A game like MapTap for football fans: how SpotGuesser compares

If you play the MapTap game every morning, you already know the habit: five places, a globe, a tap, and a score that depends on how close you got. SpotGuesser is a game like MapTap built around football. The globe and the daily five are the same idea; the places are where football happened, from players' birthplaces to the grounds where finals were won.

A note before we start: this is SpotGuesser's own site. Everything said here about MapTap comes from its game, its FAQ and its App Store page, as they read on 7 October 2026, with a little help from TechCrunch and NPR.

What is MapTap?

MapTap is a daily geography game, played in a browser at maptap.gg or in its iPhone and Android apps; the daily puzzle on 7 October 2026 was number 838. Every day it gives you five places "connected to events that happened 'this day in history'". You turn a 3D globe, tap where you think each one is, and score by distance. Once you have played, it tells you the story of each place.

Its globe is bare on purpose: no borders, no names, just the planet. Its maker calls this "the overview effect", and NPR's Linda Holmes found that "without those familiar borders showing, it can be difficult to even locate places you are very familiar with." TechCrunch called it "my new Wordle".

A game like MapTap, built on football

SpotGuesser works the same way, with football as the subject. Every day there is one match of five questions, the same for everyone: where a player was born, which city a club plays in, where a World Cup or European final was played. 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 sure. There is no clock.

After each answer you see the right place, how far off you were and a short story about it, the way MapTap tells you about its places. At the end you can see how your score compares with everyone else who played that day, and a daily streak counts the days in a row you have played.

MapTap and SpotGuesser at a glance

How the scoring compares

Both games score by distance alone, with no points for speed. MapTap gives up to 100 for each place: within 22 km is full marks, and 1,000 km off still keeps 81. Its rounds are weighted, so rounds 1 and 2 count once, round 3 twice and rounds 4 and 5 three times, which is how a perfect day reaches 1,000. In the daily game there is also a safety net: a tap inside the right country never scores less than 25, and the right continent never less than 10.

SpotGuesser also gives up to 100 a question, but all five count the same, so a perfect day is 500. Its curve is a little stricter in the middle distances: a pin 22 km off keeps 99, 1,000 km off keeps 64, and the other side of the world scores nothing. There are no bonuses and no hints, so every point comes from where your pin lands. The how to play page has the full table.

A bare globe, or a labelled one

This is where the two feel most different in the hand. MapTap's globe has no lines on it at all, so finding a city means reading coastlines and mountain ranges. SpotGuesser's globe shows country borders and names, and city names as you zoom in, so the challenge is less about reading the map and more about knowing your football: which city a club calls home, or where a striker grew up.

That also changes what you learn. MapTap teaches you the shape of the world. SpotGuesser teaches you where football comes from, one story at a time.

Playing with friends

MapTap has grown well beyond the daily game. Versus matches let you challenge another player to the same five places, with an Elo rating if you play rated games, and groups give you and your friends a shared leaderboard; creating one needs MapTap+. You can also copy a Wordle-style result to your group chat.

SpotGuesser's challenges are free. Name up to seven friends and send them the link. Each of them plays that day's match whenever they like, 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.

More games like MapTap

If you like the tap-the-globe habit, there are more games like MapTap to try, several of them about football. We have compared each with SpotGuesser:

• PlayPinDrop Footy: five football rounds a day, each a famous moment to place at the ground where it happened.
• Ballocate: football knowledge turned into a pin on a map.
• Crest Quest: a club's crest, and you find where the team plays.
• GeoGuesser: Soccer: a daily football question with a map to answer it on.
• ExtraTime Conquest and Route One use a world map in other ways: one as a board to conquer with football trivia, the other to draw a player's career.

Outside football, NPR puts TimeGuessr "in the same family as MapTap": five photos a day, and you place each one on a world map and a timeline.

Which one should you play?

MapTap suits you if you love geography for its own sake, want to learn the shape of the world without borders to lean on, and enjoy history behind every place.

SpotGuesser suits you if football is your thing, if you want a five-minute daily match with the story behind each answer, and if you want to challenge friends for free.

Each takes a few minutes a day, so there is no reason not to play both. Play today's SpotGuesser match and see how close you can get.