False Bearing

False Bearing is one of the small daily geography games on Ten Minute Games, a site made by Istvan Kreisz, who describes himself as a geography nerd building the daily games he wanted to play. Everyone gets the same round each day, and a new round starts at 00:00 UTC.

A leg puts one city in the middle of a circle, marked in red, with five arrows running out to five other cities, each labelled with its name and flag. Four of those arrows follow the true direction from the centre city. One has been turned the wrong way, and that is the liar you are looking for. Tapping an arrow only selects it; pressing Confirm commits, and you get one attempt per leg. After the answer the game names the liar, redraws its arrow the right way and shows the cities on a map. If a leg has you stumped you can skip it.

Each day brings a World round and four regional rounds, for Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia and Oceania, picked from tabs above the board. A round has three legs, and each is harder than the one before, so the first may mix cities on different continents while later ones need a finer sense of how places line up. The question is direction, not distance: you have to picture which way Dublin, Mumbai or Mecca really lies from somewhere like Damascus, which is less obvious than it seems once the curve of the Earth and flat map habits come into it.

There is no account. Results and streaks are kept only in your browser, so clearing its storage or changing device starts them again. Past days stay free to play from the day picker. It suits players who like Worldle's direction arrows or compass games such as Whichway and want a short daily test of their mental map.