Country outline picture round: name the country from its shape

Strip a country down to its outline and something odd happens: places you could point to on a map in a second become strangely hard to name. There are no neighbours to orient you, no coastline colour, no capital city dot. Just a shape. That's what makes outline rounds such a good second-half picture round, when teams are warmed up and ready to be annoyed.

Here are eight to get you started. Tap an outline to check it, or build the whole round in the quiz builder with the button under the grid.

Running the round

Tell teams two things before you start the clock. First, the outlines are not to scale, so a tiny island and a continental giant take up the same space. Second, every answer is a sovereign country, not a region or a state. Those two sentences save a lot of grumbling later.

Four minutes is about right for eight shapes. Unlike flags, outlines don't reward staring, so teams either know it or they don't, and the extra time mostly goes on the one or two shapes they half recognise.

One point each. There isn't much room for half points here, although if a team writes a neighbouring country for one of the landlocked shapes, you could argue they deserve something for getting the continent.

What to say at the reveal

The first shape is the easiest giveaway of the set and the one most teams start with. The country is over 4,300 km from top to bottom but averages only about 180 km across. Wikipedia has the figures if a team wants to argue.

The fourth is sometimes described as a teardrop, which is also the shape locals use when describing it. It's one of the few outlines where the nickname genuinely helps.

The fifth is the one that catches people out. Teams tend to assume a long, thin shape has to be coastal, and this one has no coastline at all. It does have eight of the ten highest mountains on Earth, including the highest, which is a fair trade.

The seventh and eighth are both landlocked too, and both tend to be the ones teams leave blank. If you want to be kind, give a verbal clue for the last one: it's in Europe, and it shares a long border with Russia.

Variations

• Two rounds from one set. Run the outlines as a round early in the night, then later ask for the capital of each country teams named. Teams who struggled the first time get a second chance to claw points back.
• Rotate them. Turning an outline 90 or 180 degrees makes a familiar country genuinely hard. Do this for two or three of the eight and tell teams you've done it, but not which ones.
• Local version. Outlines of counties, states or regions near your venue play well with regulars and are easy to make from any free map tool.

For more picture round formats, see our picture round ideas post. The flag picture round uses the same ready-to-run format if you want a matched pair for geography night.