Pondo.

About Pondo.

Small daily puzzles about the world. One new puzzle a day in each game, the same for everyone, a few minutes long. Free, with no account.

The games

Slice

Draw one straight line across a real country to cut off a share of it: half its land, or a third of its population. Land is easy to judge by eye. Population isn't: it crowds into cities, coasts and river valleys, so the line that looks right is often far off.

Downstream

A raindrop lands somewhere on Earth. Follow it downhill and guess which sea it ends up in. Call it early for more points, or let the water run a little further first. It isn't always the nearest sea.

Real data, real surprises

The puzzles aren't made up. Slice's countries come from Natural Earth's borders and its populations from a world map of people in 1 km squares. Downstream's routes are traced through a map of 8.5 million river stretches to the sea the water really reaches. When an answer surprises you, it's a true fact about the world.

How the daily puzzle works

A new puzzle arrives at midnight where you are. Your browser works out which one from today's date, so everyone playing on the same day gets the same puzzle and can compare results.

Your results and streaks are saved on your device, not on a server, so they don't follow you to another phone or browser, and clearing your browser's data clears them too. More in the privacy policy.

Credits

Pondo is built on open data. Thank you to everyone who makes it.

  • Population (Slice): Schiavina M., Freire S., Carioli A., MacManus K. (2023): GHS-POP R2023A, GHS population grid multitemporal (1975-2030). European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC). Licensed CC BY 4.0. The puzzles use the 2025 grid at 1 km, summed into points.
  • Country borders (Slice): Natural Earth, Admin 0 Countries 1:10m. Public domain.
  • Rivers (Downstream): HydroRIVERS, from HydroSHEDS. Lehner, B., Grill, G. (2013): Global river hydrography and network routing: baseline data and new approaches to study the world's large river systems. Hydrological Processes, 27(15): 2171-2186.
  • Seas and oceans (Downstream): Flanders Marine Institute (2018). IHO Sea Areas, version 3. Available from Marine Regions.
  • Maps (Downstream): OpenFreeMap, © OpenMapTiles, data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
  • Type: Bricolage Grotesque and Hanken Grotesk, under the SIL Open Font License.

Say hello

Found a wrong answer, a bug, or have an idea for a game? Get in touch.