Frequently Asked Questions

A daily geography puzzle. Every day you get three real places on the map, and you split each one by population, either in half, in thirds, or in quarters, trying to get every piece as close to even as possible.

Yes, and the daily game always will be. Halves, Thirds, and Quarters, every day, no account needed.

No. You can play as a guest, with your stats and streak saved locally in your own browser. Creating a free account lets you show up on the leaderboard and earn XP, once you've also set a username.

The daily game itself, all three modes, every day, is completely free, forever. Premium adds the full Archive (every past day, playable any time), Unlimited Play (play any mode as many times as you like), and Country Mode (pick any country in the world and split it).

Your score compares the split you draw against the real population split in that exact spot, out of 100 per round. The closer your split is to a genuinely even population share, the higher you score.

That's the ideal move, the single best adjustment you could have made to get closer to a perfect split. It only appears after you've locked in, so it never gives anything away beforehand.

From WorldPop, a research initiative that produces gridded population estimates for the entire world (more detail on the data sources page). WorldPop combines official census and survey data with satellite imagery (things like nighttime lights, land cover, and settlement patterns) and machine learning to model how population is likely distributed within smaller areas, since real censuses are only reported at a broader administrative level, not down to individual towns or city blocks.

It's a modelled estimate, not a headcount, so it's honest to say it isn't perfect. Accuracy can vary in remote areas, places with outdated or unreliable census data, or regions where population has shifted quickly since the underlying data was collected. It's the best openly available option for a game like this, but treat it as a very good estimate rather than an exact figure.

Puzzle size varies on purpose, day to day. Some rounds are a tight, zoomed-in slice of a single country, others stretch across a large chunk of a continent. Each day's three rounds are also guaranteed to span at least two different continents, so you're never splitting the same region three times in a row.

Border and coastline data comes from a standard, publicly available world boundaries dataset (Natural Earth), used as-is. For places with disputed or contested borders, GeoSlice just follows whatever that dataset shows, rather than picking a side. This isn't a political statement of any kind, it's simply the most practical way to render consistent maps for a geography game, and the same approach applies everywhere in the world without exception.

No. GeoSlice is an independent, small project, with no government, political, or organizational affiliation of any kind.

No.

Not a separate app, GeoSlice runs entirely in the browser, and works on mobile browsers the same way it does on desktop.

Three ways of splitting the same place. Halves: drag one line, aim for as close to a 50/50 population split as possible. Thirds: three lines from a shared center point, aim for an even three-way split. Quarters: two lines crossing at a right angle, aim for four even quadrants.

At midnight in your own local time zone, not a single fixed time for everyone.

Yes, through the Archive, a Premium feature that lets you browse and play any past day, in any of the three modes.

A Premium feature that lets you play brand new, freshly generated rounds of Halves, Thirds, or Quarters, as many times as you like, each one a random new location, with your stats tracked the same way as the daily game. This is different from the Archive: the Archive replays specific past daily puzzles, while Unlimited Play always generates a genuinely new one.

A Premium feature where you search for, or randomly pick, any country in the world and split it, in Halves, Thirds, or Quarters, following that country's real coastline and borders, islands included.

Yes. After finishing a mode, you can share an individual round as an image, showing the actual map you played, or share the whole day's results as text.

Yes. Payments are handled entirely by Stripe, a payment processor used by a huge range of companies worldwide. GeoSlice never sees or stores your card details directly.

You earn XP for playing today's actual daily puzzle. Archive days, Unlimited Play, and Country Mode don't count toward XP, it's specifically tied to keeping up with the daily game.

Two things are required: an account, and a username set on your account page. If you're signed in but haven't set a username yet, that's almost always the reason, head to your account page and set one.

Yes, any time, from your account page.

Right now, guest stats are stored locally in your browser and don't automatically transfer to a new account, they stay separate. This is something worth having, and it's on the list.

Yes. Guest and signed-in scores count exactly the same way toward that day's spread, you don't need an account for that part specifically.

Whoever's on top of monthly XP when the month ends gets a free month of GeoSlice Premium.

The full Archive, Unlimited Play, and Country Mode, all described above.

Lifetime is a one-time payment for permanent access, but it's only available during GeoSlice's launch window, once that period ends, the Lifetime option won't come back. Monthly is billed every month and can be cancelled any time. Both include exactly the same features while Lifetime is still available.

Yes, from your account page. Cancelling stops future billing, and you keep full access until the end of the period you've already paid for.

You keep full Premium access until your current billing period ends, then it reverts to the free daily game.

No. Full details are in the Privacy Policy.

Email hello@geoslice.net and your account and associated data will be removed.

Email hello@geoslice.net, every message gets read.