MapTap Daily Geography Challenge Becomes the New Favourite Word Puzzle

As Wordle marks its fifth anniversary, it’s worth asking whether the daily puzzle still delivers the same excitement it once did. For many players, it certainly does—but after solving thousands of puzzles, keeping a streak alive can sometimes feel more like a habit than genuine fun. Lately, my friends and I have found ourselves hooked on a different daily challenge called MapTap, available both as a mobile app and through the web.

Every day, MapTap presents five geography-based questions. Each challenge asks players to identify the location of a city—or occasionally the site of a famous historical event or battle—by tapping its position on a world map. Depending on how close your guess is to the correct location, you receive a score ranging from 0 to 100.

The questions gradually become more challenging as the game progresses. The opening clue might feature a globally recognised city such as London, while the final question could ask you to locate a remote island nation somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Later rounds also carry score multipliers of two or three, allowing players to finish with a maximum score of 1,000 points. Personally, I consider anything above 900 a solid performance, although many players aim for a perfect score.

Much like Wordle, MapTap generates a simple text summary that you can easily copy and share with friends or in group chats, making it fun to compare results every day.

I certainly didn’t expect to be writing about the game when I completed today’s challenge, but I’m perfectly happy sharing a score that wasn’t spectacular. It’s a reminder that nobody knows everything. For the record, I do know where Indonesia is—it just happens to be an enormous country. And somehow, I still occasionally mix up exactly where Sicily sits off the coast of Italy. I’m doing my best.

You certainly don’t need to be a geography expert to enjoy MapTap, although players with strong geography knowledge will naturally have an advantage. What makes the game especially rewarding is that you gradually improve over time. The more you play, the better your understanding of world geography becomes, and your scores steadily increase.

At the conclusion of each day’s puzzle, MapTap also provides short but informative descriptions of every featured location. The explanations are easy to read while offering interesting historical and geographical context. One recent puzzle, for example, followed the journeys of the 14th-century explorer Ibn Battuta, whose travels stretched across Africa, Asia, and the Iberian Peninsula—a particularly enjoyable theme.

I’ve also spent time with other geography-inspired games such as Worldle and Globle, both of which offer entertaining challenges. However, neither has managed to keep my friends and me coming back as often as MapTap. In games like Worldle or Globle, some puzzles can feel nearly impossible without consulting a world map—especially if you’re expected to know which countries border places like Turkmenistan. MapTap, on the other hand, always lets you make an educated guess and immediately see how close you came, making every attempt feel worthwhile.

If you enjoy daily puzzle games, MapTap is well worth trying. Share your scores with your most competitive friends, debate whether everyone should know the location of the Battle of Midway, and enjoy discovering a little more about the world with every puzzle.