There are things which every person wants to know better but does not. Geography is among such topics, but at least everyone knows about forty countries and their approximate locations on the map. But there is no need to be sad, as there is no way adults could solve the problem of remembering the names by the most natural way – learning the list of the capitals, which is impossible to do.

But there are word games which surprisingly efficiently teach this topic thanks to the results of the scientific researches in the field of cognitive science.

Why Retrieval Is Better than Review

Testing effect is one of the most reliable findings in the field of memory. The process of retrieving information from memory is much more efficient than reviewing the same data.

If you just read a list of capital cities, you recognize each of them, feel the sense of familiarity with the names, and remember nothing at all. But if, on the other hand, you are given six blank tiles and have to guess the capital city with the green letter L in it, you will do a lot of the useful cognitive work.

The effort is the key point here. While sitting for about twenty seconds trying to remember the right name, you perform an action which fixes the information in the brain. The game which would give you the answer immediately would teach you nothing.

What it feels like to play a geography theme

The principle of playing the game is to pick the pack and get the names from it one by one, with different lengths of the words between the rounds. After you guess one, the next one immediately loads up.

The pattern is the same for most of the players. At first, the names appear very fast, because everyone knows the obvious ones. Then, you receive something which you partially remember, and try to assemble the name with all six guesses, which means that you will remember this one in a way you could not if you just read the name in the atlas.

The best packs are Countries, Capital Cities and Rivers of the World.

But it is the pack with the capital cities that surprises people the most. Knowing the country is not the same as remembering its capital, and most adults find out their knowledge is much thinner than expected somewhere in the middle of the Central Asia.

Why it works with kids who refuse the quizzes

Here we come to the practical side of the solution. You know perfectly well how a child reacts to the idea of completing a quiz. On the contrary, the same child playing a word game with the country names does not perceive it as studying, since the frame of mind is the frame of mind of a puzzle, and not a test.

The amount of knowledge gained is the same, while the resistance is not.

The length of the word can be changed from three to seven letters, which becomes very important here, as the younger child working with shorter names will stay in the game without being locked out by the long names.

How to get even more out of the game

Say the answer aloud while you are solving the task. Adding the second form of the word – spoken – gives you the second way to recall the information later.

Pause on the ones which have beaten you. When you spend all six guesses on guessing the name, you should pay attention to this one and look at its placement for ten seconds. The hard cognitive work was already done, and now you attach the location to it.

Expect spelling to be the problem. There are plenty of people who can pronounce Kyrgyzstan and do not know how to write it. The tile count is merciless about it, and it is the place where most of the learning occurs.

Use hints on blanks, not on partially correct answers. You get two hints per word, and wasting one on the word you almost guessed will be counterproductive, since you deprive yourself of the chance to use retrieval as the way of learning.

How to play the word game with your friends

Geography themes are great in the multi-player rooms, where everyone guesses the names simultaneously and then votes on the next topic between the rounds. The room with the theme of the capital cities becomes very close to a pub quiz.

There are also other tools which might be helpful. The challenge function allows you to select the hidden word yourself and send a link, so you easily set up the obscure capital city for someone claiming to be good at geography.

Private rooms are helpful for families, as you can select the word length suitable for the youngest player.

Where to play

The geography themes are located under the Topics menu above the board at the wordleunlimited.dev website. It works in the browser and requires neither registration nor downloading of any files. Your run counts towards your level and rank.

It would not make you a cartographer. It would quietly fill some of the holes in your knowledge left since the school, and this is much more than most people manage to do intentionally.