The city center of Groningen, The Netherlands, not to be confused with Groningen Township, 70 miles south of Duluth (Photo by Matthew James)

There’s a lot of Minnesota history to be found in the names on a map. Some places, like Iron Junction, reflect the industry that created the town. Many names come from Anishinaabemowin, like Mahnomen, derived from manoomin, meaning wild rice. And some city names both reflect their primary industry and come from Anishinaabemowin, like Biwabik, which comes from the Ojibwe word for iron. This Geoguessr challenge looks specifically at places in Minnesota that took their names from locations from around the world.

With the Minnesota communities of Finland, Wales and Oslo, the source of their names is pretty obvious. For the five Minnesota communities in this challenge, the places after which they are named are somewhat less famous or the reasons for the name are somewhat less clear. The challenge consists of two separate games. In the first, you have to locate five Minnesota communities named after someplace else in the world. In the second game, you have to find that place in the world. For most of these places, the original city is far larger than its Minnesota counterpart. For one, the Minnesota namesake has outlasted the source of its name, a Norwegian town that disbanded more than a century ago. That Geoguessr round shows the present-day location in Norway.

Each round has a time limit of 5 minutes.

PDD Geoguessr Challenge #23: Part A – Northern Minnesota Communities

PDD Geoguessr Challenge #23: Part B – World Cities with Namesakes in Minnesota

How to Play Geoguessr

GeoGuessr can be played on a laptop or desktop and on Android or IoS mobile devices with the GeoGuessr app. Just click on the link that fits how you play. You can create an account to keep track of your scores and see how you compare to other players or just click on the link above to play as a guest without having to create an account or log in.

Every game consists of five locations based on a theme chosen by the game creator. You are shown a Streetview image stripped of all the informational labels that are normally overlayed onto the image. Unless the challenge specifically restricts it, you can move around and look for clues like street signs and business names to find out where you are. The image below shows a basic overview of the Geoguessr screen layout and controls.

Once you think you know the location — or are nearly out of time — you use the inset map to place your marker where you believe the round started. After you hit “Guess,” you will see how close you were to the correct location and how many points your guess earned. The closer you are to the location, the higher your score, with a maximum score of 5,000 points. On a map that covers a small area, like the Gary-New Duluth neighborhood, being off by a few blocks will cost you a lot of points. On a map that has locations from around the world, you will get nearly all the points just for finding the right city. The maximum error for a perfect score also changes by map size, but in general if you are within 50 feet (15 meters) you will always get the full 5,000 points.

Not often, but every now and then, GeoGuessr gets a little buggy. If the underlying Streetview imagery has changed since the game was made, sometimes it repeats the last round, gives a black screen, or doesn’t allow a guess to be made. If that happens, please let me know and I’ll update the challenge.

At the end of the five rounds, an overview screen shows your score for each round in addition to your guessing time and how far off you were from the correct location. The correct locations and your guesses are also shown on a map and you can click on any of the round numbers to review the locations. Additionally, the final screen in a challenge will show how you rank compared to the top scorers of the challenge. When choosing your user name, keep in mind that your user name and score per round will be visible to other players of the challenge.

If you have feedback on this challenge or ideas for future challenges, please share them in the comments below.