Sketch country borders

Outline Drawing: how to play

Trace the border of a named country from memory. Your line is resized to fit the real outline and scored out of 1,000 on how well the shapes match.

Play Outline Challenge Play Outline Streak

What is Outline Drawing?

In Outline Drawing you are told a country and asked to draw its border on an empty canvas. The game is about the shape of the line only. You do not colour the country in, and it does not matter where on the canvas you draw or how big you make it.

Outline Challenge hands you one country at a time, picked at random, and the New Outline button deals another. Outline Streak chains rounds together and continues while every drawing scores 800 or more. Easy uses 24 well-known countries, while Hard draws from 139 others.

Modes: Outline Challenge and Outline Streak
Time limit: 90 seconds on Easy, 60 seconds on Hard
Countries included: 24 on Easy, 139 on Hard
Maximum score: 1,000 points per drawing
Streak target: 800 points or more every round

How to play

1Set the difficulty to Easy or Hard at the top of the screen before starting the round.
2Check the country name on the start card and press Start Challenge.
3Draw the coastline and land borders as one large outline inside the dashed guide box, using the brush that is already selected.
4Add separate loops for islands and any detached parts of the country.
5Fix slips with Undo, or switch on the hint to see the real outline faintly behind your drawing.
6Press Submit, or wait for the timer to end, and compare your line with the real outline on the results screen.

Scoring

Before scoring, your drawing is scaled and moved so that it fits the same space as the real outline. Its proportions are kept, so a country drawn too tall and thin stays too tall and thin.

Two things are then measured. The first is how much of the real border has your line close to it, which makes up 70% of the result. The second is how much of your ink lies close to the real border, which makes up the other 30%. Close means within about 3% of the canvas width.

That result is boosted by 30%, then by a further 10%, and capped at 1,000. A drawing that matches about 70% therefore already earns the full 1,000, and you need about 56% to reach the 800 that keeps a streak going.

Using the hint halves the score before the boosts are applied, which limits a hinted drawing to 715. That is below the 800 a streak needs, so the hint always ends a streak.

Tips

Do not fill the country in. Any ink away from the border counts against you in the 30% part of the score.
Get the overall proportions right before adding detail. A rough line that stays near the border scores, so the height-to-width ratio matters more than every bay and headland.
Include far-off islands and detached regions. Your drawing is stretched to the full extent of the real outline, so leaving them out puts the mainland at the wrong scale.
Outlines are plotted on a plain latitude and longitude grid. Far-northern countries such as Norway, Iceland and Russia therefore look wider and flatter than they do on a globe.

What you learn

Drawing a border from memory tests whether you really know a country's shape: where the coast bulges, which way a peninsula points and how long the country is compared with its width. These are details you can skip when you only have to recognise a silhouette.

The Easy countries are Spain, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, India, Australia, Italy, Greece, Turkey, China, Cyprus, Russia, Japan, Egypt, South Africa, Iceland, Nigeria and Mexico. Hard adds smaller and less familiar countries from every inhabited continent.

Questions and answers

Is the Outline Challenge a daily challenge?: No. Unlike the daily flag, the outline country is chosen at random each time you open the page, change the difficulty or press New Outline, so two players will usually get different countries.
Does my drawing have to be centred or a certain size?: No. Size and position are adjusted for you before scoring. Draw large so you have room for detail, but a very small scribble is not enlarged.
Does the colour of my line matter?: No. Any colour except white or a very pale shade counts as part of your outline.
Is my best streak saved?: Yes, in the browser on the device you play on. Outline Streak keeps its own best streak, separate from Flag Streak. The Best figure on the home page card is the Flag Streak one.