First choose any US city by entering it and choosing it in the drop-down box. Then, name any US city in each 100 mile circle/ring as the rings expand outward from your city of choice, trying to name SECOND LARGEST city in each circle. The first circle will include your city of choice as a possible answer.
PLEASE NOTE - You must type a '.' (period) after each city to submit it to prevent answering another city with a name you would be have to type to get your answer. If multiple cities have the name you submitted, only the largest one will be counted.
You accumulate points based on the population of the city you named in relation to the second largest city in the circle. A smaller city’s point total will be the ratio of its population to the largest, so if you name a city of 75K people and the largest city has 100K, you get 75 points. Naming the largest city will get you points based on the ratio of the 2nd largest city's population to the largest city's.
When you run out of time or end the quiz, you will see the current ring’s 2nd largest city at right (under ‘Answer Stats’ by your coordinates).
For example, if you choose ‘Chicago’ – you will be shown a circle of radius 100 miles centered at Chicago. Naming any city in this circle (including Chicago) will cause another ‘ring’ of radius 100 miles to appear outside that circle, however - you will want to try naming the SECOND LARGEST city you can to get more points. After completing that circle, you now need to name any US city in the new ring (but not within any previous circles/rings), again trying to name the 2nd largest city. If there are not two cities within the next ring of that distance, the ring will keep expanding by that distance until two cities fall within it.
Quiz Takers 
21243 I couldn’t crack Minnesota and Michigan plus a few western states. “weed” somehow finish california
Adding to the tips already given, here’s a few more that will be helpful on higher difficulty levels.
1. Country/state names. Missouri has at least one of each, Indiana has at least two cities sharing names with countries (both in South America) and the previous State is also a city name.
2. Pokemon. Yes, POKEMON. There’s at least two cities sharing their exact name with Pokemon, one in Oklahoma, the other in Michigan, and another city in Texas that adds a T to the name of a Pokemon. All three Pokemon names are six letters in length.
3. County names. There are 3,141 counties/equivalents in the US that are used in the US County quiz. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how many small towns you get with this strategy!
4. Given names and surnames. One of the ten largest cities in the country has a name used as both a given name and a surname. The 11th largest city is also on that list, mostly as a given name. Expect results similar to tip #3.
5. Street names. As a great example, the street I live on fits both tips 3 and 4!
20569/21391. completely forgot alaska and hawaii tbh
Needs an update to correct the gulf of america misprint. it’s the gulf of mexico. I don’t care what the orange man says.
Sorry it’s hardcoded into Google Maps, nothing I can do 🙁
I was bored and went the morbid curiosity route on beginner; only got as far as October 17, 1978 (Lanett, Alabama) but I got a score of 20744/21397 and fully covered 32 states. Which is both higher than I expected and lower than I feared. Probably would have gotten closer if I had more time and could have gotten all the way to the present. I don’t think I would have gotten Hawaii or Alaska fully covered
wdym in what order did you cover
Got all but 14
we need one that includes the territories cities
this quiz needs a custom option
Is it possible to complete the state of Alaska by covage?
The quiz is not working anymore?
working fine for me – trying reloading it.
i somehow got adak, alaska but not roseau, mn. im still happy with getting 21272
Roseau is the name of a Capital City in the Caribbean… remember all the tips given in the comments: Capital Cities, European cities, presidents/vice presidents, Springfield…
Is it possible to get Alaska? There’s a lot of towns that are not working
everything that’s incorporated should work fine for AK. unincorporated areas are generally not included in my quizzes.
20k /21k in intermediate… so close. Fun quiz!
Thanks Darin, fun quiz.
I got 16867 just by naming europian capitals and countries, pretty cool!
You can get a surprisingly long way by just typing European capitals
I believe it should be possible to exceed 20k points rather easily if you expand it to European city names in general. The amount of German/UK/historical city names found in the US is insane. Look at number of places called Heidelberg, Florence or Newcastle for example..
add in a few presidents and Springfield too 😛
Can the scores on this be reset? The amount of cities seems to be decreased.
i’ve lowered all the scores by the difference in amount of cities. I have less now as I was counting towns in some states that shouldn’t have been on this quiz.
the list needs to be updated last update was in 2015 weve had a us census since than
this actually is updated with 2020 census figures. i don’t mark every single US quiz that uses the same database each time I update the database.
its really hard to get all of the small alaskan towns might want to consider dropping some off the list i even write them down thinking i have enough in the radius but i don’t in the end for beginner
They’re real places, same as small towns in Idaho or Kentuck or Saskatchewan! Leave them in!