Articles

Pieces on the data behind the game — where the numbers come from, which comparisons catch people out, and how to read a ranking that looks obvious and isn't.

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• Which country really has the longest coastline? — Canada's coast is longer than the next three countries combined — and the honest answer to "how long is it?" is that it depends on your ruler.
• The highest and lowest countries on Earth — Everest belongs to two countries at once, the highest unclimbed mountain sits in Bhutan, and the highest point in the Maldives is about five metres.
• Why capital cities are colder than you think — Ulaanbaatar averages below freezing, Reykjavík is milder than Astana, and the warmest capitals aren't the ones on the equator.
• The countries with the most neighbours — China and Russia both border fourteen countries, Brazil touches every South American nation but two, and two countries are landlocked twice over.
• The eight most populous countries, and what is changing — India passed China in 2023, Nigeria is climbing fast, and the gap between the biggest country and the smallest is about 1.8 million to one.
• Olympic medals by country: the all-time table — The United States has more than three thousand medals, a country that no longer exists is third, and Hungary beats nations twenty times its size.
• The richest and poorest countries per person — Monaco's GDP per person is more than a thousand times Burundi's, and two of the top five are inflated by accounting rather than income.
• The most and least visited countries on Earth — France welcomes more tourists than it has residents, and Tuvalu gets about three thousand visitors a year — fewer than one large cruise ship carries.