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That’s fun. Although a picture indoors seems unfair. Somehow I knew one of the pictures had to be West Virginia and got within 40 miles. But the indoor one I got the exact opposite of the country because how are you supposed to tell? Literally all convention centers in the US have the same walls and awful garish carpeting.
Indoor photos can still provide good clues. I had no idea where the first picture was. I guessed somewhere in Vermont. But that second picture had me guess West Virginia because David McKinley was in the photo.
Ah thanks for the info! Yes that would likely substantially narrow it down, I didn’t recognize him but there was at least a clue.
165 miles. Started off 200 miles away but became obsessed with PA. and never really got closer
This is fun. My first guess was 34 miles from the place. It took four tries to get to 0. Though, I don't understand the indoor one.
i think it's auto-generating a problem based on geotagged pictures. the indoor one isn't supposed to be a good clue, it's just a photo that happened to be in the dataset.
Could maybe pass the pictures through an object detector. Too many faces and it skips the picture. It may already be doing it to remove pictures with words as one "clue" containing a sign would spoil it. Though I'd rather it keep the picture but blur the sign in that case.
#60 has a picture of a map, so I don't think it's being filtered.
There are definitely pictures with signs, I've been going back through the archives.
they could, but i kinda like the wildness of it. not knowing if you're going to get a completely useless clue (or one that totally gives away the answer) is part of the charm,.
Tough clue, but I guess folks in that area (or into politics) might recognize the longtime US Representative from WV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McKinley),
I didn't recognize him but figured something about that bunch of overweight white men said Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, or WV to me.
I got within 10 miles, pretty proud of myself. Could have probably done better with google maps showing lakes / reservors
Is the idea that all pictures are the sane location? I got 17 miles, the pictures all had intense west virginia energy haha
I also did not read the very brief introduction. Then, some of the pictures looked similar and I got suspicious.

569, 1236, 512, 1734, 4.6 -- 4.6?? Pure luck.

If you can edit out the spoiler in your comment that might be polite.

Yeah, completely missed the instructions as well. There's plenty of room on the page, they should at least show by default on the first visit.
> They should at least show by default on the first visit

They did for me. Firefox browser on Windows 11. Instructions were showing when I first visited and I had to close them to continue.

First thing I one usually do on first visit of most pages is closing window to continue. So instead of reading the content I was searching for button to close it. Even though I knew it was not cookie pop-up!
My thoughts too, big WV energy (pun intended). I got 18 miles. It looks very similar to where I do a lot of camping.
Would have been too easy if there were any political signs lol. 14 miles for me.
I don't know why I was thinking Tennessee. Eventually I figured it out.
My first guess was 25 miles away (!), but could only get to 11 miles in the final one.
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This is pretty neat! Although I find myself relying far more on triangulation via the distances than I do the images.
Same. The image helps with a first and maybe last guess, and sometimes there's something highly identifying in the image, but triangulation would be enough if I could only accurately estimate distances. The scale on the map helps.

It would be cool if the radii were drawn at the end? It would be too easy if they were drawn before, I think.

I've never been to the states in the photos and somehow got within a few hundred miles of them. Guess my brain has had enough training data.
You’ve been trained by the internet
If anyone knows the creator of this site, they might want to fix the bug of being able to get a different `frame` of reference on all of the images.

Wiki commons may be a great place to find images, but they do too good of a job naming things.

Some of the photos were actually taken about a thousand feet from the zone where you were marked "correct". I clicked right on top of the dam for my fifth guess and it showed me being 0.2 miles off.
So, I did not realize these were all supposed to be the same location.

I find it funny that my best guess was what appeared to me to be a Ohio conference room.

Got 0 mi on my first guess because I thought “That’s [state]” and then picked a random spot on the [other state] side of the state since it had that feel. I feel like I might as well quit at this point, lol.

Edited out spoilers.

