CityQuiz

Have you heard of CityQuiz? The concept is simple: name as many cities as you can. It sounds easy, but it is surprisingly challenging. And quite addictive! There are several versions, but I focused on the US quiz. The interface looks like this: 

You think of a city, type it in the box, and then it appears on the map. Big cities have big dots and small cities have small dots. It keeps a running total of how many cities you've named and what percentage of the urban population that represents. You can save your progress and work on it for as long as you want. I chose a different strategy: I gave myself 24 hours, refrained from looking at anything (maps, old blog posts, etc) that would remind me of cities, and tried to name as many as I could. They came fast and furious at first, then I would think of a few more here and there. Looking at my map, you it's pretty obvious where I've traveled and where I haven't. 

As you can see, I named 550 cities, representing 32% of the national urban population. I'm pleased with that. Of course, as soon as my 24 hours were up, I thought of dozens more cities! More on that later. 

The vast majority of the cities I named are in California. That makes sense; I've lived here all my life. My second best state was Washington, where my parents grew up. We visited often. 

It would have been pretty embarrassing if I'd missed any states entirely since I've been to them all. I've been to almost all of the state capitals (not to mention I spent 11 years drilling them into the heads of my 5th graders) so there's no way I would have forgotten those. I'm pleased that I remembered all of the US cities over 500,000 and more than half of those over 100,000. 

If you're going to try CityQuiz, this is where you should stop reading. Or keep reading if you want. Consider the cities I mention to be a free gift toward your total. 

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Here are the smallest cities and the rarest cities that I named. 

So what did I miss? 

The largest city I missed is Virginia Beach, Virginia. The largest city I missed that I've actually visited is Santa Ana, California. The most annoying city that I missed is San Bernadino. I KNOW that I added it, but I must have had a typo or forgotten to toggle the state to California or something like that. The largest city I missed that's on my list of Future Travels is Cincinnati, Ohio. That's pretty annoying too. 

Now check out this blog post by the creator of CityQuiz, Ian Fisher.