Data & sources

Real data, readable puzzles.

Can You Geo? uses public datasets to make Mystery Map feel like a game, not a lookup table. Each map is reviewed for fairness before it becomes part of regular play.

Primary sources

World Bank data on a Natural Earth map.

Indicator values come from World Bank World Development Indicators. Country boundaries come from Natural Earth Admin 0 country geometry. The live game loads prepared same-origin files, so play stays fast and stable.

Natural Earth

Dataset: Admin 0 countries, 1:110m
License: Public domain
Attribution: Made with Natural Earth.
Retrieved: 2026-06-27

Permitted under Natural Earth public-domain terms.

Natural Earth public-domain vector data may be redistributed; attribution is requested.

Source reference · License terms

World Bank

Dataset: World Development Indicators via Indicators API
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International unless specifically labeled otherwise by World Bank metadata.
Attribution: The World Bank
Retrieved: 2026-06-27

Generally permitted under CC BY 4.0; metadata must be reviewed for third-party exceptions.

Redistribution requires attribution and respect for indicator-specific third-party notices.

Source reference · License terms

How Mystery Map chooses years

A Mystery Map uses one recent reference year with enough country coverage to make the pattern playable. That keeps the map honest: a player is reading one global snapshot, not a stitched-together timeline.

Why some countries are missing

Missing values usually mean the provider did not publish a usable value for that country in the selected year. Those countries are hatched on the map and do not count as low values.

Why rates beat raw totals

Raw totals often reward knowing which countries are biggest. Mystery Map prioritizes rates, shares, percentages, and per-person measures because they create fairer visual puzzles about structure, not just scale.

How distractors are reviewed

Good wrong answers should feel plausible without being unfair. Daily-ready maps are reviewed so the answer choices point at nearby ideas, not nearly identical maps.

How editorial eligibility works

Not every real dataset makes a good puzzle. Some maps are better for Practice, some are saved for expert play, and some are held back because the pattern is too muddy or too close to another answer.

Why some indicators are retired

Retired indicators are not fake or unsupported; they simply make weaker puzzles. Some are near-duplicates of better maps, some are too ambiguous, and some depend on definitions that are not satisfying to infer from an unlabeled map.

Corrections and map issues

If a map looks wrong, report the game date, country, and what looked suspicious. Source links or screenshots help turn a hunch into a clean correction.

Known limitations

The current catalog is static, country-level, and World Bank focused. It does not include subnational variation, disputed border quizzes, cloud-synced results, public leaderboards, or non-World Bank providers yet.