How Guess the Country Scoring Works

Guess the Country has two scoring layers: country points and leaderboard points.

Country points are the small score shown in the game. Leaderboard points are the larger score used for ranking completed wins.

Country points

Country points reward solving with fewer guesses and fewer paid clues.

The formula is:

country points = max(1, 7 - guesses - paid clues)

If you lose, you receive 0 country points.

Clues

The game starts with one clue available. That first clue is free.

Additional revealed clues count as paid clues. Paid clues reduce your country points and your leaderboard score.

Leaderboard score

The leaderboard score converts your country points into a larger score, then subtracts a time penalty.

The formula is:

score = max(100, country points * 1200 - seconds * 5)

Only won sessions can submit a leaderboard score.

What lowers your score?

• More guesses lower your country points.
• Paid clues lower your country points.
• Each second costs 5 leaderboard points.

The leaderboard score has a minimum of 100 for a completed win.

Example

If you solve in 3 guesses, use 1 paid clue, and take 45 seconds:

country points = 7 - 3 - 1 = 3
leaderboard score = 3 * 1200 - 45 * 5 = 3375

Your final leaderboard score would be 3,375.

Strategy

The strongest country scores come from using the comparison feedback aggressively. A wrong guess can still be valuable if it reveals continent, capital, population, or area direction. Paid clues are useful, but because they lower the country-point base, they should be used only when they are likely to prevent several uncertain guesses.

You can play it here: Guess the Country.