[HN Gopher] Where in the USA is this?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Where in the USA is this?
        
       Author : chippy
       Score  : 260 points
       Date   : 2023-07-03 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (pudding.cool)
 (TXT) w3m dump (pudding.cool)
        
       | cliff_badger wrote:
       | If anyone knows the creator of this site, they might want to fix
       | the bug of being able to get a different `frame` of reference on
       | all of the images.
       | 
       | Wiki commons may be a great place to find images, but they do too
       | good of a job naming things.
        
       | elil17 wrote:
       | Some of the photos were actually taken about a thousand feet from
       | the zone where you were marked "correct". I clicked right on top
       | of the dam for my fifth guess and it showed me being 0.2 miles
       | off.
        
       | atdrummond wrote:
       | Not sure if I should be happy or upset with my result.
       | https://ibb.co/x5DSh04
        
       | spacemanspiff01 wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | uhtred wrote:
       | open the image in a new tab and there are often some serious
       | clues in the filename- is this cheating?
       | 
       | I actually did it initially to be able to zoom in and see if I
       | could read the guy's badge on his shirt
        
       | wincy wrote:
       | That's fun. Although a picture indoors seems unfair. Somehow I
       | knew one of the pictures had to be West Virginia and got within
       | 40 miles. But the indoor one I got the exact opposite of the
       | country because how are you supposed to tell? Literally all
       | convention centers in the US have the same walls and awful garish
       | carpeting.
        
         | royalewithchees wrote:
         | Indoor photos can still provide good clues. I had no idea where
         | the first picture was. I guessed somewhere in Vermont. But that
         | second picture had me guess West Virginia because David
         | McKinley was in the photo.
        
           | wincy wrote:
           | Ah thanks for the info! Yes that would likely substantially
           | narrow it down, I didn't recognize him but there was at least
           | a clue.
        
       | xenospn wrote:
       | I absolutely love this! Got to 107 miles on the first try :)
        
       | giantrobot wrote:
       | You almost had me, covert dataset labeling company. Where's the
       | input box to tell you what Transformer I would be based on my
       | name and zip code?
       | 
       | Most /s but also maybe not.
        
       | phobotics wrote:
       | This is really cool, great project. I thought the instructions
       | were clear, especially as it obviously follows in the trend of
       | Wordle style games.
       | 
       | Don't understand the people complaining about the game when it's
       | their own lack of reading comprehension failing them.
        
       | hackeraccount wrote:
       | 165 miles. Started off 200 miles away but became obsessed with
       | PA. and never really got closer
        
       | cbfrench wrote:
       | Got 0 mi on my first guess because I thought "That's [state]" and
       | then picked a random spot on the [other state] side of the state
       | since it had that feel. I feel like I might as well quit at this
       | point, lol.
       | 
       | Edited out spoilers.
        
         | ryukoposting wrote:
         | Went purely on feel and got 40mi on my first guess, and I felt
         | pretty good about that! Took a couple silly guesses because I
         | didn't see that the picture changes after each guess - the
         | [geological formation] in the later photos should have been a
         | dead giveaway.
        
         | tkanarsky wrote:
         | Lol same, I was like "yeah this is Appalachia for sure, why not
         | WV", clicked somewhere in the middle of the state, and got 14
         | miles :)
        
           | nwatson wrote:
           | I thought "Kentucky" and was 200 away on first guess.
        
             | hughesjj wrote:
             | PA for me, it's like all the wrong guesses are just
             | triangulating on the "most Appalachian" place lol
        
           | irrational wrote:
           | Same, though I clicked in the middle of the name "West
           | Virginia" and was 34 miles away.
        
         | ethbr0 wrote:
         | Spoiler alert? :P
        
           | kdmccormick wrote:
           | Read the article before reading the comments? ;)
        
       | j_m_b wrote:
       | My best guess was 9 miles away!
        
