{"id":48,"date":"2022-08-18T23:38:49","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T23:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/?p=48"},"modified":"2023-05-16T01:57:10","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T01:57:10","slug":"hello-worldle-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/?p=48","title":{"rendered":"Hello, Worldle! #0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m a huge fan of Worldle<\/a>, the geography offshoot of Wordle.

Here are my hacks:

1. It sounds clich\u00e9 but it works: get a sheet of graph paper, open an online map, and draw away. Even if your artistic skills are off, contouring with your own mind is a fast and easy way to get familiar with a region you don’t know well. If you have a graphics tablet, make a new layer for each country in Photoshop\/GNUimp.

2. Using a map again, go ahead and start making mnemonic devices. Start with categories like these:
\u2022 Could fit within a ball (Poland, Suriname, North Macedonia)
\u2022 Oriented on an axis
\u2022 Lobed (like Austria, Afghanistan, Latvia, Zambia, Tajikstan, Bangladesh, or Moldova)
\u2022 Cutouts like Gambia inside of Senegal, Lesotho inside South Africa, or San Marino and the Vatican in Italy
\u2022 The Horn of Africa is a rhino; Somalia is the horn, Djibouti is the eye, Eritrea is the ear, and Ethiopia is the noggin.
\u2022\u00a0Shaped in a way that it can “only” be that country –
\u2022\u2022Guatemala has a facial side profile in the lower left corner and wears an enormous hat, but also bears a resemblance to the Gabon;
\u2022\u2022The Vatican is a fortress;
\u2022\u2022Words can’t begin to describe Venezuela’s anti-Gestalt attitude.
Guernsey and Jersey are apparently super easy for French people, but Americans will get hung up easily.
\u2022\u2022Tanzania and French Guiana are both shaped like Wisconsin.
\u2022\u2022Panama is a classic sideways-S shape with numerous channels and inlets.
\u2022\u2022In wealthy locales such as Monaco, Hong Kong, or Qatar, you can easily see the docks outlined.
\u2022\u2022Greece is a hundred islands shaped in an oval tilted towards the north-east.
\u2022\u2022El Salvador is tricky and yet another sideways country, but you can see its tattoo of a harbor in the southeast sector.
\u2022\u2022Madagascar – always a favorite – windswept Indian ocean currents carve out a smooth eastern shoreline while the west side guards Mozambique and Tanzania.
\u2022\u2022Puerto Rico is 1 main island surrounded by 4 smaller islands on each corner.
\u2022\u2022NSFW… Norway, Sweden, Finland is the mnemonic.
\u2022\u2022Niger? Friendly pufferfish swimming northeast-bound.
\u2022\u2022East Timor has westward island that make the mainland look like it’s going to ea(s)t them.
\u2022\u2022Republic of the Congo and Pakistan have virtually the same shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. If you’re feeling saucy, you can toggle the difficulty in-game by checking and unchecking “Replace proximity percent by size percent” to get an edge.

4. Take screenshots! That way you can refer back to what guesses worked and what didn’t.

5. The hot spots are the Balkans, the Antilles (Greater\/Lesser), the ****stan countries, and southeast Asia. If you can master those, you can then proceed to the Pacific Island nations lmao.

6. Differences between Guyana, French Guiana, Equitorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea.

7. Americans tend not to know these highly-populated countries: Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh. They all have significant Muslim populations. Only Indonesia is a member of the G20. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a huge fan of Worldle, the geography offshoot of Wordle. Here are my hacks: 1. It sounds clich\u00e9 but it works: get a sheet of graph paper, open an online map, and draw away. Even if your artistic skills are off, contouring with your own mind is a fast and easy way to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexaddison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}