Shortest border route

Geo Chain: how to play

Link a start country to a target by typing neighbouring countries one at a time. The aim is the route with the fewest countries.

Play Geo Chain

What is Geo Chain?

Geo Chain is a route puzzle on a world map. The game names a start country and a target country, and you connect them by typing countries one after another. Every country you add must share a land border with the one before it, so the chain is a walk across real frontiers.

Reaching the target is only half the task. The game has already worked out the shortest possible route, and at the end it tells you whether you matched it. Every puzzle has a best answer of between four and eight countries, with the start and the target included in that count.

Goal: Reach the target using as few countries as possible
Shortest route: Always between 4 and 8 countries, counting start and target
Time limit: None
Undo: Unlimited, one country at a time
Start and target: Random, drawn from 147 countries joined by land borders

How to play

1Press Play Now, and the game picks a random start country and target country.
2Find both on the map, where the start is blue and the target is red with a pin.
3Type the name of a country that borders the start and press Enter.
4Watch the accepted country turn green and the map zoom in on it, then type a neighbour of that country, since each new name must border the latest link.
5Press the undo arrow to remove your last country if the route is going the wrong way.
6Type the name of the target itself to finish, then read how your chain compares with the shortest route.

Scoring

Your result is the chain length, which counts every country in the route including the start and the target. If your number equals the shortest route, the game calls it perfect. If not, it tells you how many countries the shortest route uses.

There are no points, lives or timer. A rejected entry costs nothing. The game gives one of three reasons: Country not found, Already used (a country cannot appear twice in a chain) or Not adjacent.

Undo is free and is not counted, so only the final chain matters.

Tips

Being next to the target is not enough. You have to type the target as the final link.
France borders Brazil and Suriname through French Guiana. That border gives a direct step between Europe and South America.
Russia and China each have 14 neighbours in the game. Russia alone touches Norway, Poland, Lithuania, Georgia, China and North Korea, which makes it a strong shortcut across Eurasia.
Only land borders count, not bridges or sea crossings. Denmark connects only to Germany, and Sweden only to Norway and Finland.
Accents, capital letters and punctuation are ignored, and usa, uk, uae, drc, car and bosnia are accepted. Common alternative names work too: Czechia or Czech Republic, Macedonia or North Macedonia, Ivory Coast, and Congo for the Republic of the Congo.

What you learn

Geo Chain trains knowledge of borders: which countries touch, and which only look close on a map. Solving a puzzle well means knowing the order in which countries sit across a continent.

Questions and answers

Do wrong guesses or undo count against me?: No. A rejected name is not added to the chain, and undo simply removes the last country. Only the length of the finished chain is compared with the shortest route.
Why are island countries never the start or target?: Start and target are always chosen from the countries that can be reached from one another over land. Countries with no land link to that group, such as Japan, Australia, Iceland, the United Kingdom and Ireland, are left out.
Why does the game say "Country not found"?: Either the spelling does not match a name the game knows, or the country is not drawn on the map. Andorra, Monaco and Kosovo, for example, cannot be used as links.
Are my results saved?: No. Each chain is a new random puzzle and the game keeps no record of earlier results.