Crest Quest vs SpotGuesser: two football map games, compared

Crest Quest shows you a club's crest and asks where the team plays. SpotGuesser asks you a written football question and wants the answer on a globe. In both you drop a pin, the game measures how far you were from the right place, and the closer you are, the more you score. Past that, they test quite different things.

A note before we start: this is SpotGuesser's own site. Everything said here about Crest Quest comes from its own game page and the Sporting Maps about page, as they read on 5 October 2026.

At a glance

How Crest Quest plays

Crest Quest is the game on Sporting Maps, a site of interactive maps of sports leagues around the world that its maker calls "a fun personal project". Each round shows you a team's crest and asks, "Guess where this team is located?" You click the world map to place your guess, click again to move it, and submit. A red pin then marks the club's ground, a dashed line joins it to your guess, and a panel names the team, its league, its stadium and city, and how far off you were, in miles and kilometres. There is no clock.

A game is five rounds, and there are four ways to play. International Soccer draws on "soccer clubs from every region of the world", more than 1,500 of them, and it goes deep: alongside the Premier League and La Liga sit League Two, Italy's Serie C, Brazil's fourth tier and Japan's J3 League. You can untick any of its five regions, from Europe and South America to Africa and Asia & Oceania. North America mode switches sports, with NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB teams as well as MLS, the NWSL and the USL Super League.

Each of those modes has a Daily version too, with the same five teams for everyone that day, a streak, and a row of coloured squares to share. At the end of any game you get a total out of 25,000, a letter grade from A+ down to F, and a grade for each round.

How SpotGuesser plays

SpotGuesser has one match a day, and everyone gets the same five questions. They are written questions, not pictures: where a player was born, which city a club plays in, where a World Cup or European final was held, the places behind football history.

You turn and zoom a globe, tap to drop a pin, move it as often as you like and lock it in when you are ready. There is no clock. Each answer shows the right place, how far off you were and a short explanation of the story behind it.

At the end you can see how your score compares with everyone else who played that day, and a daily streak keeps count of the days in a row you have played. Missed a day? Every past match stays playable.

A crest or a question

This is the biggest difference between the two. Crest Quest is a recognition game first: if you know the badge, you know the club, and then the question is where they play. If you don't know it, the crest is your only clue, though plenty of crests carry a town's name or its coat of arms. With more than 1,500 clubs in the pool, nobody knows them all, and that is what the hint is for.

SpotGuesser tells you who or what each question is about, so the whole puzzle is the knowledge itself. Because it isn't tied to clubs, it can also ask where a player was born or where a final was played decades ago, things no crest can show.

Two ways of scoring

Both games score on a smooth curve rather than in bands, so every bit closer counts. In Crest Quest's International modes a round is worth up to 5,000 points: a pin 100 km off keeps 4,756, 500 km keeps 3,894, 1,000 km keeps 3,033, 2,000 km keeps 1,839 and 5,000 km keeps 410. Five perfect rounds make 25,000. North America mode is much stricter, since its teams sit closer together: there, 300 km off is worth 1,839.

The hint changes the sums. For 500 points, taken off whatever you score that round, it tells you the club's region (in North America mode, its sport). On a crest you have never seen, it can pay for itself many times over: knowing a club is in Africa rather than South America can be worth thousands.

SpotGuesser gives up to 100 points a question. A pin 50 miles (about 80 km) away keeps 98, 250 miles keeps 85, 1,000 miles keeps 50, and a pin on the other side of the world scores nothing. Five perfect answers make 500, and there are no hints. The how to play page has the full table.

Sharing a score, or playing your friends

Crest Quest is a solo game. When you finish, you can share your score on X or Facebook, or copy it to paste anywhere, with a "Can you beat me?" attached. There are no accounts, leaderboards or multiplayer: your streak and best grade are kept in your browser.

SpotGuesser's challenges turn the daily match into a game against people you know. Name up to seven friends and send them the link. Each of them plays that day's match whenever they have five minutes, and once you have played, you see the standings and, as your friends finish, who made the closest guess and the biggest miss, with every player's pin on a map for each question. Nobody needs an account.

Which one should you play?

Crest Quest suits you if you know your badges, want to play game after game, like the idea of clubs from League Two to the J3 League, or follow American sports as well as football.

SpotGuesser suits you if you want a five-minute daily match, like learning the story behind each answer, want questions about players and finals as well as clubs, or want to challenge friends who will play at different times of day.

They test different things, so there is room for both. We have also compared SpotGuesser with Ballocate, GeoGuesser: Soccer and PlayPinDrop Footy. Play today's SpotGuesser match and see how you do.