Editorial policy
Every quiz draws a line around what counts. This page documents where ours fall: every contested call, and the reasoning behind it.
What counts as a country
Our world roster has 197 countries: the 193 UN member states, both UN observer states (Vatican City and Palestine), plus Kosovo and Taiwan.
UN membership is the least arguable baseline, so that's the foundation. The observer states hold a formal seat at the UN, so they count. Kosovo and Taiwan hold no UN seat, but each governs its own territory, runs its own elections and currency, and is recognized by a meaningful share of the world; they appear in nearly every serious reference list, and they appear in ours.
The same 197-country roster drives the capitals, flags, and map quizzes, so a country never exists in one quiz and not another.
Disputed and partially recognized territories
Every contested entity, and how it behaves in play. The through-line: a place counts as a country when it actually governs itself and a meaningful part of the world says so, and whatever we decide is applied consistently across every quiz, in both directions.
| Entity | Status | Our call | In play |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vatican City | UN observer state | Included | Counts in every country quiz. Its capital is Vatican City itself. |
| Palestine | UN observer state, recognized by most UN members | Included | Counts in every country quiz. Capital quizzes use Ramallah, the administrative seat. |
| Kosovo | Recognized by roughly half of UN members | Included | Counts in every country quiz. Consistently applied: Serbia subdivision quizzes cover the 25 districts of Serbia proper and exclude the districts of Kosovo. |
| Taiwan | Fully self-governing, limited formal recognition | Included | Counts in every country quiz; Republic of China and ROC are accepted when typing. China subdivision quizzes cover the 31 province-level divisions the PRC administers, and Taiwan is not among them. |
| Western Sahara | Disputed between Morocco and the Polisario Front | Not included | No single government administers the territory, so it does not work as a country answer. Typing it in a world quiz will not count. On maps its area renders as part of Morocco, the de-facto administrator of most of it. |
| Somaliland | Self-declared, recognized by no UN member | Not included | Treated as part of Somalia. Somalia subdivision quizzes include all 18 regions, including the ones Somaliland claims. |
| Northern Cyprus | Recognized only by Turkey | Not included | The whole island counts as Cyprus, whose capital is Nicosia. |
| Abkhazia & South Ossetia | Recognized by a handful of states | Not included | Treated as part of Georgia. |
| Transnistria | Self-declared, recognized by no UN member | Not included | Treated as part of Moldova. |
| Crimea | Occupied by Russia since 2014; Ukrainian under international law | Not included | Not a country, and consistently Ukrainian: Ukraine subdivision quizzes include Crimea and Sevastopol among the 27 first-level units, while Russia subdivision quizzes cover the 83 internationally recognized federal subjects and exclude them. |
| West Bank | Occupied Palestinian territory | Not included | Not a country answer. Israel subdivision quizzes cover the six standard districts and deliberately do not draw the West Bank as an Israeli district. |
| Cook Islands & Niue | Self-governing in free association with New Zealand | Not included | Not UN members and not counted; they may appear in future territory quizzes. |
| Greenland, Hong Kong, Macau, Puerto Rico & other territories | Dependent or special-status territories | Not included | Never count toward the 197 and never appear as answers in a country quiz. On world maps each fills in with its parent (Greenland with Denmark, Hong Kong and Macau with China, Puerto Rico with the United States). |
One continent per country
Continent quizzes place every country in exactly one continent, so the six continents sum to the same 197. The transcontinental calls: Russia is in Europe. Turkey, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan are in Asia. Egypt is in Africa despite the Sinai. Timor-Leste is in Asia; Papua New Guinea is in Oceania.
States, provinces, and regions
Subdivision quizzes use each country's internationally recognized first-level units, under the name an English-speaking quizzer actually knows: provinces, states, and regions in most places; oblasts, prefectures, cantons, voivodeships, governorates, and emirates where those are the established English terms. Notable cases:
- Russia: The 83 internationally recognized federal subjects. Crimea, Sevastopol, and the regions annexed in 2022 are Ukrainian and are not included.
- Ukraine: All 27 first-level units: 24 oblasts, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol. Occupation does not change what a place is.
- France: The 13 metropolitan regions (and, in the départements quizzes, the 96 metropolitan départements). Overseas regions and collectivities are territories with their own future home, not rows to pad a list with.
- United States: The 50 states. Washington, D.C. is not a state and is not one of the answers.
- China: The 31 province-level divisions the PRC administers: 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau are not among them.
- United Kingdom: England is quizzed on its 48 ceremonial counties, the historic set people actually know, rather than the shifting administrative map.
- Australia: The 6 states plus the Northern Territory and the ACT, eight answers in all, because leaving the territories out would surprise more people than including them.
- India: All 36 first-level units: 28 states and 8 union territories.
- Vietnam: The long-standing 63-province set. Vietnam merged provinces in 2025; we test the map the world learned, and will move when the new one settles into common knowledge.
- Norway: The 15 mainland counties. Svalbard and Jan Mayen are territories, not counties.
Some units have no consistent set of official flags (French regions, Chinese provinces, English counties), so those sets ship without a flags mode rather than inventing one.
Capitals
Where a country has more than one capital, the constitutional or official capital is the canonical answer, and the other defensible answers are accepted when you type them. Bolivia shows Sucre and accepts La Paz. South Africa shows Pretoria and accepts Cape Town and Bloemfontein. The Netherlands shows Amsterdam and accepts The Hague. Sri Lanka shows Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte and accepts Colombo. Tanzania shows Dodoma and accepts Dar es Salaam; Myanmar shows Naypyidaw and accepts Yangon. Israel is Jerusalem; Palestine is Ramallah.
Beyond geography
The same discipline applies outside the atlas: every quiz states its inclusion rule, and the rule is applied strictly.
- Music: an artist's discography quiz covers solo studio albums only. Live albums, EPs, compilations, mixtapes, and soundtracks don't count, and neither does work with a band; the band gets its own quiz. Gwen Stefani's quiz has five albums; No Doubt's records live on No Doubt's quiz.
- Film: a franchise quiz covers the mainline theatrical films. Harry Potter is eight films, and Fantastic Beasts is a different franchise. Cast quizzes cover the principal billed cast, not cameos.
- Television: cast quizzes cover the series regulars, not guest or recurring players.
- Sports: rosters are season snapshots. Each season is its own quiz, so a player traded mid-career appears exactly where history put them.
- History: lists of rulers and office-holders use the standard roster and count each person once. US Presidents covers all 45 in order, so someone who served two non-consecutive terms is still one president. English and British monarchs run from the Norman Conquest of 1066. Roman emperor quizzes name the principal rulers, not every short-lived usurper.
- Awards: the Oscars, the Grammys, and league championships follow the official winner record, in chronological order.
Spelling, aliases, and typos
It's a knowledge test, not a spelling test. Type-in quizzes accept the names people actually use: USA, Britain, Czechia, Ivory Coast, and Holy See all land. Accents are optional; cote d'ivoire works fine. Leading "the" is ignored.
Honest misspellings count when they can only mean one answer: "nigiria" gets you Nigeria because nothing else is close. But when two answers are near neighbors, like Slovakia and Slovenia, we ask for precision, because guessing the midpoint shouldn't pay.
Disagree?
Reasonable people draw these lines differently, and some of these calls are genuinely close. If you think we got one wrong, email contact@threeroads.app and make the case. More about the site on the about page.