Everything you need to know about Noirdle
Noirdle is a free daily geography puzzle game where you identify cities from their map layouts. Each day features a new country with three map challenges: a capital city, a major city, and a hidden town. It's like Wordle, but for geography lovers!
When you open Noirdle, you'll see a stylized map of a mystery city. Type your guess into the search box and submit. If you're wrong, you lose a point but can keep guessing. Use the zoom and pan controls to explore the map for clues like street patterns, rivers, and coastlines. Complete all three rounds to finish the daily challenge.
A new Noirdle challenge is released every day at midnight UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). That's 7 PM Eastern, 4 PM Pacific, or midnight in London. Everyone around the world plays the same challenge each day.
Each daily challenge features three cities from the same country. The first round is always an iconic or capital city, the second is a major metropolitan area, and the third is a lesser-known hidden town. Cities are chosen to provide a range of difficulty levels and to showcase different parts of the country.
Yes! Visit the Archive page to browse all past challenges. Click any past challenge to play it. Your scores for historical challenges are tracked separately from the daily challenge.
You start each round with 10 points (30 total across three rounds). Wrong guesses cost 1 point each. Hints also cost points: region costs 1, population costs 1, first letter costs 2, country costs 3, and revealing the full map costs 4 points. Landmark hints cost 1-3 points depending on how famous the landmark is. You always earn at least 1 point per round if you eventually guess correctly.
Noirdle offers several types of hints to help you identify each city. Region hint (1 point) tells you the geographic area. Population hint (1 point) gives the city's population range. First letter hint (2 points) reveals the starting letter. Country hint (3 points) reveals the country. Map reveal (4 points) removes the fog overlay completely. Landmark hints (1-3 points) show famous landmarks near the city.
The map starts with an artistic fog overlay that obscures details. As you zoom in closer, the fog gradually clears, revealing more of the map. This 'fog of war' mechanic encourages you to use overall city layout and geography as your first clues before zooming in for street-level details.
Yes, Noirdle is completely free to play. No account or sign-up is required. Just visit noirdle.city and start playing. The game is supported by non-intrusive ads.
Noirdle stores your game progress and statistics locally in your browser's storage. We use a randomly generated player ID (no personal information) for the leaderboard. We use Google Analytics to understand how the game is used and Google AdSense for advertising. You can manage your cookie preferences at any time. See our Privacy Policy for full details.
After completing a challenge, click the Share button on the results screen. This copies a spoiler-free summary of your score to your clipboard, which you can paste into messages, social media, or group chats. You can also challenge friends directly by sharing a unique challenge link.
Noirdle is created by Elanra Studios, an independent game development studio. We're passionate about making geography fun and accessible through engaging daily puzzle games. Have feedback or suggestions? Visit our Contact page!