Mapfold

Mapfold hides a country and makes it appear by elimination. The board is a whole world map, paired with a STILL STANDING panel that lists in alphabetical order everything still standing, 232 entries at the start, territories included. Before each question, the game asks under which angle you want to question the hidden country: Location, Flag or Nature, each card announcing its difficulty and the share of terrain it should fold. The official rule sums up the idea: each question is a fact that roughly halves the field of possibilities, and each mistake folds away the excluded part of the map.

1. Choose the angle of the question among Location, Flag and Nature: the easiest card rules out fewer countries than the hardest one.
2. Read the posed question, then look at what remains alive on the map and in the STILL STANDING list.
3. Touch a country on the map and confirm the guess.
4. In case of an error, the country is crossed out, the excluded half folds away and the next question is displayed.
5. Continue folding until you touch the correct country.

The idea of folding the map is more than a visual effect: seeing half a world fold back after an error turns a wrong answer into useful information, and the game becomes an exercise in dichotomy where you watch the terrain shrink. Choosing an angle before each question adds a risk-taking element that is missing from many deduction games; you decide how much you want to cut.

All feedback comes through the map itself: the proposed country is crossed out, the excluded area folds away and disappears, and the counter of countries still standing goes down at the same time the side list shortens. The game's countdown is therefore read in negative space, in the number of remaining entries rather than in a row of boxes. The rule warns that once you are down to the last two countries, an error costs the day.

Archive

An Archive link is stored in the footer, under the site's list of games.

• The choice of angle is the real decision of the round: always taking the card marked EASY leaves a still-wide field for the next turn, whereas the hardest angle requires knowing how to read a nature or flag clue.
• The STILL STANDING panel is a tool, not decoration: unfolding it with Show all lets you check that a country you have in mind is still in contention before spending a guess.