Daily Brains · a 3×3 grid of countries, scored by how obscure your answers are.
Nine Lands is the geography puzzle in Daily Brains (/daily). Each day sets a tic-tac-toe board with three clues down the side and three across the top. Every square needs a country that fits both its row and its column clue, each country can be used once, and you have twelve guesses for nine squares. Right answers are stamped with a Rarity score: the fewer people live there, the more it is worth.
STORY & LORE
The atlas
The answer pool is the 193 UN member states, searchable by their common English names plus everyday aliases (Ivory Coast, Czech Republic, Burma, Swaziland, UK, USA and so on). Every fact behind a clue is objective and was checked country by country; where a fact is genuinely arguable (a star that only appears inside a coat of arms, French recently demoted to a working language, a country on both sides of a continental border) the guess is accepted but the puzzle never relies on it.
Guaranteed solvable
The board is built from the day number, so the whole world gets the same one. The generator only accepts a board when every square has at least two definite answers, no clue is a restatement of another, no clue family (two continents, two flag clues) appears on both axes, and a bipartite matching proves all nine squares can be filled with nine different countries. Boards never repeat within a year.
HOW IT PLAYS
Guessing
Tap a square (or move with the arrow keys and start typing), then pick a country from the search list. A right answer fills the square; a wrong one burns a guess and the square stays open. Twelve guesses: one per square plus three spares. Tap any clue to read exactly what it means. The day ends when the board is full, the guesses run out, or you tap Finish early twice.
Rarity
Each square's valid answers are ranked by population. The least-populous valid answer scores 100, the most-populous 20, and everything in between is spread evenly by rank. Answers scoring 70 or more are rare finds (💎). The day's score is the Rarity total, up to 900. The results sheet shows each square's score and the rarest answer you could have played.
Streaks and sharing
Three right answers in a row, column or diagonal (a tic-tac-toe line) wins the day and keeps the streak; filling all nine is a perfect board. The share card is a 3×3 emoji grid (💎 rare, 🟩 correct, ⬜ empty) with the puzzle number, squares filled and Rarity total.
CLUES
| Family | Clues |
|---|---|
| Continent | Africa, Asia, Europe, North America (incl. Central America and the Caribbean), South America, Oceania |
| Geography | Landlocked, Island nation (all territory on islands) |
| Size | Area over 1,000,000 km², area under 1,000 km², population over 100 million, population under 1 million |
| Roads | Drives on the left |
| Flag | Star on the flag, crescent on the flag |
| Language | Spanish-speaking, French official, Arabic official, Portuguese official |
| Name | Ends in -IA, ends in -STAN, contains a Z, five letters or fewer, two or more words, starts with A/B/C/E/G/I/L/M/N/P/S/T |
REWARDS
| Event | Reward |
|---|---|
| Get three in a row | 15 Tickets |
| Fill all nine squares (perfect) | +25 Tickets |
| First Line (first winning board) | 🧭 Bronze · 10 Tickets |
| Full Atlas (all nine in a day) | 🗺️ Silver · 20 Tickets |
| Three-Day Voyage | 🔥 Bronze · 15 Tickets |
| Globetrotter (7-day streak) | ✈️ Gold · 40 Tickets |
| Cartographer (30-day streak) | 🌍 Legendary · 100 Tickets |
VERSION HISTORY
- Launch version in Daily Brains.
- 193-country atlas with aliases, 36 clues, solver-checked daily boards (no repeats within a year).
- Population-ranked Rarity scoring, tic-tac-toe streak lines, emoji share card, cloud-mirrored progress.