Tips for travelling farther
In Farflung any right answer scores, but the answers nobody else thinks of score the most. These habits will help you find them without gambling away your pins.
1. Let the first answer go by
The country that pops into your head first is usually the one everyone else thought of too, and that’s exactly what makes it Common. Treat it as your safety net, then spend a few seconds looking for a second or third option. The clock gives you 45 seconds; you rarely need more than ten to place a pin.
2. Think small: microstates
Europe’s tiny countries turn up in more answer lists than you’d expect, and players forget them because they barely show on a map. Keep these in mind:
- Vatican City, San Marino and Monaco: each is wrapped by a single neighbour, so they’re answers to “borders exactly one country”.
- Liechtenstein: doubly landlocked, sitting on the Rhine and in the Alps.
- Andorra: landlocked between France and Spain, high in the Pyrenees.
- Luxembourg and Malta: both use the euro, and Luxembourg borders France, Germany and Belgium.
Zoom in before you tap. Small countries have a generous tap area, but a pin in the wrong place still counts where it lands.
3. Don’t forget the island nations
Island countries are the classic rare answer. Build a mental tour:
Caribbean
Barbados, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Dominica, St Kitts & Nevis, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Antigua & Barbuda, Trinidad & Tobago.
Indian Ocean & Atlantic
Seychelles, Mauritius, Comoros, Maldives, Cabo Verde, São Tomé & Príncipe.
Pacific
Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Nauru.
Shared islands
Some islands hold two countries: Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Timor, New Guinea, Borneo, and Ireland.
4. Hunt for exclaves and overseas pieces
Borders are where the best gems hide, because overseas territories and exclaves give countries neighbours you wouldn’t expect:
- France borders Brazil and Suriname through French Guiana in South America.
- The UK borders Spain at Gibraltar, and Spain borders Morocco at Ceuta and Melilla.
- Russia borders Poland and Lithuania through its Kaliningrad exclave.
- Azerbaijan borders Turkey only through its exclave of Nakhchivan.
In Farflung, territories count for the country that governs them, so a pin on Greenland counts as Denmark. That makes Denmark an Arctic country.
5. Read the note under the prompt
Every prompt has a one-line note that settles the edge cases, such as whether the Gulf of Aqaba counts as part of the Red Sea, or whether a maroon flag counts as red. It often hints at how many right answers there are, which tells you how deep the list goes.
6. Know when to play it safe
A miss scores nothing. A Common answer is worth 20 km, and an Uncommon one 40 km. If you’re only half-sure about a rare pick, a solid Uncommon answer often beats the gamble. Save the big swings for prompts where you know the full list.
7. Build your own mental lists
Many prompts come back to the same building blocks. These lists pay off again and again:
- Landlocked countries: 16 in Africa, and many more in Europe, Asia and South America (Bolivia and Paraguay).
- Lines on the globe: the countries crossed by the Equator, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, the Prime Meridian and the Arctic Circle.
- Seas and rivers: who shares the Black Sea, the Caspian, the Baltic, the Danube, the Nile and the Mekong.
- Official languages: where Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French and English are official, including the outliers (Equatorial Guinea, Timor-Leste).
8. Learn from every reveal
After each pin, Farflung shows every right answer with its rarity, plus a short note on the gem. Those reveals are a geography lesson in themselves: the gem you missed today is the one you’ll remember tomorrow.
Want more? Read the full rules or the FAQ.