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20 World Capitals Likely to be Closest to Random Point

Trigger warning: Advanced concept.

If you land on a random point on planet Earth, which world capitals would you mostly likely be closest to?

Quiz by scambigol
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Last updated: May 17, 2024
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First submittedApril 30, 2024
Times taken1,817
Average score70.0%
Rating4.00
4:00
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% Chance
Capital
5.54
Wellington
5.38
Mexico City
4.56
Cape Town
4.16
Santiago
4.05
Canberra
3.74
Apia
3.67
Tokyo
% Chance
Capital
3.66
Ottawa
3.30
Port Louis
3.15
Majuro
3.14
Montevideo
3.03
Reykjavík
2.14
Jakarta
2.13
Ulaanbaatar
% Chance
Capital
1.98
Brasília
1.92
Lima
1.43
Nukuʻalofa
1.39
Praia
1.39
Dili
1.10
Astana
34 Comments
+13
Level 66
Apr 30, 2024
Just understood the quiz after it was over, big bruh moment
+1
Level 51
May 1, 2024
How did you do this? Did you do a voronoi tesselation with all the capitals and then calculated the area of each zone?
+7
Level 76
May 1, 2024
I didn't use an accurate method but I assume it was good enough. I used a set of about 16.000 coordinates and for each one calculated the closest capital. For each integer latitude the first point would be 0 longitude, the next one would be longitude 223 km east until 360° was reached. Hope that makes sense... so for example that means 180 points on the Equator, 100 at 40°N or S... I couldn't think of a way of making a perfect calculation.
+3
Level ∞
May 17, 2024
This has now been recomputed with about 4 million points spaced an equal distance apart on the Earth's surface.
+5
Level 84
May 17, 2024
That's amazing. Great quiz and makes such a cool map. I wonder how it would look on a globe.
+11
Level ∞
May 1, 2024
Very cool quiz! I am going to add a map to this one and feature it when I get the time
+2
Level 68
May 17, 2024
Should the country borders still be visible when you zoom in?
+3
Level ∞
May 17, 2024
No, but I didn't bother fixing it. At some point the zoomed-in border-opacity got set to !important in the style-sheet. Which makes it really tough to override. We should probably avoid !important in general in the stylesheet. But this is an edge case on a single quiz so I'm not going to worry about it.
+3
Level 68
May 17, 2024
It's not a big issue anyway, adds a hint for anybody that needs it :)
+1
Level 95
May 17, 2024
Such a cool idea! Loved this quiz, thank you.
+7
Level 76
May 17, 2024
Could you make it more clear what we're supposed to do? I thought a random point on earth would be chosen, and we would have to guess the capitals closest to it. It took until I guessed Ottawa by pure chance that I understood what I was supposed to do.
+1
Level 70
May 17, 2024
brilliant as always! And I immediately knew that the capitals in Oceania will be my downfall and of course they were :D
+1
Level 81
May 17, 2024
Great quiz and wonderful SVG! Really enjoyed taking it.
+7
Level 86
May 17, 2024
I played it, but I still don't understand it.
+5
Level 83
May 17, 2024
Same, and we both have level 80+.
+4
Level 83
May 17, 2024
You're not the only one . I think I kind of get it now.
+2
Level 88
May 18, 2024
Same.
+1
Level 69
May 20, 2024
Same here.
+2
Level 84
May 17, 2024
Super cool quiz! Great job scambigol!
+2
Level 72
May 17, 2024
This is a nonesensical quiz but my good knowledge of remote capitals helped me go through. For example why none of the European cities is an answer? If I land for example randomly in any part of Europe I stand a good chance of being close to 40+ national capitals...
+5
Level 79
May 17, 2024
Because for any capital in Europe any point is very likely to be closer to a different capital. For e.g. Wellington, there's lots of space around it not close to any other capitals, so lots of points in the pacific are closest to Wellington. It's which capitals have the most points around them that are closest to that capital
+1
Level 74
May 17, 2024
This is awesome! Nice!
+1
Level 68
May 17, 2024
Great quiz. Might be the only time I'm grateful for the Siachen Glacier.
+1
Level 71
May 18, 2024
Very interesting quiz !
+1
Level 85
May 18, 2024
Like many, it took me a while to figure out what the quiz was asking for. I think barmanitan's comment says it best: "It's which capitals have the most points around them that are closest to that capital."
+1
Level 74
May 18, 2024
Why not highlighting in the map the ten biggest areas?
+2
Level ∞
May 18, 2024
Because I like it much better this way.
+1
Level 28
May 18, 2024
I have no idea how this quiz works. I managed to randomly guess 8 capitals to maintain my current streak.
+2
Level 55
May 18, 2024
I'm not sure if this is a bug but the regular world map appears while you are zoomed in.
+1
Level 43
May 18, 2024
Basically you have to guess the largest areas?
+1
Level 68
May 19, 2024
Wow, that made my head hurt
+1
Level 70
May 19, 2024
Awesome quiz, very creative! I hope this becomes a series
+1
Level 76
May 20, 2024
Very, very clever :)
+1
Level 88
May 20, 2024
Got 18 on first go. Not quite sure what I was doing but went for remote places, or ones which bordered large empty spaces or oceans. Seems this was the way - great concept