider.
- Drop your pin. Tap the globe where you think the landmark is. You can tap somewhere else to move the pin.
- Lock it in. You get one guess per round. Press “Lock in guess” and the game shows how far away you were, with the real location marked in green.
- Play 5 rounds. Your total is out of 25,000 points.
Scoring
Each round is worth up to 5,000 points. Within about 25 km counts as a full-score pinpoint, and the score drops smoothly the further away you are. Roughly:
| Distance from the landmark | Points |
|---|---|
| 25 km or less | 5,000 |
| 500 km | about 3,900 |
| 2,000 km | about 1,900 |
| 5,000 km | about 400 |
| 10,000 km | about 30 |
Daily game and leaderboard
Everyone gets the same 5 landmarks each day, and a new set starts at midnight Pacific Time. When you finish today’s run you can enter a name and post your score to the daily leaderboard. You can post one score per day, and you don’t need an account. After that, “Practice round” gives you five random landmarks with no leaderboard. Practice rounds draw from 300 landmarks around the world and never include today’s daily five, so you won’t see the same questions again.
Tips
- Get the country and region right first, then zoom in for the exact spot.
- Use coastlines, rivers, lakes and mountain ranges on the satellite image as anchors.
- Think about the landmark’s surroundings. Cities sit on coasts and rivers, and mountains sit inland.
- Zoom in before you drop the pin. Even a short drag on a zoomed-out globe can be hundreds of kilometres.
Questions
Yes, completely free, with no sign-up.
Not the same five. After your daily run, practice rounds use different landmarks, and you can play as many as you like. Only your first daily run counts for the leaderboard.
It shows whatever name you type when you post. Please don’t use your real name if you’d rather not.
Finish the daily game on consecutive days to build a streak. After today’s run, press Share to copy a spoiler-free result, one coloured square per round, to send to friends. Your streak and stats are saved in your browser, so clearing your browser data resets them.
At midnight Pacific Time (12:00 a.m. in Los Angeles), the same moment for everyone in the world. For example, that's 3:00 a.m. Eastern and 8:00 a.m. in London during US daylight saving time.