       | Arainach wrote:
       | It's an interesting site, but why do so many of these guessing
       | games have single page applications without state in the URL?
       | 
       | https://guessthe.game/ functions the same way - please include
       | the day in the URL so that if I want to go back through your
       | backlog (or show someone something from your backlog) it's easy.
       | 
       | If I snoop the traffic and watch the redirects I sometimes can:
       | 
       | https://guessthe.game/?fpg=110
       | 
       | But this site makes it even more obnoxious:
       | 
       | https://pudding.cool/games/where/?uuid=i135v&rs=x0hdn&upc=9a...
       | 
       | Really? UUID? (side note: that's not a UUID)
        
         | choward wrote:
         | What's adds to that annoyance is that the only way to navigate
         | the games is a "prev" link. There's no way to jump directly to
         | a game or go to the next game. This means every day it becomes
         | more time consuming to get to the first game. And if you
         | accidentally refresh the page, have fun!
        
       | function_seven wrote:
       | I went back a couple days to #74, and laughed out loud at the
       | second photo.
       | 
       | Not sure if this link will work, but it should take you to #74:
       | https://pudding.cool/games/where/?uuid=6aa7v&rs=q0hdp&upc=tu...
        
         | obituary_latte wrote:
         | I don't get it. What's funny about the water tower? That it has
         | the town name? Even with that, I couldn't find the name on the
         | map reliably. Or is it a different picture?
        
           | function_seven wrote:
           | It has an outline of Illinois, with a star right where the
           | village is located.
           | 
           | So I brought up the map, zoomed in on Illinois, and put my
           | guess about where that star was.
        
         | obituary_latte wrote:
         | I don't get it. What's funny about the water tower? That it has
         | the town name? Even with that, I couldn't find the name on the
         | map reliably. Or am I looking at the wrong picture?
        
         | irrational wrote:
         | Nice of them to put a picture of the state with a star right on
         | the tank.
        
       | EugeneOZ wrote:
       | Keep being US-centric.
        
       | ydnaclementine wrote:
       | > Wait, it's all Ohio?
       | 
       | > Always has been
        
         | agloe_dreams wrote:
         | This. A vast number are in rural Ohio
        
       | glitcher wrote:
       | Even without knowing any real hints from the pictures myself, it
       | was still a lot of fun for me refining each guessed location
       | based solely on distances reported on previous guesses. Nice
       | work.
        
       | brezelgoring wrote:
       | I got 0 mi! [1]
       | 
       | After the first 2 I stopped attempting cities and figured the
       | picture didn't matter, it was a game of triangulation.
       | 
       | Nice game, I like it, even though I've never set foot in the US.
       | 
       | [1] Spoilers! - https://i.imgur.com/azCWc3i.png
        
         | jws wrote:
         | 0 mi in 4 guesses. The funny part was I forgot to look at the
         | photos after the first two and had to go back and look at the
         | photos to see what I missed. The first photo has a bridge, so
         | that informed the clicks a bit since I knew I needed a stream,
         | so some help from the content.
        
         | dh2022 wrote:
         | I tried a similar approach. I only got as close as 126 miles...
        
         | ankaAr wrote:
         | 18 miles using triangulation
        
         | dustincoates wrote:
         | I got 0 miles because the first photo was exactly the kind of
         | landscape I grew up with. It also helps that almost all of the
         | Texas photos are sure to have a flag or the shape of Texas
         | somewhere.
        
         | yaky wrote:
         | Triangulation from guesses #3 and #4 gave me the general area,
         | but then picture #5 shows what feature to look for on the map.
         | Got 0.5 miles.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | After reading your comment (but not looking at the spoiler), I
         | attempted triangulation from the get-go.
         | 
         | I managed to get 60 mi away.
         | 
         | I think 0 mi away is very impressive. Especially since you had
         | already used some of your attempts without initially aiming for
         | triangulation!
         | 
         | Kudos to you :)
        
         | postmodest wrote:
         | I was off by 6 miles because the actual pin is off by six miles
         | for the last picture.
         | 
         | Also, as an American, the fact that I recognized the first
         | picture to within 50 miles makes me sad. Our bridges should not
         | look like that, even there.
        
           | joeframbach wrote:
           | Agreed. I grew up in Pittsburgh, but even after 10 years
           | after moving away, I immediately recognized the first picture
           | as "somewhere in West Virginia" as if instinctually.
        
