Can you name the countries by distance of their capital from where the Equator and Prime Meridian meet? by MghtyRoach

Can you name the countries by distance of their capital from where the Equator and Prime Meridian meet?

created by MghtyRoach

Enter a country in the box below
Correctly named countries will show up below
Click any empty Distance (km) or Country to answer for that location
Source: Google Maps Distance Calculator
Thanks to DJC83 for inspiration for this quiz. All distance is between 0°N/S, 0°E/W, and the respective capitals.
This quiz has not been verified by Sporcle

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Distance (km)	Country
619 (Africa)
696 (Africa)
750 (Africa)
779 (Africa)
959 (Africa)
1053 (Africa)
1062 (Africa)
1306 (Africa)
1351 (Africa)
1387 (Africa)
1390 (Africa)
1522 (Africa)
1662 (Africa)
1745 (Africa)
1765 (Africa)
1767 (Africa)
1768 (Africa)
1850 (Africa)
2120 (Africa)
2140 (Africa)
2172 (Africa)
2209 (Africa)
2363 (Africa)
2517 (Africa)
2666 (Africa)
3075 (Africa)
3120 (Africa)
3288 (Africa)
3353 (Africa)
3552 (Africa)
3627 (Africa)
3853 (Africa)
3912 (Africa)
3915 (Africa)
3936 (Africa)
3973 (Africa)
4030 (Africa)
4035 (Africa)
4101 (Africa)
4103 (Africa)
4231 (Africa)
4238 (Africa)
4269 (Europe)
4378 (Africa)
4409 (Europe)
4411 (Africa)
4441 (Africa)
4515 (Europe)
4536 (Africa)
4607 (Africa)
4706 (Africa)
4734 (Europe)
4829 (Europe)
4830 (Europe)
4877 (Europe)
4924 (Europe)
4940 (Africa)
4954 (Africa)
5015 (Europe)
5045 (Europe)
5052 (Africa)
5103 (Europe)
5120 (Asia)
5148 (Europe)
5151 (Asia)

Distance (km)	Country
5188 (Asia)
5210 (Europe)
5226 (Europe)
5276 (Europe)
5285 (Asia)
5294 (Europe)
5318 (Asia)
5320 (Europe)
5329 (Europe)
5335 (Europe)
5381 (Europe)
5443 (Europe)
5549 (South America)
5553 (Europe)
5553 (Asia)
5579 (Europe)
5594 (Europe)
5600 (Africa)
5600 (Europe)
5608 (Europe)
5676 (Europe)
5730 (Asia)
5733 (Europe)
5742 (Europe)
5848 (Europe)
5937 (Asia)
5937 (Europe)
5966 (Europe)
5979 (Europe)
6046 (Asia)
6137 (Europe)
6153 (Asia)
6164 (South America)
6187 (Africa)
6208 (Asia)
6304 (Europe)
6316 (Europe)
6344 (Asia)
6454 (Asia)
6458 (Asia)
6502 (South America)
6511 (Europe)
6514 (Europe)
6632 (Asia)
6647 (Africa)
6695 (Europe)
6733 (North America)
6734 (Europe)
6747 (Asia)
6790 (Europe)
6796 (South America)
6844 (Asia)
6896 (North America)
6903 (North America)
6907 (North America)
6949 (North America)
6956 (North America)
6958 (Europe)
6993 (South America)
7034 (Europe)
7035 (North America)
7072 (Europe)
7130 (North America)
7172 (South America)
7300 (Asia)

