🗺️ Guess The Distance
How many kilometers separate these cities?
🗺️ Guess The Distance
How many kilometers separate these cities?
Each round shows two cities with a photo of each. Guess how many kilometres separate them, type your number and press the arrow (or Enter). The real distance appears together with your points, then press Next for a new pair.
There are 100 pairs covering every inhabited continent. The shortest, Berlin to Paris, is under 900 km. The longest pairs, such as Wellington to London, are close to 19,000 km, almost halfway around the planet.
Distances are measured in a straight line over the surface of the Earth between the two city centres. This is called the great-circle distance. It is the shortest possible route on a sphere, and it is roughly what a long-haul flight follows. It is not the driving distance, which is usually much longer.
Because the Earth is round, the shortest route often looks curved on a flat map. A flight from Europe to Japan, for example, passes far to the north. Read more in Great-circle distance explained.
Each round is worth up to 1000 points: 1000 × e−3 × error,
with error = |guess ÷ real distance − 1|. Missing by 10% gives 741 points and missing by 20% gives 549.
Since scoring is based on percent, being 500 km off on a short European hop hurts far more than being 500 km off on
a trip across the Pacific.
Each answer is the great-circle distance between the two city centres, rounded to the nearest kilometre. City photos are loaded live from Wikipedia and belong to their authors under Wikimedia Commons licences. Spotted a mistake? Let me know on the contact page.
Can I answer in miles?
The game uses kilometres. To convert, multiply miles by 1.6. For example, 3,000 miles is about 4,800 km.
Why does my map app show a different number?
Map apps usually show road or rail distance, and they may use a different point in each city. The game always uses the straight-line distance between city centres.