About Smurdy

Smurdy is a free geography quiz site that I build and run myself. It started as a map quiz I made to teach myself geography. The more I played it, the more I thought of things to add or improve.

I go by Smurdy online. I'm quite a big fan of geography and programming, and I spend an unreasonable amount of time staring at maps and thinking up geography challenges. A lot of the site's features come from me playing Smurdy, getting annoyed by something, and spending the next hour figuring out how to fix it.

What is on the site

• Bordered map quizzes where you click or type countries and US states.
• No-borders quizzes that make you remember the map without showing political borders.
• Point quizzes where you name which country or state a red dot is in.
• Flag quizzes for the world and US states.
• Country capitals and all 50 US state capitals.
• Weak Spots, which remembers all your mistakes so you can come back later and fix them.
• Favorites, recents, search filters, and other tools to help you manage your quizzes.

Why there are so many modes

There's a few different ways to fail at geography. I can recognize New Zealand instantly and still forget its flag or capital. That is why those show up as separate quizzes and separate Weak Spots.

Weak Spots

Weak Spots remembers both the place you missed and the kind of quiz you missed it in. If you get it right in Retry Missed, it leaves the list. You can do this as soon as you finish a quiz or later in the main menu.

How places are counted

Country map quizzes generally follow Natural Earth's separately mapped features and group ordinary dependencies with their sovereign state. UN member and observer states are kept as separate answers, along with a small number of de facto entities that the source data already represents separately. Inclusion, naming, and displayed borders do not represent Smurdy's position on sovereignty or international recognition.

What's next

My to-do list changes too often to say for sure, but right now I want to add Locate modes, country-shape quizzes, more city stuff, Study Mode and a daily challenge. Subdivisions still have a lot of room to grow too. I spend most of my daily free time polishing Smurdy and adding new features, so anything that feels missing will probably be added eventually.

Feedback actually changes the site

I catch lots of bugs by playtesting Smurdy myself, but people also regularly send useful corrections and really cool ideas. If you notice something, send it here.