Distance (km)	Country
7361 (Europe)
7493 (South America)
7691 (South America)
7900 (North America)
8123 (Asia)
8158 (North America)
8188 (Asia)
8188 (Asia)
8224 (South America)
8252 (South America)
8297 (Asia)
8457 (Asia)
8607 (South America)
8621 (North America)
8738 (Asia)
8741 (South America)
8745 (North America)
8768 (Asia)
8773 (Asia)
8867 (North America)
8899 (North America)
8903 (Asia)
8907 (North America)
9240 (North America)
9370 (North America)
9557 (Asia)
9611 (North America)
9717 (North America)
9888 (North America)
9931 (North America)
9983 (Asia)
10,060 (Asia)
10,076 (North America)
10,655 (Asia)
10,977 (North America)
11,151 (Asia)
11,270 (Asia)
11,318 (Asia)
11,353 (Asia)
11,560 (Asia)
11,645 (Asia)
11,663 (Asia)
11,883 (Asia)
12,239 (Asia)
12,785 (Asia)
13,024 (Asia)
13,168 (Asia)
13,189 (Asia)
13,343 (Asia)
13,929 (Asia)
14,279 (Asia)
14,932 (Oceania)
14,968 (Oceania)
15,411 (Oceania)
16,252 (Oceania)
17,493 (Oceania)
17,580 (Oceania)
17,628 (Oceania)
17,685 (Oceania)
18,011 (Oceania)
18,250 (Oceania)
18,580 (Oceania)
18,777 (Oceania)
19,071 (Oceania)
19,242 (Oceania)
5200 (Europe)

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There are 18 comments for this game.
(Warning: comments may contain spoilers)

Distance from the Middle of the Map Quiz

by MghtyRoach

Created Mar 8, 2011 in Geography
Game Plays 399

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	MghtyRoach:	Mar 8th, 2011 at 16:45 GMT		4 points
	I've included the continents as hits to make things a bit more sane. As always, any comments and suggestions are welcome.

	beerman:	Mar 8th, 2011 at 18:08 GMT		4 points
	It would be more useful if you had the continent in the left column, that way it shows up above the typing box. Right now the distance shows up, but thats very useful. Also, Moldova is spelled wrong. Other than that, good quiz.

	MghtyRoach:	Mar 8th, 2011 at 22:36 GMT		2 points
	Thanks, beerman. I'd thought I'd caught all the spelling and continental errors. Regarding the hint bit, I've been on the fence on that for a bit. I'm still considering whether I want to do that, or just put them both in the same box.

	MikeN:	Mar 8th, 2011 at 23:08 GMT		-1 points
	Turkey should be in Europe.

	hilco:	Mar 8th, 2011 at 23:18 GMT		5 points
	Ankara is in Asia and so is 97-98% of Turkey. I could never believe New Zealand would be closer to the center than Papua New Guinea. Checking this in Google Earth however made it clear. Large distance measuring keeps surprising.

	tahitiwahini:	Mar 8th, 2011 at 23:23 GMT		2 points
	@MikeN: Parts of Russia, Turkey, and Kazakhstan, are in Europe and Asia. In this particular quiz since the distance is being measured to the capital it seems appropriate to put the country in the continent that its capital is in. So Russia is in Europe because Moscow is west of the Ural mountains (part of the traditional border line between Europe and Asia). Kazakhstan is in Asia because Astana is in Asia, east of the Ural mountains. Finally, Turkey is in Asia because its capital Ankara is in Asia, east of the Bosporus and Dardanelles (another part of the traditional border line between Europe and Asia).

	tahitiwahini:	Mar 8th, 2011 at 23:34 GMT		3 points
	At some point in the quiz I began to wonder what the last country was going to be (the farthest away from the zero point, 0°N/S, 0°E/W). Then it hit me that it could only be one country, namely the country that is on the opposite side of the earth from the zero point. And a country directly on the opposite side of the earth from the zero point is a country that is very likely to have territory in each of the four hemispheres of the globe, and there's only one country for which that is true: Kiribati!

