Can you name the countries whose Alphabetic Score is greater than or equal to zero? by skuban

Can you name the countries whose Alphabetic Score is greater than or equal to zero?

created by skuban

Enter a country in the box below
Correctly named countries will show up below
Answers do not have to be guessed in order
The Alphabetic Score is given by the sum of the letters, whose values are given in this manner: A= -13, B= -12,...L= -2, M= -1, N=1, O=2,...Y=12,Z=13. High scores are given by lots of late letters.
Also try: Alphabetically Late States
This quiz has not been verified by Sporcle

Popular trivia games today

Symbol Match Minefield

7017

Accidental Inventions

3310

Countries of the World (Redux)

2194

Word Ladder: Crossing A Street

1641

2000s Movies by Cast II

1306

Missing Word: Top Grossing Movies (1991)

1268

Cartoon Therapy

1085

Pandemic Logic Puzzle

1013

And more...

PLAY GAME

05:00

Show Missed Answers

Alphabetic Score	Country
33
23
21
20
18
17
17
10
9
9
7
7
7

Alphabetic Score	Country
6
5
5
4
4
4
3
3
3
1
0
0
-12 as 'Saint', 5 as 'St.'

Javascript is not currently enabled on your browser.
If you do have Javascript enabled:
This site uses javascript to make the magic happen.
Please turn on javascript and reload this page, or use a more current browser (like Firefox)

You might also like these games:
Test Cricket Triple-Centuries	First and Last by Continent	Capital Trip

There are 25 comments for this game.
(Warning: comments may contain spoilers)

Alphabetically Late Countries Quiz

by skuban

Created Aug 9, 2012 in Geography
Game Plays 1,401

Friend Scores and Standings

Loading friend results....

Top Games Today in Geography

Top Games with Similar Tags

Top User Games in Geography

	AutonomusPlebian:	Aug 9th, 2012 at 17:01 GMT		0 points
	Why does L= -1 and M= -2? Shouldnt it be the other way round?

	skuban:	Aug 9th, 2012 at 17:11 GMT		2 points
	Oh jeez, silly me. Fixed.

	thedpr:	Aug 9th, 2012 at 18:58 GMT		5 points
	This definitely required more thought (and hence more fun). :) Thanks for making it.

	skuban:	Aug 9th, 2012 at 19:12 GMT		2 points
	Yeah, no problem. :) I'm glad you enjoyed it!

	Brisvegan:	Aug 10th, 2012 at 09:25 GMT		5 points
	This is actually really quite tricky. Requires a quite unique focus on the structure of the country name. Or random guessing of a large number of countries.

	popestcyril:	Aug 10th, 2012 at 20:17 GMT		17 points
	A quiz on which kyrgyzstan is the highest rated country in the category being quizzed! Can't beat that!

	skuban:	Aug 11th, 2012 at 03:57 GMT		3 points
	Haha, exacatly what I thought when I saw the results!

	Fusty:	Aug 19th, 2012 at 16:03 GMT		2 points
	I really struggled with this. Its a good challenge though. I'm glad I got kyrgyzstan. Plus some more obscure ones in the indian ocean.

	skuban:	Sep 27th, 2012 at 18:11 GMT		2 points
	Thanks for the EP RobPro!

	Corydon:	Sep 28th, 2012 at 05:36 GMT		2 points
	Cool quiz! You know what would be neat? If you did lowest (or highest) overall score (absolute value), so you'd test for countries closest to the center, like Oman (or furthest from the center, like Zambia).

	Tobsodan:	Sep 28th, 2012 at 08:00 GMT		2 points
	@Corydon: then you'd have to make it an average (divide by number of letters), otherwise you'd just be searching for the longest country names. OT: Great quiz, and very hard. I'd say you could perhaps add another minute, although that might just lead to too much random guessing.

