What ranki.gg is

ranki.gg is a free daily puzzle built from published statistics. Everyone gets the same puzzle on the same local day. The point is the gap between the order you expect and the order the source actually records. A country you would put first often is not first. Two neighbours you would treat as twins often are not close. You are not asked to memorise the numbers. They are on the card. You are asked to say which number belongs to which country.

The numbers come from publishers already named on each puzzle: the World Bank, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and Our World in Data, FAOSTAT, UNDP, the Penn World Table, Ethnologue, and the specific article or table linked on the answer screen. A figure that cannot be tied to one of those sources is not used. The sources and methodology page says what each kind of number does and does not measure. Food supply is food available, not a weighed plate. A renewable share can be firewood. A time zone count includes territories.

How each mode works

Rank it. Five or six countries, values in a column, highest at the top unless the card says otherwise. Drag the cards, or use the arrows, then press Lock it in. A right slot turns green and stays. A wrong slot turns red. You get five tries. The sample on this page is rice available per person, from the FAO food balance, not a crime statistic.

Top 1 and Top 5. Top 1 asks which country is first in a long list. You type a country. Each guess shows that country's real rank, and a hint gets more specific when you miss. Five tries. Finding number one wins, including when several countries share that top value. Top 5, on the days that use it, gives you six cards and five slots. You leave the odd country out.

Tier it. Some stats are labels, not a smooth ranking. Language family, the numbers one hand can show, and how many time zones a country keeps are tiers. Several countries can share a tier. You drop each chip into a labeled area and lock it in. Right tiers stay. Wrong ones turn red. Five tries.

Name it. Two rules at once, usually a letter rule and a stat rule. Any country that passes both wins. A guess that is not a country, or a repeat, does not spend a try. Five tries. The miss tells you which rule failed.

Multiple choice. Four countries, one answer, one shot. Tap a flag to highlight it, then press Lock it in. The fact and the source for that question appear once. A quiz day is a run of those questions. Each question is its own card in the daily pile.

Guess the number. One country shows its real value. You type your guess for a second country. Accuracy is 100 when the guess matches and falls to 0 when it is about three times off. The two points on that part are its weight in the daily package, not a score out of two. Tea, coffee, cocoa, garlic, and life expectancy are the non-sensitive sets. The comparisons are the ones stored with those series, such as Turkey's tea supply against the United Kingdom, or Albania's life expectancy against Russia.

Why the data is worth a round

The interesting part is a contrast you can check. Belarus has more potatoes available per person than Ireland on the FAO card. Japan is more forested, as a share of land, than Brazil on the World Bank card. Iceland leads the Human Development Index card on this site, and the United Arab Emirates edges the United States on that same index. France has more time zones than the United Kingdom once overseas territories count. None of those sentences adds a number that is not already on the learn pages, and each page links the publisher.

Read the explainers, then play. Browse the numbers. Every past day is written up with its table and source. How to play is the longer rules page. About says who makes the game: Michael Yao, creator of ranki.gg. Sources lists the publishers. Methodology and corrections says how a figure gets onto a card and how to report a wrong one. Contact is the published email for a wrong figure.