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 (3 million+ views) and a Huffington Post article. It has an active subreddit, r/iafisher.

Follow @ianafisher on Twitter for site updates.

Frequently asked questions


Will you add a city that is missing?

Sorry, but I no longer take requests for adding individual cities. If you are interested in helping to improve the data, check out the new data guidelines page.

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

When logged in, you cannot add more than 5,000 cities (7,500 for the world quiz). When logged out, you will not be able to save a quiz with more than the limit, but you can continue adding cities to your map locally.

Can you raise the max cities limit for me

I cannot change the limit for individual users. If you are (a) logged out, (b) on Firefox, and (c) have hit an error around 22,000 cities, you can follow these instructions to increase the browser limit.

Will I lose my progress if I close the page?

No. When logged in, your progress is always saved. When logged out, you will only lose your progress if you clear the site data in your browser.

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). Any quizzes started while logged out cannot be transferred.

Why is Istanbul missing from the Asia 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 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?

Hi, I'm Ian.

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

You can email me at help@cityquiz.io. Please read the FAQs before emailing me. If you have a question about the max cities limit, or about adding a missing city, that question is already answered here.

Please also understand that I am a single person and it is not always possible for me to respond to every email.

Site credits


Personal

I was inspired by the geography quizzes on Sporcle, especially those that are now hosted on hugequiz.com.

Many members of the CityQuiz community have pitched in to improve the site. I greatly appreciate their contributions and would like to credit them individually.

  • Huy-Hoàng Nguyễn helped improve Vietnamese city data.
  • nyghts helped prepare the Germany, France, and UK quizzes, and found improved data for Russia.
  • Björn Buchli helped with the massive data update that made the India quiz possible.
  • Soup assisted with updating the Italy and Poland data sets.
  • Lib Ted helped with Poland and Argentina.
  • Yonjae Lee provided corrections and better data for South Korea.
  • Sasha Trubetskoy has lent a hand with the maps many times over the years.
  • Noah Kim gave feedback on early versions of the site.

If you would like to help improve the quiz, take a look at the guidelines for new data set.

Software

Data

Copyright and licensing