The countries most people forget
Every player clears Europe and the Americas fast, then slows down in a fairly predictable order. Here's which countries actually cause the most trouble, and why.
Small European countries
Vatican City, San Marino, Monaco, and Liechtenstein are all under 500 square kilometers combined, and on most maps they're barely a dot next to their neighbors. Players who know all four exist often still forget one simply because it never registered visually — Liechtenstein in particular gets lost between Switzerland and Austria.
The "Guinea" cluster
Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Equatorial Guinea are three separate West/Central African countries with almost identical names, and none of them border each other directly in a way that makes the distinction obvious. Most players either get all three or forget at least one — there's rarely an in-between.
The two Congos
The Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo sit side by side, share a name, and are frequently confused for a single country. The DRC is roughly ten times larger by land area and population, which is part of why it's the one people remember first — the smaller Republic of the Congo often gets left off entirely.
Pacific island nations
Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia are the countries most players miss completely on a first attempt. They're small, spread far apart, and rarely come up outside of a geography quiz — which is exactly what makes naming all of them a genuine benchmark of a strong run.
Landlocked Central Asia
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — the five "-stan" countries of Central Asia — get mixed up with each other more than almost any other cluster on the map, largely because their names sound similar and their borders shift shape a lot between memory and reality.
Recently renamed or reorganized countries
Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), North Macedonia (formerly just Macedonia), and Czechia (formerly the Czech Republic in casual use) trip up players who learned their geography before the name changes. This game accepts the older names too, so this is a lot less of a problem than people expect once they actually try typing the old version.