           | svachalek wrote:
           | That state has a powerful Senator though, so not all the
           | roads are like that. There are some ridiculously overbuilt
           | highways with no traffic.
        
           | Arn_Thor wrote:
           | I've never been to the US but somehow West Virginia was my
           | first guess and I got it down to zero miles eventually. I
           | don't know why that state is so particularly recognizable
        
         | TheDudeMan wrote:
         | I did not even notice that it was giving me distance feedback
         | after each guess.
        
         | Izkata wrote:
         | I was like "Huhm... a rural area?" and got very lucky:
         | something like 1280 miles on the first guess and 0 miles on the
         | second guess.
        
         | iambateman wrote:
         | Ooooh I got 99 miles on guess 3 and then started guessing 2000
         | miles away because I assumed they would be distributed.
        
         | nathancahill wrote:
         | Got 23 miles on the first guess!
         | 
         | Spoiler: https://i.imgur.com/HK6sNsf.png
        
         | hermitdev wrote:
         | I managed to get 0 mi, as well. I guessed the state based on
         | the first image and was able to rapidly narrow it down from
         | there. Kind of cool today's happened to be in the state I was
         | born in, yet have no memories of.
        
         | jb1991 wrote:
         | I must have missed the part in the instructions where all the
         | photos are from the same place. Is that what you mean by
         | triangulation?
        
           | aidos wrote:
           | They are, yeah. I didn't realise to start with. I played a
           | couple of older games and managed to get 0 miles on one too -
           | though there was a hint in the second photo that got me
           | within 12 miles and it was easier find it from there.
        
           | brezelgoring wrote:
           | Yes, you can use a ruler and the scale to get closer with
           | each guess, regardless of what the picture shows. I use the
           | built in drawing app on Linux Mint.
           | 
           | Here is another attempt, with my triangulation circles
           | written (don't judge me)
           | 
           | Attempt: https://i.imgur.com/Hz3c37c.png
        
             | SomewhatLikely wrote:
             | To help others understand, This image shows that there's
             | only two possible locations left where all the circles
             | intersect. Because the game gives exact distance to the
             | target the correct answer must be on the circles.
        
       | CSMastermind wrote:
       | I really wish it was easier to zoom in on the photos to find
       | clues. Also the maps being used for the game were rough for me.
       | Lacking details, town names, clear rivers unless you're way
       | zoomed in, etc. Google maps would be a much better choice imo.
        
       | apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
       | Hundreds of hours of Geoguessr had me within 30 miles on the
       | first guess despite having never been there. This is an
       | interesting take on the concept.
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | My first guess hit 17 miles from the mark.
       | 
       | Maybe that's because I've been there...
        
       | irrational wrote:
       | This is fun. My first guess was 34 miles from the place. It took
       | four tries to get to 0. Though, I don't understand the indoor
       | one.
        
         | notatoad wrote:
         | i think it's auto-generating a problem based on geotagged
         | pictures. the indoor one isn't supposed to be a good clue, it's
         | just a photo that happened to be in the dataset.
        
           | whoopdedo wrote:
           | Could maybe pass the pictures through an object detector. Too
           | many faces and it skips the picture. It may already be doing
           | it to remove pictures with words as one "clue" containing a
           | sign would spoil it. Though I'd rather it keep the picture
           | but blur the sign in that case.
        
             | madcaptenor wrote:
             | There are definitely pictures with signs, I've been going
             | back through the archives.
        
             | jamilton wrote:
             | #60 has a picture of a map, so I don't think it's being
             | filtered.
        
         | LVB wrote:
         | Tough clue, but I guess folks in that area (or into politics)
         | might recognize the longtime US Representative from WV
         | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McKinley),
        
           | SoftTalker wrote:
           | I didn't recognize him but figured something about that bunch
           | of overweight white men said Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, or WV
           | to me.
        
