Flag Guessing Game

How to play the flag guessing game

Each game shows ten flags, one at a time. Name the country that flies each flag to score up to 100 points, for a best possible total of 1,000. After every flag you see the right answer and which part of the world it comes from, and at the end you get a list of all ten flags, so you can study the ones you missed.

Before you start, choose a mode and a region. Your choices stay set when you press Play again, which makes it easy to drill one region until you know every flag in it.

Classic mode: type the country

Classic is the real test. Start typing a country name and tap the right one from the short list that appears. You never have to spell a name in full, and a typo can't cost you a guess. Common short names work too, so USA, UK, Holland, Korea and UAE all find the right country.

You get two guesses at each flag. A right answer on the first try is worth 100 points and a right answer on the second try is worth 50. After a wrong guess the game tells you which region the flag is from. If you have no idea, press Skip this flag to see the answer and move on.

Easy mode: pick from four

Easy mode shows four country names under each flag. Tap the one you think is right for 100 points. The wrong choices come from the same region when possible, so it is still a fair challenge. It is a good way to learn new flags before you try them in Classic.

Guess the flag by region

You can guess the flag from the whole world or from one part of it:

Russia and Turkey stretch across two continents, so they appear in both the Europe and the Asia sets. Australia and New Zealand are part of the All flags set.

Scores and sharing

When you finish, you see your total out of 1,000 and whether it beat your best score for that mode and region. Each mode and region keeps its own best score in your browser, so a strong Easy Europe result never hides a weaker Classic Africa one.

Press Share result to copy a short summary without spoilers: one square per flag, green for a first-try answer, yellow for a second-try answer and red for a miss, plus a link back to this page. Paste it into a group chat and see who knows more flags.

Flags that are easy to mix up

Some flags are close enough to fool almost everyone at first. These pairs and groups are all in the game:

• Indonesia and Poland. Both are two plain bands of red and white. Indonesia has red on top; Poland has white on top.
• Ireland and Ivory Coast. Both are green, white and orange vertical stripes. Ireland starts with green next to the flagpole; Ivory Coast starts with orange.
• Russia, Slovakia and Slovenia. All three use white, blue and red horizontal stripes. Russia's flag is plain. Slovakia adds a shield with a white double cross, and Slovenia adds a smaller shield showing a mountain under three gold stars.
• Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. All use yellow, blue and red bands. Colombia's yellow band takes up half the flag, Ecuador adds a coat of arms in the centre, and Venezuela has equal bands with an arc of white stars.
• Australia and New Zealand. Both are dark blue with the Union Jack in the corner. Australia's stars are white and include a large seven-pointed star under the Union Jack; New Zealand has four red stars with white borders.
• The Nordic crosses. Denmark is a white cross on red, Sweden yellow on blue and Finland blue on white. Norway is a blue cross edged in white on red, and Iceland is a red cross edged in white on blue.

Tips to learn flags faster

1. Play one region at a time. Thirty flags is far easier to learn than ninety. Start with the region you know best.
2. Use Easy mode first. Seeing the right name next to three wrong ones helps the flag stick before you have to type it.
3. Look for one detail. Ghana's black star, Lebanon's cedar tree and Kenya's shield and spears each give a flag away at a glance.
4. Study the end list. The list of all ten flags after each game shows exactly which ones you missed. Play the same region again straight away and they will come back soon.

More from GuessNest

The flag guessing game is one of the guessing games on GuessNest. If you enjoy it, try the daily nest, where a flag round sits alongside Shade, Year, Angle and Count in a new five-round puzzle every day. In the daily round you get three guesses at a single flag, and the score drops with each try. Flag images come from the open-source flag-icons project.