Speedrunning the "Countries of the World" Quiz

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I can't think of a title

I remembered that it was around a year ago when I successfully finished memorizing all the countries, at a time of 8-ish minutes, and now I'm slowly pushing down the time down, achieving 4:xx a few months ago and just recently a 3:29. (I do have a segmented run of 2:51 though)

I'm definitely not the fastest, but I still want to share information and discuss different strategies on lowering the time taken, as I can't find much information on people doing this. Feel free to post your times here and share what strategies/tricks you used to push down your time.

As a start here's some of my insights:

1. Try to standardize the order you take. This way you can train your brain more efficiently as you spend less time thinking of what to type next. And do also make the path more linear, too. I find jumping across large gaps/ocean time consuming. For me it's North America > South > Europe > Africa > Asia > Oceania. The order I type American countries is always the same. Sometimes I even have to restart the run because I accidentally type a later country and can't get back to the one I missed because my brain just keeps going forward, lol.

2. Abbreviations. These can help cut down times (until you used all of them, of course). DR for Dominican Republic, FYROM for North Macedonia (might be unintuitive), Congo for the Rep. Congo AND Dem. Rep. Congo, at the same time, KSA for Saudi Arabia, DPRK and ROK and North and South Korea (these two are pretty helpful), ROC for Taiwan (smaller time save tho), Burma for Myanmar (which is not an abbreviation but it's much easier to type), PNG for Papua New Guinea, NZ for New Zealand, and FSM for Micronesia. (Please use the non-abbreviated names if possible in real life)

3. Take Rests, I have to stress this. I notice that the longer I play the more likely I make typos, and the best run is usually the first one. If you feel like you're not performing well, feel free to take a break.

Among other stuff that I probably do subconsciously without I even noticing. So, yeah, these are all the stuff that I can think of that might help. Feel free to discuss or comment on my strategies in the comments.

Sorry for the wall of text.

EDIT: It's a 3:06 now! I can probably push it down to sub-3:00 if I make a bit less mistakes.

10 Comments
+4
Level 82
Jun 25, 2025
ksa for saudi arabia as well
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Level 73
Jun 25, 2025
PRC also works for China, aside from saving two characters, typing it along with ROC can create a sort of rhythm, similar to the one when typing Iran and Iraq after each other.
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Level 75
Jun 25, 2025
Honestly for me typing Macedonia is easier than fyrom
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Level 61
Jun 25, 2025
+1
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Level 68
Jun 25, 2025
I always do FYROM myself, but I do notice that the abbreviation takes longer to spring to mind for some people
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Level 61
Jun 25, 2025
What is your order within the continents?
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Level 68
Jun 25, 2025
Thanks for sharing! You use the same order of continents as I do, I'm real curious to see what order you do within the continents. Imagine if we did it the same way!

Pro tip for blogging: Have confidence! This is a pretty good first blog, it's not spam, and it's talking about a topic that's fairly on-point for this site. No need to apologize, this was a nice thing to read about!

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Level 46
Jun 25, 2025
Thanks!

The order I currently use for the Americas is: Canada ---> Guatemala > Belize > El Salvador ---> Panama > Cuba > Bahamas > Jamaica > Haiti > Dominican Republic > ABDGT > St. Lucia > St. Kitts > St. Vincent > Colombia ---> Suriname > Ecuador > Peru > Chile > Argentina > Bolivia > Paraguay > Uruguay > Brazil

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Level 46
Jun 25, 2025
Outside the Americas the orders are a bit more fluid. I memorize countries by chunks, so for example whenever I type Italy I also type San Marino, Vatican and Malta next. Much less likely to miss some countries accidentally. The order inside those chunks is usually more variable though.

(umm the first comment was too long it's pending pls wait)

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Level 68
Jun 26, 2025
your North/South America method is very very similar to mine, go the other way around South America though (starting in Colombia and going south first)