An amateur attempt to improve my GeoGuessr score in the space of a week

It's really weird how there are so many 'casual' games, yet the term can encompass something as simple and superficial as Candy Crush, or as ubiquitous and culturally powerful as Fortnite. When GeoGuessr came along nearly a decade ago, it was a refreshing idea for a game that welcomes the widest audience possible. However, that audience didn't reach its peak until much more recently with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The premise of GeoGuessr is pretty simple: you're presented with a completely random image from the vast library of Google Street View pictures, and have to pinpoint exactly where in the world you think the image was taken on a foldaway map. You're probably going to react in one of two ways: you're going to say that this sounds relatively easy or, given the vastness of the planet, that this is quite a daunting task. I was in the former camp when I first came across the game but after being humbled by pathetically bad scores, I'm now with the latter group.

Like most other players of casual games, I've dipped in and out of the game without trying too hard and thinking too much, instead feigning surprise when I got something obvious correct (say, an image containing a known landmark or a clear location sign), or rage quitting and deciding to play something else on my phone or tablet. It was with this in mind that I thought of trying to play the game consistently for a week and see whether my scores would improve with ever greater experience. Here's how that went.

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