Geekiness

I've often describe my geekiness (and that of several of our friends) with an explanation of the the reference game. As I spent most of the day alone, I had to find a solo way of indulging my geekiness. I rediscovered The geography olympics, now at http://www.geographyzone.com/new/index.php?t=1&b=1 . Although that redirects you to the new geography challenge with a much improved interface.

It's amazing how the brain works. At first I was getting only 7 out of 10 right and after a few tries was back up to pretty consistent 10/10 with the occasional 9/10 due to the South-West Pacific. Kiribati anyone? But soon I was recalling countries that hadn't even come up yet today. Soon, I was working for good times, not just perfect scores. You get a total of 120 seconds. One by one, you are asked to click on ten countries, randomly selected from 192. If you make a mistake, the correct answer is displayed - a nice new feature. I used to play with an atlas handy. I've been playing for a little over an hour and my top times for perfect scores are

100 seconds left - once
99 seconds left - once
94 seconds left - four times

Like minesweeper, there is obviously some luck involved. Small countries are bad because it takes time to hover over them. The location of a country can be bad too. It takes time to scroll across the world map. Here's a hint. Keep your mouse hovering over the Eastern part of the Mediterranean between countries for quick map shifting to within range of a very large number of countries. Another. Don't click on a country until you KNOW its whole name - it is displayed letter by letter. I've clicked on Austr(ia) only to find out that I was to click on Austr(alia).