How Pinlight works

The round

1. Open a photo. Hunt for language, climate, road style, and landmarks.
2. Click the world map to drop a single pin — your best guess.
3. Lock it in. We reveal the true coordinates, draw the line, and award up to 5,000 points based on distance (perfect hits score full marks; far misses fade toward zero).
4. Repeat for five places. Max total: 25,000.

Fairness

Locations are selected from a fixed curated pool with a deterministic date seed. Nobody gets an easier private set. Scores are graded on the server from your pin coordinates — client-reported points are never trusted.

Free vs Pro

Free: always play today’s five and appear on the board as “Traveler.” Pro ($9.00 once, not a subscription): unlimited practice rounds with region filters (Europe, US, Asia, LatAm, Africa, Oceania, World), a custom leaderboard name, and the past-daily archive as a bonus. Durable unlock on this browser — optional account to carry it across devices.

Practice mode

Pro players open /practice for private five-packs. Each run has a seed so refreshing mid-round keeps the same photos. Switch regions anytime between runs — free players see the unlock offer instead.

Share + challenge a friend

Finish today’s five and you’ll land on a results card with a Wordle-style distance tile row you can copy and paste anywhere. Hit “Challenge a friend” to copy a link to that exact day’s five photos — anyone who opens it plays the same round and can compare scores with you, Pro or not.

Tips

• Start with hemisphere and climate before city-level guesses.
• Driving side, alphabet, and vegetation kill bad continents fast.
• A regional pin still beats a wild continent-level miss.