Four steps
How to play Draw the Border
- Read the pair. The prompt names two neighboring countries. The map zooms to them, fills both in the same color, and hides the line between them.
- Find the ends. Small dots mark where the border meets the coast or a third country. A border in several pieces, such as France and Spain around Andorra, has a pair of dots for each piece.
- Draw the line. Drag from one dot to the other with a mouse, trackpad, or finger. Use Move map to pan and zoom first; your line stays in place on the map while you zoom.
- Submit and compare. The real border appears in green over your dashed line, with a score out of 100. A score of 60% or more keeps your streak going.
Coverage, closeness, ends
How the border score works
The game samples about two hundred points along the real border and checks each one against your line. Coverage(55% of the score) is the share of those points your line passes close to. The tolerance is 5% of the border's overall size, so a long border like Canada and the United States gives you the same relative room as a short one like Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Closeness (35%) works the other way round: it measures how far your line strays from the real border on average, so scribbling a thick zigzag over the whole area does not pay. Closeness is scaled by coverage, which stops a short, precise fragment from earning full marks. Ends(10%) checks that your strokes start and finish near the marked dots. Every distance is measured relative to the border's size, so zooming in or playing on a phone does not change the result.
From the game's own map data
Easiest and hardest borders to draw
The game has 280 country borders and 101 U.S. state borders. Each one is graded by how winding it is: the length of the line divided by the straight distance between its ends. A ratio near 1.0× is close to a straight line; anything above about 1.9×, or a border in four or more pieces, counts as hard. Lengths are measured on the simplified 1:50m map the game draws, so they come out shorter than official survey figures.
Easy: straight lines and simple curves
| Border | On the map | Shape | What to remember |
|---|---|---|---|
| Egypt – Sudan | 1,266 km | 1.03× | A ruler-straight line along the 22nd parallel. Start at the Red Sea and head due west. |
| Egypt – Libya | 1,095 km | 1.02× | Almost a pure north–south line from the Mediterranean into the Sahara. |
| Mexico – United States of America | 2,478 km | 1.20× | Straight desert segments in the west, then the bends of the Rio Grande down to the Gulf. |
| Norway – Sweden | 1,555 km | 1.30× | One long, gently wavering line down the Scandinavian mountains. |
| Colorado – Wyoming | 419 km | 1.00× | A perfectly straight line of latitude, the easiest kind of state border. |
Medium: famous borders with a twist
| Border | On the map | Shape | What to remember |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canada – United States of America | 7,801 km, 3 sections | 1.34× | Famous for the 49th parallel, but the Great Lakes and the Alaska line make it more than one straight stroke. |
| Argentina – Chile | 4,610 km, 2 sections | 1.31× | Follows the high Andes for most of South America, with a separate section across Tierra del Fuego. |
| France – Spain | 486 km, 2 sections | 1.21× | Runs along the Pyrenees, split into two sections by Andorra. |
| India – Pakistan | 2,467 km | 1.63× | From the Arabian Sea through the Thar Desert and Punjab into disputed Kashmir, where the map draws a de facto line. |
Hard: rivers, valleys, and enclaves
| Border | On the map | Shape | What to remember |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bangladesh – India | 2,007 km | 5.53× | India wraps around Bangladesh on three sides; the line doubles back on itself constantly. |
| Kyrgyzstan – Uzbekistan | 883 km, 3 sections | 3.95× | Carves through the Fergana Valley in several separate pieces. |
| China – Russia | 3,130 km, 2 sections | 2.28× | Two sections, either side of Mongolia, following the Amur and Ussuri rivers in the east. |
| Ireland – United Kingdom | 310 km | 2.41× | Short, but it wriggles across the island of Ireland from Lough Foyle to Carlingford Lough. |
Straight colonial-era lines across deserts are the friendliest place to start. River borders are harder than they look, because the line follows every bend. The toughest are borders that wrap around a neighbor, like Bangladesh and India, or that split into enclaves, like the Fergana Valley.
Same five borders for everyone
Daily border challenge and sharing
Every day at 00:00 UTC the game picks 5 new country borders: two easy, two medium, and one hard, in that order. Everyone playing that day gets the same set, and your progress is saved in your browser so you can finish later. When you are done, share a spoiler-free result: one square per border.
🟩 is 80% or better, 🟨 is 60–79%, 🟧 is 40–59%, and ⬜ is below 40%. Practice mode has no daily limit: pick countries or U.S. states, choose a difficulty, and play five borders at a time.
Questions
Draw the Border FAQ
What is the draw the border game?
Draw the Border shows two neighboring countries on a map with the line between them removed. You draw where you think the border runs, and the game overlays the real border and scores how closely your line follows it.
Is Draw the Border free?
Yes. It runs in the browser on desktop and mobile with no account, download, or paywall. Daily progress is saved only in your own browser.
How is it different from Country Draw?
Country Draw asks you to sketch the whole outline of one country from memory, and scores the shape anywhere on the map. Draw the Border asks for one shared line between two countries, and scores it in place: the position of your line matters.
Does it include U.S. state borders?
Yes. Practice mode has a U.S. States pool with 101 state-to-state borders, from straight lines like Colorado and Wyoming to river borders like Mississippi and Louisiana. The daily challenge uses country borders.