About Alphabet Atlas
Alphabet Atlas challenges you to name one country for every letter of the alphabet that has one, in three minutes. You can type countries in any order, and the board fills in under each starting letter.
How to play
- Press Start to begin a three-minute round.
- There are 24 letters to fill: every letter except W and X, since no country on the game's list begins with either.
- Type any country. When it matches a name on the list it is accepted instantly and placed under its first letter. Accents, spaces and capitals are ignored.
- Only one country counts per letter. If that letter is already filled, you will see a message and the new name is not used.
- Your score is the number of letters filled when the clock runs out.
- If you fill all 24 letters before time is up, the game ends immediately and every second left on the clock is added to your score as a bonus.
Controls
- Type on any keyboard; the input is focused when the round starts.
- There is no Enter key to press: a correct name clears the box by itself.
- Filled letters turn green and show the country and its flag.
Tips and strategy
- Do the scarce letters first, because they each have only one answer: Oman for O, Qatar for Q and Yemen for Y.
- Next come the letters with few options: J (Jamaica, Japan, Jordan), V (Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam), Z (Zambia, Zimbabwe), F (Fiji, Finland, France) and R (Romania, Russia, Rwanda).
- Use exact list names. Cote d'Ivoire fills C, Holy See fills H and Turkiye fills T; aliases like Ivory Coast or Vatican are not accepted here.
- Common letters such as S, M, B and C have many answers, so leave them for last when you are under time pressure.
- If you are close to a full board, keep going quickly: every remaining second becomes a bonus point once all 24 are done.
Background
Alphabet games, where players find one item for each letter, are a familiar party and classroom format. Country names spread unevenly across the alphabet. In the game's list of 195 countries, S is the most common first letter with 26 names, followed by M with 18 and B and C with 17 each, while O, Q and Y have only one each and W and X have none. The game uses English short names, so a country's first letter can differ from its own name for itself: Germany is Deutschland in German and Japan is Nihon or Nippon in Japanese.
Questions
- Is there a time limit?
- Yes, three minutes. The round ends early only if you fill all 24 letters.
- Why are W and X missing?
- No country among the 195 on the game's list has an English name starting with W or X, so those letters are left out.
- Where is my best score saved?
- In your browser on this device. A full board scores 24 plus your remaining seconds.