       | stygiansonic wrote:
       | I am guessing Trevor Rainbolt would dominate this:
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Rainbolt
        
       | mythrwy wrote:
       | Spoiler alert: Viewing source of the photos told exactly where
       | the image was from. (all West Virginia). So I got 35 miles, then
       | 0 miles.
        
       | wing-_-nuts wrote:
       | I got within 10 miles, pretty proud of myself. Could have
       | probably done better with google maps showing lakes / reservors
        
       | joker_minmax wrote:
       | I got one of them within 34 miles. Not my fault Appalachia has a
       | look to it
       | 
       | Edit: wait, they're all the same place? I was confused on that
       | point. I thought each was a different state.
        
         | jareklupinski wrote:
         | yea i think i jumped passed the instructions and thought all
         | the pictures were different places
         | 
         | got 64 (i think it's the rusty bridges...)
        
         | chiph wrote:
         | It's a daily puzzle. So everyone gets the same one today.
        
       | bloodyludi wrote:
       | Not the same location for me. 194 miles apart: First picture
       | showed Stouts Mill Bridge https://goo.gl/maps/3JkHPWMQo3wK39ZD8
       | Last one Deer Creek Dam https://goo.gl/maps/u5zxGmby74X7JMWi7
        
         | lelandbatey wrote:
         | The attribution on the first image shows that it's apparently
         | the Burnsville Bridge:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnsville_Bridge
         | 
         | It seems that these two bridges just happen to have almost the
         | exact same construction and type of trees around. However, you
         | can see that in the first image from the parent article that
         | there are four houses in the background, and if we look up the
         | bridge attributed to the first image in the parent, it has
         | those same four houses in the background:
         | https://goo.gl/maps/WLnbN845pa4Hw1Yi7 Compare to the wikipedia
         | photo used in the parent article:
         | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burnsville_Bridge.jp...
         | 
         | The Stouts Mill Bridge does not have those same four houses in
         | the background, it has a different set of buildings in a
         | different arrangement near it:
         | https://goo.gl/maps/3JkHPWMQo3wK39ZD8
        
       | zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
       | I got 63 miles on my first guess
        
       | cpeterso wrote:
       | The original "where in the world?" location guessing game is
       | GeoGuesser from 2013. There are competitions and some pro
       | competitors can pinpoint locations within feet, though some rules
       | allow the player to browse Google Maps in a separate window.
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoGuessr
        
       | QuadmasterXLII wrote:
       | Is the idea that all pictures are the sane location? I got 17
       | miles, the pictures all had intense west virginia energy haha
        
         | klyrs wrote:
         | I also did not read the very brief introduction. Then, some of
         | the pictures looked similar and I got suspicious.
         | 
         | 569, 1236, 512, 1734, 4.6 -- 4.6?? Pure luck.
         | 
         | If you can edit out the spoiler in your comment that might be
         | polite.
        
           | jaywalk wrote:
           | Yeah, completely missed the instructions as well. There's
           | plenty of room on the page, they should at least show by
           | default on the first visit.
        
             | Nition wrote:
             | > They should at least show by default on the first visit
             | 
             | They did for me. Firefox browser on Windows 11.
             | Instructions were showing when I first visited and I had to
             | close them to continue.
        
         | Severian wrote:
         | My thoughts too, big WV energy (pun intended). I got 18 miles.
         | It looks very similar to where I do a lot of camping.
        
           | cm2012 wrote:
           | Would have been too easy if there were any political signs
           | lol. 14 miles for me.
        
       | paxys wrote:
       | My first guess was 25 miles away (!), but could only get to 11
       | miles in the final one.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | fishtoaster wrote:
       | This is pretty neat! Although I find myself relying far more on
       | triangulation via the distances than I do the images.
        
         | jamilton wrote:
         | Same. The image helps with a first and maybe last guess, and
         | sometimes there's something highly identifying in the image,
         | but triangulation would be enough if I could only accurately
         | estimate distances. The scale on the map helps.
         | 
         | It would be cool if the radii were drawn at the end? It would
         | be too easy if they were drawn before, I think.
        
