Name the cities

City Collector: how to play

Type the names of cities and towns to pin them on the map and add their population to your total. No timer, no penalties.

Play City Collector

What is City Collector?

City Collector is a typing game without a clock. You choose a country or a region, then name every city and town you can think of. Each correct name appears on the map as a red dot, sized by its population, and its inhabitants are added to your running total. The place list comes from the GeoNames database.

There are twelve single-country maps (the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Italy and Spain) and five packs: World, Europe, Asia, North America and Nordic. A place counts if it has more than 10,000 inhabitants. Liechtenstein, San Marino and Vatican City are exceptions, where smaller places are included too.

Maps: 17: five region packs and twelve single countries
Places that count: Cities and towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants
World pack: 100 countries and territories in Europe, Asia and North America
Time limit: None
Progress: Saved in your browser, separately for each map

How to play

1Open City Collector and choose a region pack or one of the twelve countries.
2Type the name of a city or town in the box and press Collect city.
3Read the message under the box, which confirms the place and shows its population, or tells you the name is not on the list.
4Watch the tracker panel to compare your collected population and city count with the totals for that map.
5Press Finish map to see a summary of cities, countries and population, then share it or choose Continue to keep collecting. The menu in the top bar switches to another map.

Scoring

There are no points, lives or rounds. Your result is two numbers, the cities you have collected and their combined population, each shown against the full total for the map. Extra counters track the cities of 100,000+ and 1,000,000+ inhabitants you have found.

A name that is not on the list costs nothing, and typing a place twice only brings up a reminder that you already have it.

In the packs, each country is shaded a deeper red as you collect more of its cities, reaching full strength at 20. The country counter shows how many countries you have at least one city in: out of 5 in the Nordic pack, 4 in North America, 47 in Europe, 51 in Asia and 100 in World.

Tips

Begin with capitals and other million-plus cities. They move the population total fastest, and the 1,000,000+ counter tells you how many are still missing.
Capital letters and accents are ignored, so Malmo collects Malmö and Tromso collects Tromsø.
On Italian cities you can use either language for eight big names: Roma, Milano, Napoli, Torino, Genova, Firenze, Venezia and Padova work as well as the English forms. Elsewhere, if one spelling is rejected, try the local or the English version.
When several places share a name, you get the most populous one inside the map you are playing. To collect a smaller namesake, switch to the map of its own country.
In the Europe pack, Russian cities count only if they lie west of 60 degrees east, roughly the line of the Urals. The Asia pack accepts every Russian and Turkish city.

What you learn

The game trains recall of city names well beyond capitals, and it shows where people live. As the dots build up you see which coasts, valleys and regions are crowded and which are almost empty, and the dot sizes give a feel for how large cities are compared with one another.

Questions and answers

Is my progress saved?: Yes. Collected cities are stored in your browser on the device you are using, one collection per map. They do not follow you to another device or browser.
Why was my city not accepted?: The usual reasons are that it has 10,000 inhabitants or fewer, that it lies outside the map you chose, or that the list uses a different spelling of the name.
Does the World pack cover every country?: No. It combines Europe, Asia and North America, which gives 100 countries and territories. Africa, South America and Oceania are not included.
How do I start a map again?: Press Restart and confirm. Only the map you are on is cleared. Your other countries and packs keep their cities.