Lol same, I was like "yeah this is Appalachia for sure, why not WV", clicked somewhere in the middle of the state, and got 14 miles :)
I thought "Kentucky" and was 200 away on first guess.
PA for me, it's like all the wrong guesses are just triangulating on the "most Appalachian" place lol
Same, though I clicked in the middle of the name “West Virginia” and was 34 miles away.
Spoiler alert? :P
Read the article before reading the comments? ;)
Went purely on feel and got 40mi on my first guess, and I felt pretty good about that! Took a couple silly guesses because I didn't see that the picture changes after each guess - the [geological formation] in the later photos should have been a dead giveaway.
Hundreds of hours of Geoguessr had me within 30 miles on the first guess despite having never been there. This is an interesting take on the concept.
Not the same location for me. 194 miles apart: First picture showed Stouts Mill Bridge https://goo.gl/maps/3JkHPWMQo3wK39ZD8 Last one Deer Creek Dam https://goo.gl/maps/u5zxGmby74X7JMWi7
The attribution on the first image shows that it's apparently the Burnsville Bridge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnsville_Bridge

It seems that these two bridges just happen to have almost the exact same construction and type of trees around. However, you can see that in the first image from the parent article that there are four houses in the background, and if we look up the bridge attributed to the first image in the parent, it has those same four houses in the background: https://goo.gl/maps/WLnbN845pa4Hw1Yi7 Compare to the wikipedia photo used in the parent article: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burnsville_Bridge.jp...

The Stouts Mill Bridge does not have those same four houses in the background, it has a different set of buildings in a different arrangement near it: https://goo.gl/maps/3JkHPWMQo3wK39ZD8

The original “where in the world?” location guessing game is GeoGuesser from 2013. There are competitions and some pro competitors can pinpoint locations within feet, though some rules allow the player to browse Google Maps in a separate window.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoGuessr

Rules? That sounds like a kind of Honor Rule since it seems impossible to enforce. I think it’s better to play with a time limit instead in order to make aids impractical. Of course in a duel or something you can just start the countdown after the first guess is made.
Well, today I learned that I'm very good at identifying that something is in West Virginia.
You almost had me, covert dataset labeling company. Where's the input box to tell you what Transformer I would be based on my name and zip code?

Most /s but also maybe not.

I like the map picking a lot better than naming the country in WhereTaken[1]. The US version is even easier because you only need to guess the state.

[1] https://wheretaken.teuteuf.fr/

The cool thing with wheretaken and worldle is that I've learned a lot about countries and their borders. If I could pick on a map, I wonder if I'd retained how things look in certain parts of the world, but not what country they are in.

Another awesome game for anyone who is into geography and, in this case econ: https://oec.world/en/tradle/

So everyone got the same pictures? Seems kind of non-random in terms of where the locations were, too. Nothing from the west coast in 5 photos?
Don't know if everyone got the same pictures, but I believe it's like a wordle type game where you get 5 guesses to get the correct location, all the images are for the same location, and every day they release a new 5 image puzzle. You click and it tells you how far away from the location each click is which honestly allowed me to get within 30 miles by the end of every set cause I could just triangulate approximately where it wanted me to click.
all 5 photos in roughly the same location I believe to help you narrow it in. Every day a new location with 5 new photos you can drill down with.
I got 0 mi! [1]

After the first 2 I stopped attempting cities and figured the picture didn't matter, it was a game of triangulation.

Nice game, I like it, even though I've never set foot in the US.

[1] Spoilers! - https://i.imgur.com/azCWc3i.png

I tried a similar approach. I only got as close as 126 miles...
After reading your comment (but not looking at the spoiler), I attempted triangulation from the get-go.

I managed to get 60 mi away.

I think 0 mi away is very impressive. Especially since you had already used some of your attempts without initially aiming for triangulation!

Kudos to you :)

18 miles using triangulation
I must have missed the part in the instructions where all the photos are from the same place. Is that what you mean by triangulation?
They are, yeah. I didn’t realise to start with. I played a couple of older games and managed to get 0 miles on one too - though there was a hint in the second photo that got me within 12 miles and it was easier find it from there.
Yes, you can use a ruler and the scale to get closer with each guess, regardless of what the picture shows. I use the built in drawing app on Linux Mint.