       | doodlebugging wrote:
       | Alright. I went all the way back to the first one. It was pretty
       | easy to triangulate some of them. Some of them have clues to
       | location in the photos. It was fun.
       | 
       | I would like to point out some issues with the scale displayed.
       | There are quite a few cases where the scale only changes when you
       | shift the map so your guess could be affected by an incorrect
       | scale. The first location was one example. After I guessed the
       | location from the first photo (it's pretty obvious if you have
       | been out there) I made a second guess that cut the error by about
       | half. My third guess was inside the radius which appeared to be
       | about 5 miles even though the actual location plotted as correct
       | was well outside any point that could've been triangulated from
       | the first two guesses. I suspect the scale was not correct since
       | moving the map by grabbing it updated the scale.
       | 
       | I managed to get quite a few of the 75 or so available by the
       | third guess. I got a couple on the second guess since I
       | recognized the geology of the area. All in all when you miss by
       | 0.02 miles I think it is close enough. This makes me think the
       | error radius changes based on the individual photo since I had
       | narrowed the location to within 0.04 miles on one California
       | location and wasted two picks narrowing the location while still
       | remaining outside the "correct" radius.
       | 
       | Pretty fun stuff. Thank you sir. May I have another?
        
       | yossi_peti wrote:
       | Theoretically, if you choose the first two points at random, then
       | you have a 50-50 chance of guessing right on the third guess (the
       | two circles from the first two guesses have at most two
       | intersecting points) and should always get the correct answer on
       | the 4th guess.
        
       | colordrops wrote:
       | I've never been to the states in the photos and somehow got
       | within a few hundred miles of them. Guess my brain has had enough
       | training data.
        
         | soligern wrote:
         | You've been trained by the internet
        
       | sircastor wrote:
       | I played Wordle like a lot of people did early on, and bailed
       | around the time NYT bought it. Since I've found a couple of games
       | in the same theme that I've enjoyed - once guessing the movie
       | from single frames, and one (featured here!) where you're playing
       | a Scrabble word against "Dad" which is a fun gimmick.
       | 
       | I like this one too. It requires a little bit of context-clue-
       | sluething, some logical deduction, and best guesses.
        
       | w-m wrote:
       | Got within 75 miles on the first try, even though I have only
       | been to the US once in my life (and nowhere near there). Of
       | course that's partially just a lucky guess. But it made me ponder
       | the giant influence of American TV and movies on my life. Playing
       | the same game with China for example, I would have been
       | completely and utterly lost.
        
         | Barrin92 wrote:
         | don't think it's just a lucky guess, same for me. Only been to
         | the us once, looked at it for five seconds and just thought
         | 'somewhere near Pittsburgh' and got within 50 miles. The North-
         | East of the US in general seems very recognizable. I sometimes
         | play Geoguessr when I'm bored and it's always places in the
         | South of the US that seem much harder to guess.
        
           | w-m wrote:
           | FWIW, today's puzzle seems particularly straightforward. I've
           | since tried a few of the earlier ones, and sometimes was on
           | the wrong side of the country altogether for the first try.
        
       | whoopdedo wrote:
       | I like the map picking a lot better than naming the country in
       | WhereTaken[1]. The US version is even easier because you only
       | need to guess the state.
       | 
       | [1] https://wheretaken.teuteuf.fr/
        
         | ajmurmann wrote:
         | The cool thing with wheretaken and worldle is that I've learned
         | a lot about countries and their borders. If I could pick on a
         | map, I wonder if I'd retained how things look in certain parts
         | of the world, but not what country they are in.
         | 
         | Another awesome game for anyone who is into geography and, in
         | this case econ: https://oec.world/en/tradle/
        
       | im_down_w_otp wrote:
       | Well, today I learned that I'm very good at identifying that
       | something is in West Virginia.
        
       | s0maticsec wrote:
       | The hacker in me couldn't help but view the image source, easily
       | found the location. I know it's cheating but I wanted to get it
       | right within 5 guesses lol
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | I've never been to the location/state but I got 56Mi on first
       | try, best guess 23Mi. I can't tell you what about any of the pics
       | made me think it was that state. It just felt like it.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | davidw wrote:
       | So everyone got the same pictures? Seems kind of non-random in
       | terms of where the locations were, too. Nothing from the west
       | coast in 5 photos?
        