	Cheeselord:	Sep 28th, 2012 at 10:03 GMT		3 points
	Did you just make this because you wanted a quiz where Kyrgyzstan was at the top? If so, well done. If not, well done anyway.

	skuban:	Sep 28th, 2012 at 12:22 GMT		1 point
	@Corydon, that's a good suggestion. I may make that one, although Tobsodan does have a point with the average thing. Maybe I will. Haha, the plan was not necessarily to put Kyrgyzstan on top, but it worked out really well!

	GATEcrasher:	Sep 29th, 2012 at 00:23 GMT		2 points
	Fascinating. I skipped a few on the list thinking they couldnt possibly be on there (Egypt, silly me). Very different way to think about things.

	skuban:	Sep 29th, 2012 at 02:11 GMT		2 points
	Yeah, it definitely is a different way. It's easy to skip over countries that start with early letters (like Egypt) and forget that they have other letters!

	KenHi:	Oct 6th, 2012 at 16:35 GMT		1 point
	skuban: I think you missed St. Kitts and Nevis, which (I think) has a score of 5. I like to do Excel "programming" for fun, so I built a spreadsheet to do the calculations. My spreadsheet agrees with all the other countries and their scores, but I get a 5 for St. Kitts and Nevis. Then I thought maybe you were just looking at St. Kitts, but that would be 25 and make the list even easier. Unless I'm missing something...

	skuban:	Oct 6th, 2012 at 19:09 GMT		1 point
	Good point, KenHi. I actually called it "Saint Kitts and Nevis" in my code, rather than "St." That's the reason I don't have it listed. I've added it as a bonus answer though!

	KenHi:	Oct 6th, 2012 at 19:47 GMT		0 points
	Skuban: Now I understand why it didn't make it. I noticed something else ... you accept East Timor for Timor Leste as most country quizzes do. In this case, however, I would suggest NOT accepting it, because East Timor is -1, while Timor Leste is 1.

	balatjr:	Oct 7th, 2012 at 03:13 GMT		1 point
	This is fun; but I agree about adding a bit more time. Note that only one more than half the answers correct puts one in the 80th percentile.

	skuban:	Oct 7th, 2012 at 20:02 GMT		1 point
	@KenHi, since "East Timor" is a generally accepted alternate to Timor-Leste, I feel inclined to keep it. @balatjr, I think a quiz of this type can easily become a guess-random-countries game with too much more time. As it is now, I don't think it prolongs the game unnecessarily.

	Joy_Joy:	Oct 7th, 2012 at 23:34 GMT		2 points
	Been playing too many capitals quizzes, was still in capital mode when i played it ...wondered why i could only get luxembourg! Fail! :)

	Corydon:	Oct 9th, 2012 at 08:01 GMT		0 points
	You wouldn't have to use an average if you used the same scale that you did for this one. High and low values would cancel each other out, so a country's name length wouldn't be an issue. For example, a country named Az would = 0. A country named Nm would = 0. A country named Azazazazazazaz would still equal 0. What you could do is look for values between -10 and 10 (or centered on whatever the average is), for "centered" countries, and values between -Lowest# and -20, and also ask for values between 20 and 33 (highest) for the non-centered countries.

	skuban:	Oct 10th, 2012 at 12:45 GMT		2 points
	...what?

	KenHi:	Oct 12th, 2012 at 22:56 GMT		2 points
	I did the analysis to determine average distance from the center of the alphabet (between m and n). The lowest scoring country is Solomon Islands with a 3.93 average. 13=A, 1=M, 1=N, 13=Z, etc. then divide by number of letters. The highest scoring country is Cuba, with 11.00. A few other really low countries are Kosovo, Mongolia, Comoros and Oman. Interesting that most of them have lots of O's. The really high countries are Canada, Chad, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Lots of A's and a couple with A's and Z's. I might do a quiz with this later, but I'm running out of game quota this month.

	Corydon:	Oct 21st, 2012 at 13:00 GMT		1 point
	Cool, thanks KenHi! I didn't realize there was a game quota!