Programming Snapshot – Go Geolocation Game

After the resounding success of the Wordle [1] word guessing game, it didn't take long for the first look-alikes to rear their heads. One of the best is the entertaining Worldle [2] geography game, where the goal is to guess a country based on its shape. After each unsuccessful guess, Worldle helps the player with information about how far the guessed country's location is from the target and in which direction the target country lies.

Not recognizing the outline of the country in Figure 1, a player's first guess is the Principality of Liechtenstein. The Worldle server promptly tells the player that the target location is 5,371 kilometers away from and to the east of this tiny European state. The player's second guess is Belarus, but according to the Worldle server, from Belarus you'd have to travel 4,203 kilometers southeast to get to the target. Mongolia, the third attempt, overshoots the mark, because from there you'd have to go 3,476 kilometers to the southwest to arrive at the secret destination.

Slowly but surely, the player realizes that the secret country must be somewhere near India. And then, on the fourth try, Pakistan turns out to be correct! Worldle is a lot of fun, with a new country posted for guessing every day.

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