Krillion Recorded answers
700 recorded answers
How to approach it
Work country by country rather than free-associating. Pick a handful of nations whose urban networks you know reasonably well, and for each one list municipalities in the target band from memory: the second-tier industrial centres, the provincial capitals, the port and river cities. Keep a strict mental boundary between the city proper and the wider metro area, because the second figure is usually far larger and will tempt you into the wrong range. Then sanity-check each candidate against the population band before committing. Once the obvious names are exhausted, push into regions the average player rarely reaches; the scoring system rewards picks that few other entrants made, so breadth of geography matters more than depth in any single country.
Get a hint
Start from countries with very large urban populations, then think of individual municipalities inside them rather than of the whole built-up area around a core.
A little more
Mid-sized regional capitals and industrial or port cities are fertile ground, especially where administrative borders absorbed surrounding districts as the city grew.
One step further
Look beyond the obvious giants: a name sitting just under the ten-million mark, or a fast-expanding city in a densely settled river plain, is often the kind of entry a crowd overlooks.
Reveal answers 700
- YokohamaRare60points
- AustinSchooler30points
- BangkokSchooler30points
- BarcelonaSchooler30points
- BirminghamSchooler30points
- BrusselsSchooler30points
- BudapestSchooler30points
- Buenos AiresSchooler30points
- CairoSchooler30points
- CalgarySchooler30points
- Cape TownSchooler30points
- DallasSchooler30points
- DubaiSchooler30points
- HamburgSchooler30points
- HanoiSchooler30points
- HavanaSchooler30points
- Hong KongSchooler30points
- HoustonSchooler30points
- JohannesburgSchooler30points
- Kuala LumpurSchooler30points
- KyotoSchooler30points
- MadridSchooler30points
- ManilaSchooler30points
- Mexico CitySchooler30points
- MilanSchooler30points
- MontrealSchooler30points
- MunichSchooler30points
- OsakaSchooler30points
- OttawaSchooler30points
- PhiladelphiaSchooler30points
- PhoenixSchooler30points
- PragueSchooler30points
- Rio de JaneiroSchooler30points
- San AntonioSchooler30points
- San DiegoSchooler30points
- SeoulSchooler30points
- SingaporeSchooler30points
- StockholmSchooler30points
- TaipeiSchooler30points
- TorontoSchooler30points
- ViennaSchooler30points
- WarsawSchooler30points
- BerlinPlankton10points
- ChicagoPlankton10points
- LondonPlankton10points
- Los AngelesPlankton10points
- New York CityPlankton10points
- ParisPlankton10points
- RomePlankton10points
- TokyoPlankton10points
Why these answers count
The reveal shows what the scoring curve actually rewards. Only one entry reached the top band at 100 points, so the perfect pick was something almost nobody else thought of, while 526 answers landed at 85 and 123 at 60. That middle tier is where most competent players ended up: solid, recognisable secondary cities such as Adana, Antalya, Bursa or Konya in one country, or Bandung, Bogor and Bekasi in another, all correct and all common enough to be shared by many entrants. Lower scores went to the names that come to mind first, the biggest and most famous cities inside the range, which nearly everyone writes down. The lesson is that accuracy alone puts you at 85; rarity is what pushes a correct answer toward the ceiling. Hulunbuir at 100 is the clearest illustration: a large municipal population attached to a name that rarely surfaces in quizzes, so almost no one duplicated it. Picking a well-known city is safe but capped; picking an obscure but genuinely qualifying one is the only route to the top.