         | w0m wrote:
         | all 5 photos in roughly the same location I believe to help you
         | narrow it in. Every day a new location with 5 new photos you
         | can drill down with.
        
         | wholinator2 wrote:
         | Don't know if everyone got the same pictures, but I believe
         | it's like a wordle type game where you get 5 guesses to get the
         | correct location, all the images are for the same location, and
         | every day they release a new 5 image puzzle. You click and it
         | tells you how far away from the location each click is which
         | honestly allowed me to get within 30 miles by the end of every
         | set cause I could just triangulate approximately where it
         | wanted me to click.
        
       | qalmakka wrote:
       | I've been playing this (https://wheretakenusa.teuteuf.fr/) for a
       | while now, it's nice albeit a bit hard at times. There's also a
       | worldwide version.
        
       | aendruk wrote:
       | The photo was too small so first thing I did was open it in a new
       | tab only to have the game spoiled by the URL as the image had
       | been hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons.
        
       | Solvency wrote:
       | I started at 100miles, diverted to 140 miles, then quickly
       | narrowed into 40mi accuracy by guess 5. In under 30 seconds.
       | 
       | Certain parts of America just have a "look".
       | 
       | A rusty, sad, religious, whitebread, Under Armour Tucked Into My
       | Jeans look.
        
         | mateo411 wrote:
         | Seems like a great picture for Bruce Springsteen's next album
         | cover.
        
       | olyjohn wrote:
       | Perfect game to play with your phone on the shitter.
        
       | alexb_ wrote:
       | Oh god, after reading the comments I'm so upset that they were
       | all from the same place. I got 1.7 miles away on the FIRST GUESS!
       | and I fucked it up....
        
       | bhaney wrote:
       | The most interesting part of this to me is the UX feedback from
       | the comments here.
       | 
       | Many people, myself included, say they had no idea at first that
       | the photos were all meant to be from the same location, even
       | though the very first sentence of the instructions was "There are
       | five photos from the same place."
       | 
       | I'm pretty sure I read the instructions, I guess that just didn't
       | register? An opportunity to reflect on how hard it can be to
       | properly communicate with users, I guess.
        
         | supportengineer wrote:
         | Because there were five guesses, I thought they would be five
         | different photos from five different geographic locations
        
           | steezeburger wrote:
           | Wordle is similar though and doesn't seem to suffer from this
           | ambiguity. Is it because the ui feedback from Wordle makes it
           | more clear you're guessing the same word? I thought it was
           | pretty clear here with the distance.
        
         | stronglikedan wrote:
         | You think that's bad. I guessed in three, after realizing the
         | first two photos had the name of the town in them!
        
         | hoistbypetard wrote:
         | Wow. Yes. Same here.
        
         | tuxone wrote:
         | I see it as a combination of distraction and being eager to
         | consume something. Everything in the page (and before that, in
         | the link title) screams "this is a game" yet Start was pressed
         | without reading the 33-words down the bold How to play. A U
         | issue more than UX.
        
         | rootusrootus wrote:
         | Yep. I was distracted by the pretty colors I guess, because I
         | made exactly the same error. Got a little frustrated and
         | couldn't see the attraction of the game until I saw in the
         | comments that all the pictures are in the same location.
        
         | drsopp wrote:
         | My phone does not show those instructions. Firefox on iPhone
         | mini 12.
        
           | tuxone wrote:
           | Instructions do not show up again after the first visit. Try
           | with incognito mode.
        
         | duxup wrote:
         | I regularly get requests to put text or a warning on a page
         | that's already there.
         | 
         | People just aren't good with words and will come up with all
         | sorts of reasons they didn't see it.
         | 
         | That's not to say I'm any better, just that I get to see all
         | the requests and excuses. Bolder, bigger, alerts, doesn't
         | matter.
        
         | eagleinparadise wrote:
         | My first guess was 19 miles away and I totally thought they
         | were in 5 different locations. I had lived in Pittsburgh for a
         | short time and knew exactly those iron bridges were probably
         | WV/Pittsburgh area.
        