Here is another attempt, with my triangulation circles written (don't judge me)

Attempt: https://i.imgur.com/Hz3c37c.png

To help others understand, This image shows that there's only two possible locations left where all the circles intersect. Because the game gives exact distance to the target the correct answer must be on the circles.
Imagine drawing a circle with a radius of your error each time you guess. After the second guess, there will be only two intersecting points. A careful third guess should tell you which of the two it is.
Ooooh I got 99 miles on guess 3 and then started guessing 2000 miles away because I assumed they would be distributed.
I managed to get 0 mi, as well. I guessed the state based on the first image and was able to rapidly narrow it down from there. Kind of cool today's happened to be in the state I was born in, yet have no memories of.
Triangulation from guesses #3 and #4 gave me the general area, but then picture #5 shows what feature to look for on the map. Got 0.5 miles.
I was off by 6 miles because the actual pin is off by six miles for the last picture.

Also, as an American, the fact that I recognized the first picture to within 50 miles makes me sad. Our bridges should not look like that, even there.

Agreed. I grew up in Pittsburgh, but even after 10 years after moving away, I immediately recognized the first picture as "somewhere in West Virginia" as if instinctually.
I saw a rusty-looking bridge and thought of Pittsburgh so I picked interior Pennsylvania (somewhere).
I saw a rusty-looking bridge and thought of Pittsburgh so I picked interior Pennsylvania (somewhere, 209 km off).
That state has a powerful Senator though, so not all the roads are like that. There are some ridiculously overbuilt highways with no traffic.
I’ve never been to the US but somehow West Virginia was my first guess and I got it down to zero miles eventually. I don’t know why that state is so particularly recognizable
The bridge in the fitst photo is an old one lane bridge, probably was used by carriages. It looks like it mostly just connects a small neighborhood of houses, not a main road by any means. There are probably newer concrete bridges out of frame, but they're not as picturesque as old steel bridges.
There are plenty of old steel and wood bridges across the northeast that are exactly like that. They are closed to general traffic and only used by locals.
I was like "Huhm... a rural area?" and got very lucky: something like 1280 miles on the first guess and 0 miles on the second guess.
I did not even notice that it was giving me distance feedback after each guess.
I got 0 miles because the first photo was exactly the kind of landscape I grew up with. It also helps that almost all of the Texas photos are sure to have a flag or the shape of Texas somewhere.
0 mi in 4 guesses. The funny part was I forgot to look at the photos after the first two and had to go back and look at the photos to see what I missed. The first photo has a bridge, so that informed the clicks a bit since I knew I needed a stream, so some help from the content.
Right click image, open in new tab, read URL of image which is helpfully descriptive, search wikipedia for that bridge. Wikipedia article shows location of the bridge on a map.

In reality, I didn't cheat until the 2nd picture, because a picture of some guys shaking a politician's hand isn't really that helpful. If the image didn't tell you what union was talking to what politician, I wouldn't have been able to look up the street address of the union hall. Even then, I still couldn't find the town on the map, so I had to eyeball it to get 0 mi.

I got very lucky. My first guess was only off by 5.5 miles. If I knew the exact location ahead of time I probably couldn't have gotten that close if I tried, considering the zoom level of the map when I guessed it. That got me close enough to get right on for the second guess.
I started at 100miles, diverted to 140 miles, then quickly narrowed into 40mi accuracy by guess 5. In under 30 seconds.

Certain parts of America just have a "look".

A rusty, sad, religious, whitebread, Under Armour Tucked Into My Jeans look.

Seems like a great picture for Bruce Springsteen's next album cover.
Spoiler alert: Viewing source of the photos told exactly where the image was from. (all West Virginia). So I got 35 miles, then 0 miles.
I got one of them within 34 miles. Not my fault Appalachia has a look to it

Edit: wait, they're all the same place? I was confused on that point. I thought each was a different state.

yea i think i jumped passed the instructions and thought all the pictures were different places

got 64 (i think it's the rusty bridges...)

It's a daily puzzle. So everyone gets the same one today.