HEADCOUNT
Day 47 · Jul 25, 2026
Lighting up the world…
Circle exactly
750,000people
Population data: GHS-POP R2023A (2025 epoch), EC Joint Research Centre
draw any shape · one official shot · · Rate on Listdle
Headcount is a free daily population guessing game — a population Wordle for geography: draw one loop anywhere on a world map and score on how close the real number of people inside comes to the day's target.
Full rules, scoring table, and strategy tips: how to play Headcount.
Every day there is one population target — today it's 750,000 people — and your loop can be any shape, any size. Lock it in and the game counts the real population inside what you drew: the nearer you land to the target, the higher your score out of 100.
The official attempt is committed blind: no live count, just your read of the glowing population map. That keeps the daily leaderboard a test of density intuition, not patience. After your official shape is locked, unlimited practice replays turn on a live population ticker — that's how you calibrate your sense of how many people live in a metro area, a river valley, or half a continent.
Headcount is FlightQ's population map game. Explore more free map games built around countries, 3D cities, airport networks, transit lines, and borders.
Population data: GHS-POP R2023A (2025 epoch), EC Joint Research Centre. Headcount aggregates the GHS-POP 1 km global population grid (2025 epoch) into the playable map. Population is modeled from census and satellite data, so treat every count as a careful estimate rather than a head-by-head tally — the scoring is built around that, and a ±2% read still scores 98 or better. Your official number is always recomputed server-side on a finer grid than the one your browser uses for previews.
Enjoying Headcount? Rate it on Listdle
Headcount is a free daily population guessing game — a population Wordle for geography. Every day there is one population target. You draw a single loop anywhere on a world map — any shape, any size — and your job is to guess the population: your score depends on how close the real number of people living inside your loop comes to the target.
Yes. Headcount is a daily population guessing game in the Wordle mold: one puzzle a day, one shared population target, and a score out of 100. Instead of guessing letters, you read a world population map and guess the population inside the loop you draw. Come back tomorrow for a new target.
Headcount uses GHS-POP from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (2025 epoch), a global ~1 km population grid built from census and satellite data. Population is modeled, so every count is a careful estimate — scoring is designed around that, and a ±2% read still scores 98 or better.
Score = 100 × (1 − |log₁₀(enclosed ÷ target)|), floored at zero. The score cares about ratio, so 9.4M people against a 10M target scores 97.3, half or double the target scores 69.9, and being 10× off in either direction scores 0.
Your first locked-in shape is your official score for the day — committed blind, with no live population count. After that you get unlimited practice replays with a live people counter while you draw, which is the fastest way to build population-density intuition.
Yes. Every daily puzzle is free with no account required. Premium adds unlimited practice, advanced stats and global comparisons, the full Travel Passport, beta access, and an ad-free experience.