Guess The Map

I want a try at one of these

oooh, good idea! Stumped, though.

• Doesn't appear to be anything natural like crops, since green covers everything from the Dominican Republic to Russia.

• Doesn't appear to be anything political or related to human rights.

• It doesn't look like any current or former UK possessions are noted, but there are plenty of non-UK places like Brazil unmarked.

oooh, good idea! Stumped, though.

― StanM, Wednesday, March 20, 2024 6:48 AM bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, can we get a hint?

do Turkmenistan, Angola, Syria, Cameroon have a secret Eurovision type song competition we don't know about?

Based on reverse frequency I'm assuming Chartreuse > Violet > Green ?

Nailed it!
It's favourite colours by country.

Ha! countries collaborating on an international Mardi Gras celebration?

Yeah, can we get a hint?

It isn't really a hint but I can remove some noise. After doing some research I think the purple and yellow are red herrings and should be ignored. It is only the green countries that share this thing in common.

Is it a sports thing?

Is it consumption of a food stuff?

Those couple dozen round dots, mostly gray but a few green, and many of them in the ocean, would not be there meaninglessly. There's a whole slew of them in the southern Caribbean. Meanwhile, North America as a whole seems to be considered irrelevant. A profoundly strange map!

Yeah, Peru, Algeria, Russia... ?

I suspect the dots are just the cartographer's attempt at making small countries show up rather than being a separate category of map data.

http://weeklymap.org for more stuff like this btw (don't think it's updated anymore but 111 puzzles is plenty...)

Yet some of those dots show up within larger countries, which confuses matters even further.

They're small countries I think. Luxembourg, San Marino, Isle of Man, etc.

Maybe a clue in the ABC islands: Curacao is green but Bonaire and Aruba are grey...

that's the world

are all the green nations ones that criminalise or legislate against the civil rights of LGBT people?

I'm suspecting a Russian sphere of influence because of Eastern Europe + MENA + Venezuela.
Is it something stupid like plugs ?
Or maybe something with trade

Working notes:
- Rwanda and Burundi are an exception in Central / East Africa
- Yemen also an exception
- Indonesia + Malaysia and Ghana the only green in their respective regions
- Guatemala, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, one island

I'm gonna guess Russian oil & gas consumers.

Whatever it is, none of the postwar/pre-Soviet collapse western democracies have it. And maybe it's the more socially conservative countries that have it? That makes me wonder if it's not a socio-legal thing.

xpost - surely China and India would be Russian oil/gas consumers?

also cuba, and probably not mauritius

Another pointer to this being a legal thing is the ABC countries - Curacao is green whereas Aruba and Bonaire are not. That corresponds with Aruba and Bonaire being under Dutch law whereas Curacao has its own constitution and legal system. Could it be something to do with taxation? Or maybe age of consent, divorce laws, same-sex laws or something like that.

only thing i can think of is 'served on some fucked-up UN committee like that for human rights'

I'm thinking Calzino is right and it's something to do with LGBT rights. Maps on same-sex marriage or adoption rights look very similar.

Thing is, Japan has atrocious LGBT recognition iirc, and so would have some kind of colouring.

yeah no...

LGBT rights in Yemen

Same-sex sexual activity is punishable by death; this law is applied to both men and women. Members of the LGBT community additionally face stigmatization and homophobic violence among the broader population. A provincial court in Yemen sentenced several people to death for engaging in homosexual acts in 2024.

That pesky Yemen!

That pesky Russia!

Perú and Ecuador are both green. They hate each other and don't have a lot in common besides geography and language.

kinda feel like it has to be tied to oil production, or dependency on it for each country's economy

Nothing of substance (or more herrings), but just noting that the Russian Arctic islands aside from Severny appear uniquely cobalt blue.

Those are herrings, Green is all that matters.

I won't give a hint yet as there is activity, and it will be more satisfying for someone to get there without one if possible

Although it may be something of an unknown hint I haven't worked out what the yellow/purple is (whereas blue is just an anomaly). There was no key on the map and when I checked for myself only the green countries met the condition. so maybe the purple/yellow countries used to meet the condition or will meet the condition in the future but that is pure speculation I actually don't know. So they're not necessarily herrings but wouldn't focus on them too much, green is definitely correct and blue is definitely a herring

is this map pulled from somewhere or is it something you generated?

Its a map I pulled from somewhere

from your ass?

“Countries in which it is legal to pay a trapeze artist less than standard minimum wage”

“Countries with samovars or samovar-type tea brewing”

“Countries where cats are more popular than dogs, as pets”

“Countries where ‘Peter’ is more common than ‘John’”

Anvil the real answer had better be good I puzzled and googled this for over an hour last night

ILX: come for the zings, stay for the comparison of legal systems between Aruba and Curacao...

