Smarty Pins is a free online geography game where players have to pin a location that they deduce from a quiz. You also get fun trivia in the process. The game is really simple and engaging. The game will ask you a series of questions related to a particular city or town. You have to identify that place from the question and drop the pin on it.
So what’s the twist in this game? Well, there is a distance counter which will run out if your pin-pointed answers are not proximate enough. The number of kilometers you are from the real answer will be deduced from the distance counter. When the counter runs out, the game stops.
This free geographic game was suggested by one of our readers: Frank Youfush (thanks Frank!). Smarty Pins is based on Google Maps like the game GeoGuessr where you have identify a location after looking around the place in Google Street View. This game will rouse your brains when it comes to general knowledge since it asks you questions from all around the globe.
How to Play Smarty Pins
The interface of the main page is pretty smooth. You can click on Start Game to initiate the fun ritual or you can select a particular category of questions that Smarty Pins should ask. The categories include Arts & Culture, Science & Technology, Sports & Games, etc.
When you start Smarty Pins (nice pun smarty pants!) you will see a panel on the left where the question is displayed. Below it is the distance counter and the bonus counter. When a question is presented, the map will divert to the country where that question points to.
You need to pick up the pin from the middle of the screen and drop it where you think the answer lies. Make sure you finalize your answer before the bonus counter stops. If you nail the answer, you’ll have the bonus kilometers that are left added to the distance counter. Clicking on Hint will ruin your bonus but will make the game easier. When the distance counter runs out, the game stops. At the end you can click on Share your Score to show off on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.
Here, you can see that I clearly suck at trivia and Smarty Pins keeps reminding me about it every time I lose. A different insult in every instance.
Final Words
Smarty Pins is definitely a good play where the fun is rolled into general knowledge trivia all over the world. The only thing Smarty Pins should pay attention to is that the questions they use which are mostly based on United States of America (explains my low score). It would help a lot if the sources of the questions are made uniform by focusing on a different part of globe every time. You might rarely experience a blank map too. I give 4.7 stars to Smarty Pins.
Try Smarty Pins here.
Know a better alternative to Smarty Pins? Share it in the comments!
