Krillion Recorded answers
42 recorded answers
How to approach it
Work from design grammar instead of geography. National flags are built out of a small set of templates: horizontal tribands, vertical tribands, pales, cantons and central emblems. Ask which templates can put a stripe through the exact middle, then walk each template through the world's regions until names surface. Horizontal tribands with a light centre field are the richest vein, so mine them first and keep a running list rather than stopping at the first three or four. When the obvious names dry up, switch orientation, because vertical centre bands are uncommon and easy to overlook. Finally, screen every candidate against the wording and discard flags where white sits only in a crest, a star or a hoist-side wedge. Ranking by rarity comes last: breadth first, then filtering.
Get a hint
Think in flag families rather than in individual countries: the horizontal triband, the vertical triband and the single pale are separate design traditions, and each one carries its own cluster of members.
A little more
Sort candidates by the orientation and position of the stripe. Horizontal white centre bands cluster in one broad stretch of the map, while vertical white centre bands are far rarer and usually sit between two darker outer fields.
One step further
Before accepting a flag, check whether the white runs edge to edge through the middle or merely shows up in a badge, a hoist triangle or a corner canton; that single distinction eliminates most near misses.
Reveal answers 42
- LesothoOne in a Krillion100points
- El SalvadorDeep Cut85points
- Equatorial GuineaDeep Cut85points
- KuwaitDeep Cut85points
- LatviaDeep Cut85points
- LiberiaDeep Cut85points
- LuxembourgDeep Cut85points
- NicaraguaDeep Cut85points
- NigerDeep Cut85points
- ParaguayDeep Cut85points
- Sierra LeoneDeep Cut85points
- SudanDeep Cut85points
- TajikistanDeep Cut85points
- UzbekistanDeep Cut85points
- YemenDeep Cut85points
- CroatiaRare60points
- DenmarkRare60points
- Dominican RepublicRare60points
- EgyptRare60points
- GuatemalaRare60points
- HondurasRare60points
- HungaryRare60points
- IranRare60points
- IraqRare60points
- Ivory CoastRare60points
- JordanRare60points
- LebanonRare60points
- PalestineRare60points
- PeruRare60points
- SyriaRare60points
- United Arab EmiratesRare60points
- UruguayRare60points
- ArgentinaSchooler30points
- AustriaSchooler30points
- IndiaSchooler30points
- IrelandSchooler30points
- NetherlandsSchooler30points
- NigeriaSchooler30points
- CanadaPlankton10points
- FrancePlankton10points
- ItalyPlankton10points
- MexicoPlankton10points
Why these answers count
Scoring tracked rarity, and the spread was wide for such a plain design feature. The lone hundred-point answer, Lesotho, is a horizontal tricolour whose pale middle band carries a black emblem; the symbol pulls the eye, the stripe gets forgotten, and that is exactly why almost nobody offered it. The eighty-five-point tier held the solid mid-frequency picks: El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Latvia, Liberia, Luxembourg, Nicaragua, Niger, Paraguay, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen. These are flags a well-travelled quizzer names after a moment's thought, common enough to be remembered and uncommon enough to beat the crowd. At sixty points sat the famous, heavily publicised designs, from Croatia and Denmark through Egypt, Guatemala, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Peru, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay; everyone pictures them, so they pay the floor rate. The takeaway is blunt: the obvious middle of a category earns least, and the corner that is hard to visualise earns most.