23 thoughts on “Pretend it’s an educational waste of time

  1. thduggie Post author

    Right after posting, I tried again and managed 13’334 point, fueled by a lucky guess that had me 32 km off from the actual place. What I didn’t figure out the first time: you can zoom on the inset map to place the guess more accurately, and you can use the navigational tools in StreetView to see more of the area (perhaps find a car on the road or a road sign) for additional clues.

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  2. Linda Wightman

    I find I use mostly language cues, though that did lead me to guess Portugal for Brazil and Ukraine for Russia. Side-of-the-road driving helps too. Your 14345 is amazing.

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  3. Linda Wightman

    This game is ‘way too awesome and addictive — but also educational. I find just guessing to be annoying, but if I take the (sometimes long) time to “drive” around and look for clues, it’s terrific fun. My most recent efforts earned me 18016 points!

    The most fun for this round was finding the exact place in the Ukraine — it’s easier in the city. For my worst guess (wrong continent), I gave up after exploring miles and miles of fruitless desert. That wasn’t so much fun.

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  4. thduggie Post author

    Congratulations! The Javascript link thing doesn’t reliably work for me, but I managed 16280 points by hitting one location within 6 km (a Brazilian university campus), also with significant driving around. What I don’t do is google things I see (e.g. a sign “Saratov” that clearly is the city’s name).
    For middle-of-nowheres I’ll use street line colors and – if there’s a hump – no passing lines as hints.

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  5. Linda Wightman

    This particular middle-of-nowhere was a dirt road with no lines at all. But if it’s cheating to use Google, I cheat (search, image, translate, and maps). Still, I think that’s half the fun. I spent a long but enjoyable time searching in Cyrillic-language countries for the right circus. And it’s surprising how many possibly-informative signs have been fuzzed out.

    Ah, the rest of the Maggie P gang is playing Quirkle. That means I can play Geoguessr again!

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      1. thduggie Post author

        The challenge made me spend ‘way more time on it than I should have, and I should have trusted Google for “Indian Birch” rather than looked at where 365 might intersect the endless route 10, but with the last one (49 meters off) and the second one (3 km off) I managed my first 20’000+ round!

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        1. thduggie Post author

          That said, I prefer fewer clicks and more intuitive guessing (low trees? must be the north). More pics, less time…

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  6. Linda Wightman

    This is where I get frustrated. I love figuring out towns and cities, but too often find myself plunked down in the middle of nowhere. Is there a way of exploring faster in Google Street View? There’s a limit to my patience for inching forward click by click; last night I went to bed with my wrist throbbing, not a good sign.

    Right now I’m in the middle of a puzzle and about to give up and guess. Miles and miles and miles of nothing but sand and scrub vegetation. At least the road is paved this time, but still has no markings. Speed limit signs clearly not American, and anyway the cars are on the left side of the road. So I’m guessing somewhere in Australia, without being able to be more specific.

    What’s puzzling about it is that we have a mostly straight, seemingly endless paved road in the middle of nowhere, and the speed limit is 30, which seems ridiculous, especially given that that must be in km. Based only on what I see, I’d be driving no less than 50 mph, and if the road were in Montana I’d expect cars to be doing a lot more than that. Well, here goes with my guess.

    Wow, was I wrong. Way, way off.

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  7. Linda Wightman

    Now that’s the kind of puzzle I like. Japan and France were not trivial for me, but at least I knew where to begin looking. And didn’t have miles of clicks to find clues. I was only half a km off in France, and could have done even better if I hadn’t decided it was time to get some real work done.

    Thanks for all the fun!

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  8. thduggie Post author

    A last one, where I got lucky on the final location: I’d already had that one. Actually, the first one was a hotel name, the second the Hiroshima peace dome (been there, recognize that), so relatively quick guessing on 3 and 4 still gave me a great score.

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  9. Linda Wightman

    Okay, Stephan. Porter and I teamed up to score 28884! But don’t click on that link, because here’s the challenge. The first one was our greatest miss, then we were down to 67m, 39m, and 34m. The last was in some ways the most challenging, but we were so psyched by that time that we persevered and missed the goal by a meter. That’s one meter. It took us all evening to do it, but what a thrill. This is what happens when Prudence isn’t here and Porter and I have to find a game we both like. 🙂

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    1. thduggie Post author

      You beat me on the last one, where I got 7 meters, but I managed single-digit meters on four out of five for 32383 points. How did you solve the last one? I finally got it when I saw a signpost to a particular person’s favorite oak, and Google gave me a Panoramio result. That was a lot of driving around!
      For that matter, I saw that in Zermatt a few hiking trails are on StreetView, and no-exit stubs at that – those would be a challenge, provided the Matterhorn was obscured!

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      1. Linda Wightman

        Congratulations! I bow to you as the uncontested winner, and return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.

        This really is an awesome game, though. It reminds me of the Adventure and Zork games we played so much of around the time Heather was born — only the places we’re exploring are real. I was going to add that there’s no magic to help out, but Google is magical enough.

        In the game I started yesterday, my first challenge was being plunked down in the middle of an amusement park/zoo. I did a lot of exploring and never did find an exit, but finally found a sign that named the roller coaster, and Google provided a list of world coasters and where they are. Then Porter and Prudence took over for one of the kind I don’t appreciate, being in the middle of nowhere with mile after mile of all the same scene. After much work, they actually managed to find the exact spot using Google Maps, but could not transfer that exactly onto the game map, where no matter how much you zoomed in, there was nothing to distinguish one part of the road from another. Still, they were close — Porter will have to tell you the number, as I can’t remember.

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  10. Linda Wightman

    If you don’t feel like spending your free hours trying to best our score, at least blow through the first four of the challenge and try out the last one. In many ways it was the most interesting I’ve done yet.

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  11. Linda Wightman

    For Janet’s sake, I won’t share the challenge, as the point in Alaska nearly gave Porter a heart attack. Not only was it obscure, but Google Maps was acting very weird, taking us around in circles, apparently randomly switching the forward and backward arrows, and worse.

    We didn’t best you, but we did break 30,000: 31988.

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    1. thduggie Post author

      Fun! I managed a new personal best, 32390, and with less trouble than the previous personal best. This one had nice hints within a few clicks on almost every location, though the third was a doozy. On one, I even got a 0km separation, which nets 6479 points. I conclude the maximum score is 32395.

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