The atlas
About the database
Every answer is checked against a real geographic database, not a word list.
What is in it
The atlas ships with over 200,000 places: every country with its common aliases, every settlement on Earth above roughly five hundred people from the GeoNames dataset, and a curated set of lakes, rivers, mountain ranges, seas, gulfs and straits. Each entry carries coordinates, population where it applies, and the rarity band that drives scoring.
Live lookups, millions deep
The stored atlas is only the floor. Play a place it does not know and GeoChain checks live sources before rejecting you: the OpenStreetMap database with its millions of named settlements, hamlets and natural features, the GeoNames geographic service, and the Wikipedia knowledge base. If the place is real and matches the arena, it is accepted on the spot, graded for how well known it is, and cached into the atlas so the next lookup is instant. The database gets deeper every time someone plays something obscure.
On the map
Every accepted place can be viewed on a live map through OpenStreetMap, the same way you would inspect a round in other geography games. Learn more links open the matching Wikipedia article.
Help it grow
Know a real place that gets rejected? Send it in with a verifiable source and a human reviews every submission before it joins the game. Approved places are playable by everyone.