Rules
How CLOSER works.
One mystery European city a day, six guesses, no account. Everything you need to know is on this page.
Which cities count
A city qualifies for the accepted pool when it is a recognisable European place: a national capital, a regional or state capital, or a well-known city that people can reasonably picture on a map.
The guess pool includes larger cities, regional capitals and selected smaller places. Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein have extra local coverage. Accepted guesses include places that will never be daily answers.
A small number of smaller cities are included when they are widely recognised, for example Venice, Florence, Geneva and Salzburg-scale landmarks of European geography.
Guess pool versus answer pool
The guess pool is deliberately broad: every accepted city can be typed as a guess, so you always have somewhere sensible to start. The daily answer pool is much narrower and curated by hand, so the target is always a city most players will have heard of. Every answer is a member of the guess pool, but most guessable cities are never answers.
Standard and Guided Mode
Standard Mode is the default. Each guess returns the straight-line distance to the target and whether you are hotter or colder than your previous guess.
Guided Mode adds a compass direction to every guess, pointing from your guess towards the target. You can switch it on at any point during a round without losing your guesses. Once it is on it stays on until the next city, and the result is labelled as Guided.
How distance is calculated
Distances are great-circle distances in kilometres between city centre coordinates, calculated with the haversine formula on a spherical Earth. Coordinates come from Wikidata, Natural Earth and GeoNames.
Cold is more than 1,000 km. Closer is 350–1,000 km. Hot is under 350 km. Target is the city itself.
Daily reset
A new city appears every day at 00:00 UTC. Everyone plays the same city on the same day, and your round, streak and statistics are stored only on this device.