Take the Traveler IQ Challenge

When it came to grade school geography, I was the kid armed raised, propped high by the other arm, grunting “oh, oh, oh, I know, I know.” For some strange reason my earnest exuberance to show off all that I knew about the lands of the world was, well, dismissed and found tiresome by the likes of Miss Greene, Miss Love and Miss Robertson, teachers who oddly had little interest in knowing that Vatican City is the smallest country in the world or that Helsinki is the capital of Finland.  

This week, my love of geography and faraway places found a new diversion, thanks to the errant online wanderings of our always-in-the-know marketing director, Eric Heller.   I feared for my productivity and that Eric had stumbled on another online gem, upon hearing those enticing words spill from his office door, “Hey you’ve got to check out this site.” Like Ulysses drawn to the rocks by the siren’s call, I fell for it, “What site?” Hopefully, the janatorial staff wouldn't find my  mummified, cobweb-covered body months later hunched over the keyboard, monitor in mid-game of Traveler IQ Challenge.  

The site centers around an unmarked map of the world (or geographic region of your choosing) with visible borders. The game starts when you are shown the name of a place, city, landmark or capital. You’re job is to find the place and click your mouse on the part of the map where you think it is located. A green arrow then appears marking the correct location, and formulates the distance between the reality and your guess. The farther off the mark, the more points you are charged. I was only off 57 km for Westminster Abbey and an embarrassing 1267 km for the Kremlin. My third grade self would have lowered his head and raised arm in shame and moved on to his math assignment, unaware that time heals all wrong answers.

Take the Traveler IQ Challenge.