What is the emoji city game called?

The version passed around in chats does not have a name. As a daily game with distance and direction feedback, it is Metroji.

How many emoji should a clue have?

Five is a good number. Three is usually ambiguous and seven gives it away.

Can I use these with a class?

Yes, and asking students to build their own clue is the better half of the activity. Choosing five symbols that fit one city and no other is harder geographical thinking than naming it.

Do emoji clues work for countries too?

Less well. Countries are large and internally varied, so five symbols tend to describe one region and mislead about the rest. Cities are specific enough for the format to be fair.

Guess the city from emoji

🗼🥖🎨🎭💃 is Paris. The format circulates in group chats and classrooms constantly without anyone really owning it, which is a shame, because it is a better puzzle than it looks. Here is how it works, how to build one that is actually solvable, and where to play it daily.

Why the format works

A country is a shape and a flag. A city is a set of associations, and emoji happen to be a vocabulary of exactly those. Five symbols can carry a landmark, a dish, an industry, a climate and a piece of history, which is a surprisingly complete description of a place in about as much space as a postcode.

It also makes the puzzle guessable rather than recallable. You do not need to have memorised anything: you need to reason from what the symbols suggest to a place that fits all five at once.

How to build a clue that works

The rule that matters is that the five symbols should fit one city and no other. A pizza and a colosseum narrows it to Rome. A pizza and a beach could be a hundred places.

Pick from different categories. Five food emoji is a weak clue, however famous the food.
Avoid spelling the name out. 🅰️ for Amsterdam is a word game, not a geography one.
Include one that is specific and one that is general, so there is a way in and a way to confirm.
Check it against a rival. If your clue for Lisbon also fits Porto, it is not finished.
Watch for symbols that render differently across platforms, which quietly breaks the puzzle for half the people you send it to.

Worked examples

Each of these is a clue that has already run as a daily puzzle. The linked page explains what every symbol refers to, which is the fastest way to get a feel for how tight a good clue has to be.

Questions

What is the emoji city game called?: The version passed around in chats does not have a name. As a daily game with distance and direction feedback, it is Metroji.
How many emoji should a clue have?: Five is a good number. Three is usually ambiguous and seven gives it away.
Can I use these with a class?: Yes, and asking students to build their own clue is the better half of the activity. Choosing five symbols that fit one city and no other is harder geographical thinking than naming it.
Do emoji clues work for countries too?: Less well. Countries are large and internally varied, so five symbols tend to describe one region and mislead about the rest. Cities are specific enough for the format to be fair.

Today's city

Five emoji, six guesses, one city. Free, no account, and the same puzzle for everyone in the world today.

Play Metroji See past cities