Countries Forgotten With an Empty Map

I ranked all the countries by percent guessed in the original Countries of the World Map and compared it to the rankings on my Empty Map version. Guess which countries saw their rankings fall the most, i.e. the countries that people forget when they played the empty map version.
Quiz by relessness
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Last updated: November 18, 2017
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First submittedSeptember 28, 2017
Times taken12,635
Average score42.9%
Rating4.13
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Difference
Country
51
Madagascar
50
Philippines
44
Iceland
44
Taiwan
43
Papua New Guinea
41
Dominican Republic
36
Sri Lanka
Difference
Country
34
Singapore
33
Ireland
32
Netherlands
26
Dominica
25
Haiti
25
Kuwait
21
Malaysia
Difference
Country
19
Bahamas
18
Liberia
17
Cuba
16
Thailand
16
Vietnam
16
Lebanon
16
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36 Comments
+12
Level 70
Oct 5, 2017
Looks like Liberia is the country most missed of the most missed that are missing........ percentage wise.
+2
Level 73
Dec 7, 2019
Not anymore
+6
Level 72
Nov 5, 2017
Could you add. PNG as a type-in for Papua New Guinea? I typed PNG and moved on whenever it didn't take.
+1
Level 27
Feb 26, 2018
Great quiz! Very interesting to see this put into perspective!
+10
Level 45
May 10, 2018
NETHERLANDS?!?!?!?!??!?! HOW!?!?!??!?!?!?!
+14
Level 73
Dec 7, 2019
Maybe people thought it got flooded?
+9
Level 28
Jun 13, 2021
I think it is because Europe mostly looks normal even without the Netherlands
+4
Level 47
Sep 25, 2021
Not for a dutch person
+2
Level 85
Jul 15, 2024
Ok fine, whatever, but most people on this site are not Dutch. So that's not really relevant.

When taking the "countries with an empty map" quiz, most people, when they realize they're missing countries, are going to scan over the entire world map to see what they're missing.

At that scale, when you're looking over the entire world, the Netherlands is sufficiently small that it's not - for most non-Dutch people - going to immediately jump out as being an obvious blank.

+1
Level 92
Feb 8, 2025
I can see why people forget the Netherlands when they imagine the map in their head more than other countries. It happened to me but I don't know why. Maybe because my brain visually remembers Benelux as the corner nestled between big Germany and big France, so it tells itself the little countries there all border both France and Germany, thus it feels satisfied with that corner after getting Belgium and Luxemburg.
+3
Level 18
May 17, 2018
How do people forget Iceland and Madagascar?!
+9
Level 46
Dec 8, 2018
Iceland is far away from Europe, while Madagascar isn't the focus of Africa. aBut then again, how do people remember Seychelles, Comoros, and Mauritius, and remembering the Maldives but not Sri Lanka?
+18
Level 45
Dec 28, 2018
probably the original scores are low
+2
Level 81
May 31, 2019
Yes, it is by the drop in percentage once the map is taken away, not the actual percentage on the quiz without a map.
+2
Level 85
Jul 15, 2024
You're misunderstanding what this quiz is asking.

It's not that more people remember those smaller countries than Sri Lanka. It's that those countries represent a smaller drop in "gettability" than Sri Lanka does compared to the general "Countries of the World" quiz.

On the general quiz, a lot of people are missing those countries anyway. So on the "empty map" quiz, a higher percentage of people who are missing those countries would probably have already missed them on the general quiz, whereas Sri Lanka, which isn't necessarily an obvious blank when you're scanning over the world map to see what you've missed, is probably a more obvious blank when looking at the alphabetical list of countries and racking your brain to figure out what goes in the empty slot.

+3
Level 36
May 21, 2018
A majority of quiz takers forget the Netherlands, Vietnam and Cuba?

But they remember Benin, Chad, Kosovo, South Sudan and Eritrea? Amazing!!!!

+17
Level 47
Sep 9, 2018
This is because it's easier to miss coast countries or islands when you have an empty map, if there's a gaping hole in the middle of a continent you can tell that there's a country missing most of the time. Personally I tend to miss countries like Chile because you don't really see that it's missing
+7
Level 72
Apr 28, 2019
Benin, Chad, Kosovo, South Sudan and Eritrea don't have very high percentages in the original Countries of the World Quiz.
+1
Level 73
May 23, 2019
yes, good point, I think that makes a big difference.
+1
Level 67
Jun 14, 2024
or rather, makes a low difference because the scores are already low ;)
+4
Level 73
May 23, 2019
Funny to see/think about which countries are the most forgotten of the forgotten countries and who are the least forgotten.

surprised to see the netherlands and ireland, who doesnt type ireland after they did the uk?

besides those two I missed lebanon and liberia, Indeed I forget about liberia in empty map quiz, but lebanon is paired with jordan and israel for me. Hardly ever miss/get one without the others. (have many things in pairs, not on purpose, it is just how they stay in my head. Liek I allways do, estonia lativa lithuania, and hungary, bulgaria, romania,. And obviously norway sweden finland, but I think most do.)

+1
Level 92
Feb 8, 2025
I frequently go at Western Europe by naming the big five countries first and then completing the other countries so I can see how people can guess UK but skip over Ireland in an empty map quiz.
+1
Level 20
Oct 11, 2020
HOW do people miss thailand?
+2
Level 63
Oct 22, 2020
So you're saying that more people get Liechtenstein, St Kitts, the Netherlands, St Lucia, and Vatican City than Thailand!?!??!!?!
+11
Level 82
Nov 13, 2020
No. Liechtenstein and those other countries have low scores to begin with, so the drop isn't as significant.
+1
Level 63
Feb 12, 2021
Oh
+2
Level 21
Feb 21, 2021
i have a complaint about this

i checked the empty map and sao tome is the most forgotten one

+8
Level 57
Feb 25, 2021
The quiz isn't about the most obscure ones, it's about the countries with the highest changes in a percentage, between the countries of the world with a world map, and countries of the world without a map.
+4
Level 70
Feb 23, 2021
One does not simply

Get Brunei

And miss Malaysia

+4
Level 57
Feb 25, 2021
You don't understand. This quiz isn't the most obscure ones, it's about the ones that are forgotten most, without a map. Without a map, it's the islands that are gonna be the hardest to remember.
+2
Level 44
Sep 8, 2021
People miss Papua New Guinea so they think there's a large island in Indonesia that has an east coast that is just a perfectly straight line for hundreds of miles lol
+4
Level 45
Oct 12, 2021
Interestingly, Dominica is on here because people get it with Dominican Republic. But Dominican Republic is on here too, so evidently, they don't remember that, and then don't end up getting Dominica with it.
+1
Level 92
Feb 8, 2025
Thanks for that, I was confused about how people remember Dominica in the map quiz to begin with
+2
Level 78
Jan 2, 2022
i'd love to know what's on the other end of the scale - do any countries go up on the empty map version?
+1
Level 63
Mar 13, 2025
Probably the lesser-known ones—the empty map quiztakers are skewed toward people who know all of the countries of the world already.
+2
Level 57
Nov 8, 2024
I like that most of these comments are people who just didn't understand what the quiz is