         | dfxm12 wrote:
         | Place does have many meanings, and in the context of playing a
         | game, there's always room for playing with stuff like that.
         | They could be taken from the exact same geographical
         | coordinates, the same city, the same state. The photos could've
         | all been grabbed from the same website or the place could've
         | been "by a river", whether that's the Monongahela River or the
         | Colorado River.
        
         | mike_hock wrote:
         | Oh, I didn't even realize that until I read your comment. I got
         | a lucky first guess and thought "wow, I'm good at this," and
         | then they just kept getting worse, lol.
         | 
         | I guess it's because that information is dropped at the wrong
         | time, because right after that you first have to spend time on
         | figuring out how the weird UI works so you can actually make
         | your guess. Why does the map have to be hidden behind a button,
         | and why does it have to cover the picture? There is so much
         | wasted space on the screen, why not use it to show both at the
         | same time?
        
           | bhaney wrote:
           | The siren song of a mobile-first UI
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | The UI is pretty bad. I have a nice 27" monitor, yet they
             | constrain the entire game to a tiny 5" wide column down the
             | length of my browser window. Would be great if web
             | designers would stop imagining that I'm browsing the web
             | with a tiny portrait phone screen.
        
               | actionfromafar wrote:
               | They _just_ stopped imagining that I'm browsing on a 15"
               | screen!
        
         | Anon4Now wrote:
         | My problem was the state lines. My first guess was somewhere in
         | West Virginia, which happened to be right, but being from the
         | west coast, I had trouble eyeballing where to click for West
         | Virginia.
         | 
         | The game is great, but I'm shouting to the wind about the
         | decline in quality of online maps. For example, I can barely
         | see roads on Google maps any more. The lines are faint and low
         | contrast. Zooming in doesn't help because the font remains
         | tiny. Map makers hate middle-aged people.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | fatnoah wrote:
         | I read this post, then read the instructions, and still forgot
         | the second photo was the same location as the first.
        
         | wyldfire wrote:
         | I started to suspect that it was the same location after the
         | third photo. Not that the photographs themselves seemed related
         | but that the challenge didn't feel like a cohesive "game"
         | unless the distance was a hint (and not a score on the single
         | attempt).
        
         | murat124 wrote:
         | Same boat, but lucky me I got 55 miles on the 4th photo. 5th
         | one was 2200 miles off though.
        
         | nneonneo wrote:
         | If you click the question mark, you get the help page which
         | clarifies the data used:
         | 
         | > ~500,000 geo-tagged images from Wikimedia Commons. Each day,
         | a random location is generated, along with five photos within
         | five miles.
         | 
         | In a remote area, there will likely only be a few notable
         | landmarks nearby so you can expect to see many pictures of a
         | single landmark. This might be why people think the pictures
         | are supposed to of the same place.
        
         | anonu wrote:
         | OTOH I understood the instructions immediately. This is a
         | fundamental issue in UX. Some users will know right away and
         | others will not. Maybe a better sentence structure? Maybe
         | something like "Guess the 1 location where all these photos
         | were taken" (?)
         | 
         | From my experience, most people don't read the instructions or
         | text notes anyway. So its possible that an even better UX is
         | one where the user figures out what they can do through
         | intuition rather than reading.
        
           | ethbr0 wrote:
           | > _From my experience, most people don 't read the
           | instructions or text notes anyway._
           | 
           | This fascinated me ~90s computer gaming. There were clear
           | camps of "people who always read the manual" and "people who
           | never never read the manual."
        
           | rjbwork wrote:
           | >From my experience, most people don't read the instructions
           | or text notes anyway.
           | 
           | This happens in my life constantly when dealing with family
           | IT problems or mentoring juniors at work (and sometimes
           | working with seniors too!). People just do not read the
           | output of their computers.
        
