Behind the Scenes

The twelve most-missed countries marked on a world map: all island microstates in the Caribbean and the Pacific

The countries nobody can place on a map

When the Dominican Republic lights up on the map, 16% of players type "Cuba". When Cuba lights up, only 1% answer "Dominican Republic". People are not confusing two countries — they only know one.

Aug 26, 20267 min read

Before/after: pixelated emoji flag vs HD Apple-style flag on MapGuesser

Technical

Why We Ditched Every Emoji Flag on MapGuesser

In late 2024, Syria changed its flag. Apple updated in March, Google in June, Twitter in January 2026. For a flag quiz game, relying on emojis was no longer an option. Here's how we rebuilt everything from scratch.

Apr 2, 20267 min read