How it works
In this guess the country by emoji quiz, each question is a row of four or five emoji. Every one stands for something real about a single country: a landmark, an animal, a piece of its map. Pick the country from four choices. After you answer, a note says what each emoji meant and where the fact was checked. There are 60 rows and no flags.
Read the full guide
How a row works
A row might read 🗻 ⛩️ 🏯 🌲. Those are Mount Fuji, a Shinto shrine gate, Himeji Castle and the ancient cedars of Yakushima, so the answer is Japan. Tap it. The note then goes through the row one emoji at a time, with the fact behind each.
Practice, Exam and one continent at a time
Practice mode marks each row as soon as you tap a country. For a timed run, press Exam mode below the question, then Start the exam. It gives you up to 20 rows and five minutes and holds the notes back. Then it lists your score, a score for each continent and every row you missed. There is no pass mark. The Start from menu, below the question, limits the rows to Africa (12), Asia (12), Europe (14), North America (9), South America (8) or Oceania (5). A timed run on one continent has only that many rows. Continents follow the United Nations list, so Turkey sits under Asia and Russia under Europe. A row you get wrong goes to the Missed pile and stays there until you get it right.
Where the clues come from
Most clues point to a place on the UNESCO World Heritage List. UNESCO publishes a short description of every property, so a claim can be checked against it: how high Machu Picchu stands, or how many Rock Islands Palau has. National animals, plants and coats of arms were checked in the Wikipedia article named with the clue. No row uses a national dish or a joke about people, and no living person is ever a clue.
- Read the whole row before you look at the choices. A volcano or a tiger fits many countries, but three or four clues together usually fit one.
- Some animals have no emoji, so a stand-in is used and the note says so. A monkey stands for the lemurs of Madagascar, and a llama for the vicuña on the coat of arms of Peru.
- Your phone or computer draws the emoji, so 🗿 or 🗽 may look a little different on a friend's screen. Rows avoid emoji added after 2020, so an older device should not show empty boxes.
- For a morning round of guess the country trivia in class, put Question of the day on the board. Everyone gets the same row on the same date.
- After a round, Print puts its rows on paper and a tick on With answer key adds the matching key, so you can run guess the country by emoji with answers away from a screen.
Questions and answers
Is this a guess the country emoji game with flags?
No. A flag emoji would give the answer away. Every row uses landmarks, wildlife, plants and geography. A few add a crop or an Olympic result, and only where a checked record ties it to the country.
Could a row fit more than one country?
On its own, yes, which is why the quiz offers four countries and not a blank box. Each wrong choice is ruled out by at least one fact in the note. When two countries share a landmark, as with Victoria Falls or the Iguazú waterfall, the other country is never among the choices.
How do I check my guess the country by emojis answers?
In Practice mode, tap a country and the note appears at once: the right country, then each emoji with the fact it stands for. In Exam mode the notes wait until the end. The printed answer key carries the same notes, so a paper sheet can be marked by hand.
Where do the facts behind the guess the country emojis come from?
Every clue is tied to one record that was read on the date shown under the quiz. 176 World Heritage properties were checked in the open dataset that UNESCO publishes, and 63 Wikipedia articles cover national symbols and geography that the list does not. Any figure in a note, such as a height or a year, had to appear in the record itself.
Can a class play guess the country by the emoji together?
Yes. The rows were written with children in mind and avoid stereotypes. Pick one continent from the Start from menu to match the unit you are teaching, or use Share this set to send every student the same rows in the same order. Scores are kept on each device.