         | pozdnyshev wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
         | The issue is they're clearly not all from the same place, so
         | the instruction can't really register. They were all taken
         | within a few hundred feet of each other, but that doesn't mean
         | they were taken from the same place. In today's one was aerial
         | while another was indoors -- not the same place!
         | 
         | The instructions would be better if they read "the five photos
         | were taken at different times, but were all taken within a few
         | hundred feet of each other".
        
           | ryaneager wrote:
           | Or "the five photos were all taken in the same town/city".
           | Now I know the scale I'm looking for.
        
           | wolfram74 wrote:
           | I dunno, they were taken at different times too, so none of
           | them were within thousands of miles of each other relative to
           | the galactic core. So that sentence is clearly not true
           | either. "from the same place", place ~ region or as easily
           | place ~ tripod position. Brevity and clarity are in tension
           | with each other. Gotta decide where on the pareto front you
           | want to be.
        
           | postmodest wrote:
           | Two of today's photos are from OUTSIDE the final "0 miles"
           | radius.
        
         | kylec wrote:
         | I got 19 miles away with my first guess, the map zoomed in and
         | I thought "that's a weird bug", zoomed it out, and then
         | proceeded to guess other guesses that were hundreds of miles
         | away. Interesting concept, but poorly communicated.
        
           | tasuki wrote:
           | > Interesting concept, but poorly communicated.
           | 
           | It was communicated in the very first sentence of the
           | instructions. It's just that both you and me failed to read
           | the instructions. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
        
             | actionfromafar wrote:
             | This feels like morality vs outcomes reasoning.
             | 
             | "Morally", no we don't. (Me included.)
             | 
             | Say, if you are a games designer and _want_ to get the
             | message across, then you can start A /B testing ways to get
             | your point (pun mostly not intended) across more
             | effectively.
        
             | ethanbond wrote:
             | No, this is a design problem. The fact that so many missed
             | it is just evidence of how subtly tricky good design is.
        
       | tofof wrote:
       | Unimpressed by this game. The accuracy on the scale is off by as
       | much as 25%, as can be seen here:
       | https://i.imgur.com/NOvqCnV.png. As the only information you're
       | given other than a new photo is the distance, this is a serious
       | problem.
       | 
       | What's worse, the 'correct' location radius doesn't even include
       | the locations where all the photos were taken!
       | 
       | SPOILER FOR GAME #60:
       | 
       | Game #60 has a clue that shows YOU ARE HERE:
       | https://i.imgur.com/98OXlal.png which is exactly here (google
       | maps [1]) https://i.imgur.com/KdN4OCh.png which corresponds
       | exactly to my guess location https://i.imgur.com/eCy97r6.png.
       | However, they claim that the correct location is here:
       | https://i.imgur.com/cSasI3g.png or
       | https://i.imgur.com/ChuisIx.jpeg (google [2]), which is actually
       | 9.5 miles away and outside their 5 mile radius, so it scored me
       | as missing by 4.5 miles.
       | 
       | It's quite simply unacceptable to claim that all the photos are
       | of the same place and then have the exact location within the
       | photo not be within the accepted answer radius. Geoguesser, for
       | example, REQUIRES you to identify the exact location within ~150
       | meters (in the worldwide mode) and they are actually correct with
       | that degree of precision. This error of 9.5 miles is 15,000
       | meters away.
       | 
       | 1:
       | https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3419792,-122.7415299,14.62z?...
       | 
       | 2:
       | https://www.google.com/maps/@43.2970892,-122.5563029,1891m/d...
        
         | aaronax wrote:
         | Yeah they should not be using a Mercator projection if a key
         | part of the game is triangulation AND there is a ruler shown on
         | screen.
        
         | overkill28 wrote:
         | Yeah my first guess on #74 was 7.7 miles away (!) so I thought
         | for sure I would get it. But it turns out that the flag
         | location is actually 14 miles away according to Google Maps,
         | and the multiple photos "of the same place" are over 6 miles
         | apart. So I kept getting weird numbers for my guesses that
         | didn't line up with the geography.
        
       | teaearlgraycold wrote:
       | I got:
       | 
       | 17 Mi -> 10 Mi -> 11 Mi -> 0.3 Mi -> 0 Mi!!!
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-03 23:00 UTC)