World Capitals Quiz
Twenty questions drawn from a dataset of 197 countries, asked in both directions: name the capital of a country, or name the country a capital belongs to. Four options each time, answered with a click or the keys 1-4 and A-D, and every miss shows you the right answer before you move on.
Every page in this section
- Europe Capitals QuizEurope Capitals Quiz, playable in the page
- Africa Capitals QuizAfrica Capitals Quiz, playable in the page
- South America Capitals QuizSouth America Capitals Quiz, playable in the page
- Asia Capitals QuizAsia Capitals Quiz, playable in the page
- Hard World Capitals QuizHard World Capitals Quiz, playable in the page
Two directions, one fact
Half the difficulty of a world capitals quiz is which way round the question runs. “What is the capital of France?” is recall with training wheels; Paris arrives before you finish reading. “Antananarivo is the capital of which country?” is the same kind of fact reversed, and it is reliably harder, because most people file capitals under countries and never build the index that points the other way. This capitals quiz asks in both directions on purpose. When you can answer Madagascar to Antananarivo as quickly as you answer Paris to France, you know the fact rather than the phrasing.
The capital is rarely the famous city
The most productive rule in any capital cities quiz: when a famous city and a modest one are both on offer, the famous one is often the trap. Australia is governed from Canberra while Sydney and Melbourne are both larger. Turkey answers Ankara – Istanbul is the largest city but has not been the capital since 1923. The United Arab Emirates answers Abu Dhabi, not Dubai, its largest city. New Zealand answers Wellington, not Auckland. Guess the capital by fame and points like these leak away; guess it by asking “which of these four would the famous city be distracting me from?” and you will win them back.
The seventeen countries that can never be asked
The dataset behind this site holds 197 countries, but only 181 of them can ever be the subject of a capital question. The other sixteen are excluded on principle: a multiple-choice question needs exactly one defensible right answer, and seventeen countries do not provide one. The seventeen fall into four drawers: countries running more capitals at once than one answer can hold, countries with no capital on paper at all, countries mid-move between an old capital and a new one, and countries whose capital is an international dispute. Which country sits in which drawer is each continent’s story to tell, and every continental round on this site walks through its own absentees by name – Asia alone owes seven of the seventeen explanations.
What the score screen is telling you
The top rank asks for ninety percent – on a twenty-question round that means eighteen right, so a Cartographer here can afford exactly two misses. Every miss is replayed at the end with your pick struck through beside the correct answer, and where a capital has a story, a short note tells it: that Kingstown in Saint Vincent is not Kingston in Jamaica, or that Astana spent 2019 to 2022 named Nur-Sultan before changing back. Play again and the same twenty questions return in a new order with the options moved around, so remembering “it was B” earns nothing while remembering “it was Kingstown” earns everything. Your best score stays in your browser and nowhere else.