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 
Any idea why South Haven Michigan would show up twice?
there’s both a city and charter township
Charter Townships. Two states have them — Us (Michigan) and New Jersey.
Hint: There’s a city near Detroit with a population around 99K (as of 2013… If the data was current the population would be around 101K, giving Michigan 7 cities above 100K again!). That city is a Charter Township… and it borders my hometown, so forgetting it is kinda insulting to me.
I don’t know I don’t live in Michigan
Wow, impossible. I know exactly two places in Maine (could probably get a few others on accident), and neither is part of the “easiest” level. Love the idea for this series, though.
Try the 10k version, it smoothens that a bit… though playing these quizzes from an European location we never get past New England much.
Out of curiosity, who are the other players whose percentages appear at the bottom of the screen? Are these everyone who’s done this quiz, or just those somewhat close to me, or those with the exact same set of cities that I have?
I think those are the all players that took the same level quiz regardless of their location. This is interesting because almost everyone will have a different set of cities to guess but the scoreboard is the same for everybody.
correct…I thought of doing it based on some sort of lat long ranges but there are other quizzes where you can choose any city and name the closest. obviously everyone will have a unique location so going based on same set of cities would have a ton of different scoreboards.
Ok, this is a clever twist to the usual US cities quizzes but European players are stuck with small Maine cities at least up to the 250 level… the 500 isn’t working BTW. I think the quiz would work better if cities had a minimum of 10k so that other states could come into play.
‘5h’ for 500 worked fine for me just now…yeah there will be Europe and World versions of this shortly – you can play it from outside the US but obviously it won’t be as fun…i’ll be doing other variations on this too with population limits.
Ah,”5h”… so used to the 500 that I’ve missed that. Yes, this is more aimed at the US located players… even at 500 I get all of Maine and only a tiny bit of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Being at one of the Westernmost locations in Europe I don’t think players from other European places will get significantly different results than me. Very good idea though.
I think it’s aimed at mainland North American players. Think about those in, say, Toronto or Vancouver.
Yeah sure, Canadians too.
Don’t forget Mexicans and those in the Caribbean, although anyone in the Bahamas gets the Miami area stuffed down their throats…
Even Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand get better coverage than those in Europe!
It’s the reverse of the World version if you’re in the US. American players on it only get cities in the Americas (unless they’re in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico or Maine…)