GeoSort

GeoSort is a daily geography puzzle about comparing countries. Each round gives you six statistics and six countries. For every statistic, exactly one of those six countries ranks highest among them, and every country ranks highest for exactly one statistic — so the puzzle is a one-to-one matching. Your job is to work out which of the six nations tops each ranking. The winner is the highest of the six on the board, not necessarily the world record holder — so a country famous for one thing can quietly take a different slot when the true record holder is not in the line-up.

The catch is that the country you first reach for is rarely the one that actually leads. National stereotypes are a good starting point and a bad finishing point: the biggest producer of a thing is often not the biggest consumer of it, wealth does not always track the intuition you bring to a stat, and per-capita rankings routinely hand the crown to a small country you would never have guessed. That gap between the obvious answer and the real one is where the puzzle lives.

Scoring counts the countries you matched exactly right, out of six. Every correct match earns points, a perfect six earns a large bonus, and finishing at all earns a participation floor — so even a rough round still counts toward your streak. There is no timer and no penalty for thinking it through.

A useful strategy is to lock in the matches you are sure of first, then treat the rest as a process of elimination. Because the answer is a one-to-one pairing, every country you place correctly removes an option from the stats you are still unsure about, and every stat you nail takes a country off the board. Swapping two placed chips costs nothing before you lock in, so commit to your strong guesses early and let them narrow the field.

The rankings are drawn from published, dated sources at authoring time, with the source shown on the reveal so you can check the leaders yourself. Figures drift year to year, so each round is a snapshot rather than a live standing. The same six countries and six stats go to everybody who plays that day.

How to play

1. Read the six statistics. Each is topped by exactly one of the six countries shown — the highest of those six, not necessarily the world record holder.
2. Tap a stat to select it, then tap a country chip to place it there. Tap two placed chips to swap them.
3. Fill all six slots, then hit Lock In to reveal which country tops each stat among the six.
4. Every country you matched to the right stat scores. Six out of six is a perfect round.

Strategy

Start with the stat you know best, not the country you know best. A single confident placement is worth more than four hunches, because the round is a one-to-one matching: every chip you place correctly is a chip the remaining stats can no longer use, and every stat you settle takes a country off the board. Two solid anchors usually collapse the rest into a short process of elimination.

Then argue with your first instinct. The country a stat brings to mind is usually famous for producing something, and the stat is usually asking who consumes, exports or holds the most of it per head — which are rarely the same nation. Per-capita measures in particular reward small, wealthy or sparsely populated countries, so when a ranking looks like it has an obvious winner, check whether the obvious winner is simply the biggest country on the board.

Remember the winner only has to beat the other five. A country that would rank twentieth in the world can top a stat here if the real leaders are absent, so read every stat against the line-up you were actually given rather than against your mental world ranking. Swapping placed chips is free until you lock in, so there is no cost to committing early and rearranging once the eliminations start to bite.

Finally, use the reveal. Every round names the source it drew its rankings from, and reading which country actually topped a stat — and by how far — is how the intuition for the next round gets built. Players who improve at this game are not memorising figures; they are learning which kinds of statistic reward small countries, which reward large ones, and which reward the ones nobody thinks of.

Where the data comes from

Every GeoSort puzzle is built from published, dated data, and each challenge links the source it drew its numbers from. These are the references we draw on:

• Our World in Data