Comment by sccomps
3 days ago
Cool game! For US cities add the State abbreviation as well in the question because city names are not unique across USA. For example there is a city called Lexington in Kentucky, Massachusetts, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
If you restrict the allowed countries to United States only, or play US Mode then the state is offered as a hint. However, if in other game modes the city name includes the state name then you automatically know it’s in the US which doesn’t seem balanced. And you’re right about repeated city names but they are often massively different in population, and you can get that for only a 2 second penalty.