Is it amount of inward investment by China in these countries?

How old is this map? South Sudan isn't marked, though it may be covered up by that yellow blob.

I think the map is from 2020, but its accurate for today.

South Sudan is on the map isn't it? I assume the map is just a base template map

wait, I have it! Is it Earth?

Surely for a 'Guess the..' thread, this has to follow the "Guess the City" thread where you post an image of the inside of someone's shoe then disappear for a month?

Ok, let me think of a suitable hint on the way home. I'll post one in a couple of hours unless anyone wants a bit more time

Has anyone been in the right ballpark?

I think all of the answers so far have been in the same ballpark as each other, but none of them in the same ballpark as the answer

IIRC, Perú's biggest exports are copper, gold, oil and fish-related products (fertilizer, animal pellets).

I will accept that as correct. It is a heat map of cycling activities recorded online on the most popular global app.

(Russia and some other countries are not rendered/displayed due to political reasons)

wow i rule

you do

south korea getting biz-ay

completely and thoroughly

https://scontent.fslc3-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/456063611_472399819112709_4974670646802839732_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg&_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=833d8c&_nc_ohc=bKH6qvL8Y2cQ7kNvgGEZ5Tc&_nc_ht=scontent.fslc3-2.fna&oh=00_AYCMERwCj0YIzKHnqgcTpy0kj5GYos_WfxxbeeEy4SFQGA&oe=66CDD2B7

the world, imo

Episcopalian churches

Whatever it is they don't have them in Australia

this one's a mystery

Some of those dots aren't islands

Mainly thinking of the dots in the North Sea but also the one in the Adriatic

The other two that are puzzling are the dot in the Gulf of Mexico and the one in the Hudson Bay (I would guess Akimiski island but it might just be in the bay). Akimiski doesn't appear to have anything noteworthy attached to it

can people who do this please provide a hi-res of the maps? i honestly can't tell if those spots in the ocean are part of it or not.

so Fairbanks, Alaska pops up but Las Vegas doesn't...

No Sydney, São Paulo, or Melbourne either, and with the islands and also not islands I don't think this is anything to do with cities or populated areas

The not islands like in the North Sea have to be the biggest clue.

i'm trying to wrap my head around why the EU and most of the familiar metro areas are solid and yet there's a spot between canada and greenland.

Its something that can be true on both land and sea and it can't be something physical because its just sea, so they have to be where incidents occurred. And at sea I can only think of ships sinking, but ships don't sink on land. But ships sink when shot at which means these have to be war incidents which also occur on land

though it could also be planes not just ships. Its either battles or incidents where people died

Which would explain overrepresentation of Falklands and underrepresentation of Melbourne

wtf that the only part of Australia represented is the Tiwi Islands

Or could that be Darwin? Which would fit in with the battle places theory as the Japanese attacked Darwin during WW2. But if it's battles, why isn't Vietnam more heavily dotted ..

still standing buildings built before 1800

if it's battles then it's got a different source than this one because there's no dot in the Davis Strait (between Canada or Greenland) - https://www.siliconrepublic.com/life/battles-of-the-planet-interactive-map-shows-every-known-battlefield-on-earth

but it doesn't feel THAT different

Akimiski Island / James Bay is a problem for the battles theory advocates but maybe it depends how far back you go and who recorded what. I can't think of anything else that covers the North Sea though where there are no islands!

wtf that the only part of Australia represented is the Tiwi Islands

I see Perth too?

it's battles from 2500 bc via wikipedia. not very comprehensive obviously lol.

huh, i wonder what's the battle in west australia

Google suggests the pinjarra massacre

i'm surprised there were that many sea battles back then

Battles made sense for North Sea and Falklands but still stumped on Akimiski!

we fight a lot don't we

Aussies seem pretty relaxed (about recording their battles)

But is it a lot? Its a 4500 time period on a plant of billions and no indication of how large an incident has to be to count

The map comes from this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK5OsDWYJmQ

https://i.imgur.com/qi1ui0P.png

what savages still use the mercator projection

white people of the world

Whatever this is, it seems highly correlated with national wealth.

except for the Middle East...

incidence of dementia

what is that little dark spot in the Gulf - Djibouti?

Average life expectancy?

Average life expectancy?

Reverse google image searched it, good luck getting this one guys.

Greenland complete contrast to the adjacent lands, hmmmm

(this time Greenland and Svalbard aren't part of Denmark and Norway, respectively - they sometimes are) - and Crete and Mallorca are probably too small to see (or the lines around them are too thick)

Iran, Irak, Afghanistan, Libya, Djibouti, North Korea are brighter than their surrounding countries - is it something political? (but then Greenland and Svalbard again - and those two shouldn't be life expectancy either I think)

Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, also - political? Terrorism?