	tahitiwahini:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 00:18 GMT		4 points
	@hilco: Great circle distances surprise us because we're so used to looking at the traditional rectangular map of the world with the equator bisecting the map vertically, North Pole on the top, South Pole on the bottom. But of course, that's just a projection of three-dimensional space (the spherical globe) onto a two-dimensional space (the rectangular map). Distances (and thus our perceptions of them) are fairly accurate if we don't stray too far from the equator. But as we leave the equator going north or south and move toward one of the poles there's a tremendous amount of distortion that creeps into our map. The pole is basically a point, but our map projection turns it into something more like a line than a point. The rectangular space at the bottom (or top) of our map projections is thus typically very stretched (distorted) from what is in reality. That's why Greenland appears to be so huge on some world maps, it's far away from the equator and so experiences much distortion. That's what's happening to our perception of the distance between the zero point and New Zealand (which like Greenland is far from the Equator). Because NZ's closer to the pole than Papua New Guinea there's even more stretching going on between NZ and the zero point than between PNG and the zero point. Looking at an actual globe really helps to overcome the distortion that looking at two-dimensional maps makes in our perception of distance.

	dancastro:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 01:51 GMT		3 points
	Excellent quiz! Only a minor observation: it would be better to round off the distances to the nearest kilometer. First, because online distance calculators aren't much precise (for example, from North Pole to South Pole Google Earth gives 19982 km and the actual distance is near 20004 km; there are exact formulas [like Vincenty's] available online, but the problem is that you have to enter manually the latitude and longitude of both points). And second, because giving distances with two decimal places seems a little exaggerated: you can pinpoint not only a city, but a precise house (for example, mine is at 7170.47 km from the 0,0 point, but my neighbor's is at 7170.46 km).

	chriskotx:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 02:08 GMT		1 point
	195 answers.. in order? How can anyone do this in 20 mins?

	MghtyRoach:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 02:26 GMT		3 points
	@dancastro: Good point. My only concern was the handful of capitals that were roughly the same distance if rounded, but I think I've found a good solution for each case. @chriskotx: Dunno. Maybe ask the people who managed it? (And no, none of them was me).

	tahitiwahini:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 03:40 GMT		5 points
	@chriskotx: not me. It took me two times to get through this quiz doing roughly half of the questions each time. But it has to be done in order, don't you think? I'm not sure there's much that could be done to make it any easier. Well, maybe if we could use some additional abbreviations it would help matters. I'm talking about acronyms formed by taking the initial letter of each word in a country's name. We've already become accustomed to expecting CAR, DRC, UAE, UK, and US, which are all formed in exactly the same way. I'm proposing we start using these additional acronyms as well: AB (Antigua and Barbuda), BF (Burkina Faso), CV (Cape Verde), CI (Cote d'Ivoire), EG (Equatorial Guinea), FSM (Federated States of Micronesia), GB (Guinea-Bissau), MI (Marshall Islands), NZ (New Zealand), NK (North Korea), PNG (Papua New Guinea), RC (Republic of the Congo), SVG (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines), SM (San Marino), STP (Sao Tome and Principe), SK (South Korea), SKN (Saint Kitts and Nevis), SS (Southern Sudan), TL (Timor-Leste), TT (Trinidad and Tobago), and VC (Vatican City). I maintain these abbreviations are especially useful for a quiz like this where to a certain extent you are guessing (hopefully in an educated fashion) most of the time. I'm assuming here that no one really knows that Skopje is 5,148 km from the zero point. So you're having to try a least a few countries for every answer. Abbreviations make it easier to enter of course, but also easier to delete if it happens to be wrong.

	AlexRandom:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 04:17 GMT		3 points
	I failed to read at first that distance was measured to the capitals, and wasted three minutes typing "France" again and again after Andorra. Excellent quiz!

	MikeN:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 06:03 GMT		2 points
	I think putting continent as the visible hint is better. Chrisko, I did them in order in 19 minutes.

MghtyRoach:

Mar 9th, 2011 at 12:37 GMT

5 points

I've decided to try to put both the distance and the continent in the visible hint. Give me some feedback on how that's working for you.

	tahitiwahini:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 14:11 GMT		3 points
	It's a definite improvement. Now the only reason I have to scroll down is to see what's already been answered in the event I don't remember for sure.

	beerman:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 15:40 GMT		3 points
	I like the new layout. However, Bahrain is not in Europe.

	MghtyRoach:	Mar 9th, 2011 at 16:44 GMT		2 points
	@beerman: Thank you again.