About the site


The cities quizzes are developed and operated by Ian Fisher. The first quiz, How many US cities can you name?, was published on my personal site in September 2019, followed by a cities of Europe quiz the next month. Over the following year, as the site gained traction I kept up a steady pace of new quizzes, culminating in a comprehensive cities of the world quiz in December 2020. In October 2022, I moved the quizzes from my personal site to the cityquiz.io domain, and added the ability to create user accounts.

The site was featured in a viral video by GeoWizard (2.9 million+ views) and a Huffington Post article. It has an active subreddit, r/iafisher.

You can view the history of updates to the site's database and functionality on the updates page.

Frequently asked questions


What counts as a city?

Almost anything! Not just proper cities, but towns, villages, and hamlets, too.

Will I lose my progress if I close the page?

No. You will only lose your progress if you clear the site data in your browser. If you create an account, you can save in-progress quizzes, too.

Can I share my results?

Yes. Once you save your quiz, the new URL can be sent to whomever you'd like.

Can I transfer my progress from one device to another?

Yes, as long as you've created an account. Simply copy the URL of the quiz page to your other device (you'll have to be logged in there, too).

Why doesn't the quiz accept a certain city?

First, double-check you've spelled the city's name correctly. Try variant spellings, if there are any. Next, make sure it is an independent settlement and not part of another municipality. If it is indeed, then it is probably just missing from the database.

The quality of the site's database varies by country. Some countries, like the United States and Brazil, have excellent data. Others, like China and most of Africa, have much sparser data.

Why is Istanbul missing from the Asian cities quiz?

Due to technical limitations, a city can only be in a single quiz, so I chose to put Istanbul in Europe instead of Asia.

How do you add two cities of the same name in the same country?

Click the dropdown to the right of the input box and select 'Every country' or 'Every state'.

Where did you get the list of cities?

See the credits.

Can I enter city names in my language?

Most cities are accepted under both their common English name and their native name, e.g. Cologne and Köln. In countries that use the Cyrillic script, you can enter city names in Cyrillic. Large cities, especially in Europe, may be listed under their names in several languages. For example, 'Londres' is accepted for London.

Why is a city's population much smaller than the official population?

A city's population is for the city proper whenever possible, rather than its urban area or metropolitan area. This is the only way to include every city without double-counting population. For some cities whose urban area is significantly smaller than the city proper (notably, many prefecture-level cities in China), I use the population figure for the urban component of the city proper instead.

Is there a limit to the number of cities I can add?

You cannot save a game with more than 5,000 cities (7,500 for the world quiz). However, if you are not logged in, you can continue adding cities to your map; you just won't be able to save your results permanently. At around 22,000 cities, you will reach the limit for local storage in your browser. If you use Firefox, you can follow these instructions to increase the limit. If you use another browser, unfortunately there is no way around the limit.

Why do some cities not show up in the rarest cities list?

Some cities were added to the database later, so their rarity scores would be artificially low because earlier players of the quiz did not have the opportunity to name them. These cities are excluded from the rarest cities list.

Who created the cities quizzes?

The cities quizzes were created by Ian Fisher and were originally hosted on his personal website.

I have a question about the site that was not answered here.

You can email me at help@cityquiz.io.

Please understand that I am a single person and it is not always possible for me to respond to every email. I will generally ignore emails about a single missing city or incorrect population as there are simply far too many of them for me to individually address.

Site credits


Personal

  • Thank you to Huy-Hoàng Nguyễn for helping to improve the Vietnamese city data.
  • Thank you to nyghts for assisting with the preparation of the Germany, France, and UK quizzes.
  • Thank you to Björn Buchli for assisting with updating the India data set.
  • Thank you to Lib Ted and Soup for assisting with updating the Poland data set.
  • Thank you to Yonjae Lee for providing corrections and better data for South Korea.
  • Thank you to Soup for providing better data for Italy.
  • Thank you to Sasha Trubetskoy for feedback on the site and assistance with the data sets and maps.
  • Thank you to Noah Kim for feedback on early versions of the site.
  • The site was inspired by the geography quizzes on Sporcle, especially those that are now hosted on hugequiz.com.

Software

Data

Copyright and licensing