Five power tips to boost your score on SpotGuesser

The first SpotGuesser guide was about where to pin when you don't know the answer: the big city you know, the middle of the region, where the people are. These five tips come before and after the pin. They are about reading the question, knowing each topic's map, and getting a little better every day.

Four of the examples come from the Football match of October 19, written by our guest host Rosie, an Arsenal supporter. If you played it that day, your pins are waiting in Past games. Every score below is worked out with the game's own scoring.

1. Read every word of the question

Questions are short, so every word in them is there for a reason. Rosie's second question asked where to find the Estadio Banorte, the ground that holds the record of hosting 24 World Cup matches.

Banorte is a Mexican bank, and since 2025 its name has been on the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. Even if the name means nothing to you, the record gives it away. The Azteca hosted 10 matches at the 1970 World Cup, 9 in 1986 and 5 in 2026, and no other ground has hosted World Cup matches at three tournaments. A pin on Mexico City scores 100. Guadalajara and Monterrey, Mexico's other host cities in 2026, score 82 and 72.

His fourth question works the same way. "Superclásico" is the name of more than one derby, and Argentina's, Boca Juniors against River Plate, is played in Buenos Aires. But the question names the clubs, Olimpia and Cerro Porteño, and both are from Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. A pin on Buenos Aires scores 63. Reading the club names is worth the other 37 points.

The tip: the name of a club, a sponsor, a record or a year usually narrows the map. Read the question twice before you touch the globe.

2. Ask where it happened, not who won

A question about a winner is often a question about a venue. Rosie's first question: Lazio won the last ever Cup Winners' Cup, in 1999, so in which city did they lift the trophy?

Lazio play in Rome, and a pin on Rome scores 50. But a final is played where the competition sends it, and in 1999 that was Villa Park, Birmingham, where Lazio beat Mallorca 2–1. Even a hazy memory of "a final in England", pinned on London, scores 95.

His fifth question turned it around: in 2015 Australia won their first Asian Cup, beating South Korea in the final, so in which city was it played? This time the winners were also the hosts, and the final was at Stadium Australia, in Sydney. A pin on Seoul, the runners-up's capital, scores 5.

The tip: for finals, tournaments and records, ask who hosted, and where. The winner's home is usually the wrong answer, unless the winner was also the host.

3. Learn each topic's clusters

Some answers sit close together, and knowing the cluster is worth almost as much as knowing the answer.

In Formula 1, six of the eleven teams build their cars in a corner of England known as Motorsport Valley: Mercedes in Brackley, Red Bull in Milton Keynes, Aston Martin at Silverstone, Alpine in Enstone, Williams in Grove and McLaren in Woking. A pin on the Silverstone circuit scores 98 or more for every one of them, and 99 for Haas's European base in Banbury and for Mercedes' engine works in Brixworth. The other five teams are spread far apart: Ferrari and Racing Bulls in Italy, Audi in Switzerland, and Haas and Cadillac in the United States.

In football, London is the cluster. Arsenal, Brentford, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham and West Ham all play within 8 miles of central London, and a pin there scores 100 for every one of their grounds.

The tip: learn where each topic's answers bunch up. A cluster you know turns a hunch into a near-perfect score.

4. Learn from every answer

After every guess, SpotGuesser shows the right place, how far off you were and the story behind the answer, with a link to read more. It takes ten seconds, and it is the cheapest lesson in the game.

Rosie's third question asked where Patrick Vieira, France's World Cup winning midfielder, was born. The answer was Dakar, in Senegal; he moved to France as a boy. A pin on Paris scores 24. Once you have read a story like that, you look twice at the next "where was he born?".

Then look back. Every match you have played stays in Past games, with your pins and the answers on the map. Go through a week of them and look at your misses together. You may find you know the capitals but not the stadiums, or that you always pin too far north in South America. That tells you what to learn next.

The tip: read the card after every guess, and look back over Past games once a week.

5. Train in the Playground

The daily matches give you fifteen questions a day. The Playground gives you as many as you like: 49 quizzes in eight categories, from World capitals to Team headquarters, and nothing you do there is recorded. Every quiz has two modes.

• Quick 10: ten of the quiz's places, drawn at random and scored like the daily match, for a score out of 1,000. A good test of how well you know a quiz.
• Endless: every place in the quiz in a shuffled order, for as long as you like. Good guesses in a row multiply your points, twice from the third in a row and three times from the fifth. A miss, a pin further off than the quiz allows, starts the run again. Each quiz sets its own limit: 25 miles for Premier League stadiums, 50 for Team headquarters, 100 for Players' birthplaces. Your best is your longest run, kept in your browser.

Neither mode counts for your streak, your XP or your leagues, so there is nothing to lose. Four quizzes are open to everyone: Capitals of Europe, Players' birthplaces, Team headquarters, and Monuments and statues. A free account opens all 49.

The tip: use Quick 10 to find a quiz you don't know well, then Endless to learn it.

Five tips for tomorrow's matches

1. Read every word. A club, a sponsor or a record narrows the map.
2. Ask where it happened, not who won.
3. Learn the clusters, like Motorsport Valley and London's grounds.
4. Learn from every answer, and look back over Past games.
5. Train in the Playground: Quick 10 to test, Endless to learn.

And when you still don't know, the first guide has the rules for where to pin. One finished match a day keeps your streak going, and every match closes at midnight, your time. Play today's matches.