Pin Drop
Five places, one blank world map. Drop a pin where each one is.
- Round
- 2 minutes
- Works on
- Mobile & desktop
- Category
- Quiz
Pin Drop controls: Tap the map to place your pin · drag to move it · + to zoom · DROP PIN. Press Play, then the game takes the keyboard. Press Tab to leave it.
Free play · 2 minutes · no sign-in
Tap the map to place your pin · drag to move it · + to zoom · DROP PIN
How to play Pin Drop
Read the departures board: it names today's destination, its country and what kind of place it is.
Tap or click the blank map where you think it is; tap again to move your pin, drag the map to look around.
Zoom in about your pin with the + stamp (or the + key) and nudge it into place.
Press DROP PIN (or Enter) before the gate closes. If the clock runs out, a pin you placed is dropped for you.
Watch the reveal: the true spot, how far off you were, everyone's pins and the crowd's average pin. Tap to fly on.
After five legs, your boarding pass shows your total distance and how many legs you beat the crowd on.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Touch: tap the map | Place your pin there (tap again to move it) |
| Touch: drag the map | Pan the map |
| Touch: + and − stamps | Zoom in and out, about your pin |
| Touch: DROP PIN | Lock in your pin and see how far off it was |
| Mouse: clickdrag | Place or move your pin / pan the map |
| Keyboard: arrows or WASD | Pan the map |
| Keyboard: + and − (or E and Q) | Zoom in and out |
| Keyboard: Enter or Space | Drop your pin; skip to the next leg during a reveal |
Tips
Place a rough pin first, then zoom: the + stamp zooms in about your pin, so it stays under your finger while the map grows around it.
Use the coastlines and the big lakes as landmarks. Lake Baikal, the Great Lakes, Lake Victoria and Lake Titicaca are all on the map, and most capitals sit near a coast or a river mouth you can find.
The board always names the country. For a big country, think about which side of it the place is on before you tap: Ulaanbaatar is in the north of Mongolia, not the middle.
Distances follow the curve of the Earth, so on far northern places a pin that looks close on the map can still be a long way off. Zoom in before you drop.
Do not rush the first leg: a pin within 25 km scores the full 1,000, and the clock gives you 15 to 20 seconds per place.
About Pin Drop
Pin Drop is a free daily geography game played on a blank world map. A split-flap departures board announces a destination (Paris, Machu Picchu, Lake Baikal, Ulaanbaatar), and you drop a pin where you think it is on a map with no labels and no borders, only coastlines. Then the true spot appears, a dashed flight path runs from your pin to it, and you see exactly how many kilometres off you were. It is a map guessing game and a where is it quiz in one, it runs in your browser with no download, and a whole day's five takes about a minute, which makes it one of our favourite quick games.
Every day everyone gets the same five places, and they ramp from easy to hard. The first is always a world-famous place a newcomer can nail (Paris, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Niagara Falls), the second is well known (Kyoto, Anchorage, Machu Picchu), and by the fifth you are pinning places like Ulaanbaatar, Lake Titicaca, Timbuktu or Funafuti. The board always names the country, so the challenge is knowing where a place sits inside it. There are 420 places in all: capitals and big cities, mountains, lakes, waterfalls, islands and ancient sites, and the same place never comes back within 60 days.
The reveal is the best part. Played on the day, Pin Drop shows everyone's pins for the same place as a cloud of dots, then drops the crowd's average pin, the centre of all those guesses. Crowds are surprisingly wise: their average pin is often closer than nine out of ten players, so the result says how far off it was, how many players it beat, where your own pin stands, and whether you beat the crowd. At the end a boarding pass sums up your day: a little world map with your five pins, how far off each one was, your total distance and how many legs you beat the crowd on, ready for a screenshot or the share button.
Scoring is simple and fair. Each pin is worth up to 1,000 points: anything within 25 km is a perfect landing worth the full 1,000, 100 km off is worth 940, 500 km 700 and 1,000 km 500, falling to nothing by 12,000 km. The board stamps every leg LANDED, ON TIME, DELAYED, DIVERTED or LOST. Distances are measured along the curve of the Earth, the way a plane flies, so a pin on the wrong side of the Pacific is really as far off as it looks. Play the day's five for fun, or take a ranked attempt with a fresh five and climb the leaderboards of our competitive games; every ranked run is verified by replaying it on our servers.
Pin Drop plays the same on a phone or a computer. On a phone, tap the map to place your pin, drag the map to look around, use the round + and − stamps to zoom in on your pin, and tap DROP PIN when you are happy. With a mouse, click to place the pin and drag to pan; on a keyboard, the arrow keys pan, + and − zoom and Enter drops the pin. It is one of our mobile games and PC games, and it belongs with our geography games, quiz games, brain games and casual games for adults.
Details
- Category
- Quiz & Trivia Games
- Tags
- Genre
- Trivia
- Orientation
- Portrait (9:16)
- Works on
- Mobile & desktopPhones, tablets and computers
- Controls
- Mouse or touch
- Released
- Updated
- Credits
- Design and development: Gamefinity
- Coastlines, lakes and city locations: Natural Earth (public domain), via world-atlas and natural-earth-vector
- Landmark and natural feature locations: Wikidata (CC0)
- Age rating
- 4+
Pin Drop FAQ
How long does a game of Pin Drop take?
About a minute. Each of the five places has a 15 to 20 second clock, the reveal after each pin takes a few seconds (tap to skip), and the boarding pass sums up the day at the end.
How is the score calculated?
Each pin scores up to 1,000 points from how far it is from the real place, measured along the curve of the Earth: within 25 km is a perfect 1,000, 100 km off is 940, 500 km 700, 1,000 km 500 and 12,000 km or more nothing. Your score is the five pins added up, out of 5,000, and the boarding pass also shows your total distance off.
Is it the same five places for everyone?
Yes. Played for fun, Pin Drop gives everyone the same five places each day, from an easy first one to a hard fifth, and no place comes back within 60 days. A ranked attempt deals its own five so nobody can look them up in advance.
What is the crowd's average pin?
After each pin you see where everyone else pinned the same place today, and the centre of all those pins on the globe. That average is often closer than most players, so beating the crowd is a real achievement. The crowd's pins are anonymous and never change your score.
Why are there no names or borders on the map?
That is the game: only the coastlines and the biggest lakes are drawn, so you have to know where a place is rather than find its label. The board tells you the country, and the coastlines are from Natural Earth's public-domain world map.
Can I play Pin Drop on my phone?
Yes. It is made for touch: tap the map to place your pin, drag to pan, use the + and − stamps to zoom and tap DROP PIN. It plays the same with a mouse and keyboard on a computer.
Next up
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