All First-Level Subdivisions of Europe by Proximity
There are 1052 first-level administrative divisions on the continent of Europe. To turn one green, name any subdivision within 400km (248.5mi) of its borders.
Thanks to user IAB for creating the map and to user Stewart for lowering the file size!
Only including inhabited subdivisions
Due to the large number of answers/type-ins, this quiz may be very slow
To reduce lag, start around Slovenia and North Macedonia
As per popular request, the timer has been increased from 1:15 to 2:00. As for the lag, I sadly cannot reduce it, but I have added a caveat with a tip on how to remove most of the lag more quickly: tackle Slovenia and North Macedonia first, these two cause the most lag.
A rather theoretical issue: If there were enough time one could easily look at the already guessed names next to the map and get the missing ones, too. For example I took it untimed and was missing one in Russia, but with trying all the displayed solutions, even though I did not know they were subdivisions before, I was eventually able to guess one next to it and finish the quiz.
So maybe for this quiz it would be better to only have the map.
On a laptop the names of the already guessed subdivisions will also show once you hover over their respective areas, so removing the answer boxes doesn't help with that. If you take it untimed you can always finish this quiz indeed, whether it is by hovering over the map or looking at the answer boxes. But if you take it with the 75 seconds timer most won't have time for that
The regions of Slovenia are only for legal and statistical purposes. They have no administrative power. This is why I chose to go with the municipalities, which are the first subdivisions that do have administrative powers, and I think IAB did as well. (In my first level subdivision quiz I also use the municipalities rather than the statistical regions)
It's small enough that regions aren't really necessary, similar with Macedonia, Latvia etc. All such countries of course have some sort of larger regions for various purposes (statistics, police and court districts, public administration, EU subsidies etc etc), but this quiz goes strictly for self-governing areas.
Some quizzes call for a high-pressure speed test. This isn't really one of those. Could you allow more time, especially with all the lag time to contend with?
Great game, but it's very slow running and prone to crashing – which makes the 1:15 time limit challenging – no matter how fast I type in places, the thing responds so slowly that the time expires before some of them have even registered.
Finnmark, Norway has merged with Troms to form a larger county, which is included in the quiz and map, but it is also required as a separate answer without corresponding to anything on the map. That also means you can fill out the map entirely and still miss it, which is what happened to me. Can you please fix this?
Quizmaster did not approve the changes as it is likely more changes will have to happen in the future. Finnmark will therefore unfortunately stay as an answer for the time being.
Huh, when I did the version this quiz is currently using I probably forgot to delete Finnmark by accident but then finally removed it when I truly updated the quiz in July. (As the actual first-level subdivisions of Europe quiz doesn't have it.)
It's indeed those 2. I have the old Monaco subdivisions, of which there are 10, whereas IAB uses the new ones, of which there are 9. And Finnmark, Norway is extra here.
I managed to get 1154 out of 1156 on my second try! The lag was bad at first but starting with Slovenia's capital and then the cardinal directions dealt with the worst of it. Fun and exciting, thanks!
I checked (before reading the comments, was curious how far it would get me). And it gives you a perfect 1000 for naming all the capitals. That was very pleasing :)
(some capitals don't do anything and others are already covered by previous answers, as one might expect)
Got every single one except Azores! Still good enough for 100%! I am shocked at how well I did. I've never scored in this high of a percentile on any quiz ever! My interest in Russia has definitely come in handy here.
Maybe is this quiz a little too easy ? Excluding Iceland, norwegian and portuguese islands (no spoil sorry :P ), getting only one continental / UK / Ireland / Malta answer can get you all of them, if you have enough time to type the outmost green subdivision each time... This is just a suggestion, but it could probably be better to reduce the time a little.
Some of these divisions are so small that I still can't find them even after the quiz is over. I can't fill them in if I don't know which ones are missing!
The regex I'm using for that is r:^(AR[CK]H?A[A-Z]+K), meaning Archangelk is accepted. Removing that final K would mean anything starting with "Archa" + any letter would be accepted, which is too loose in my opinion.
I'm confused. I started with the Netherlands because I'm familiar with the provinces, but the provinces are not included? Can you explain the reasoning?
The Netherlands, Curacao, Saint Maarten and Aruba are the first level subdivisions of the Kingdom of the Netherlands since the breakup of the Netherlands Antilles. The provinces and Saba, Saint Eustatius and Bonaire are the second level subdivisions.
I understand, but you shall still change it. It’s just a little unfair for Dutch people (like me and a very good quiz maker who’s name begins with dekk)
I'm aware that in the Netherlands we see the provinces as the first level, I'm Dutch too :). It's incorrect to include them though, since we're talking about the Kingdom of the Netherlands here (I.e. the entire country including the Caribbean), not just European Netherlands
So maybe for this quiz it would be better to only have the map.
(some capitals don't do anything and others are already covered by previous answers, as one might expect)
<3<3<3 for taking Schönbrunn as thumbnail <3<3<3