Close-Up Flag
A daily challenge: you see a flag from very close up, just a small piece of it, and you have 5 tries to guess which country it belongs to.
How to play
The day's flag appears sharp and in full colour, but with the camera pressed up against one spot. You type a country and, if you're wrong, the camera pulls back and you see a bit more. Under the image you can see which part of the flag is in view. You have 5 tries and there is no clock. If you type something that isn't a country, it doesn't use up a try: fix it and keep going. When the game ends, the camera pulls back to show the whole flag.
Scoring and streak
You win if you get it within 5 tries. The challenge is the same for everyone, drawn from all 195 flags, and changes at midnight UTC. It keeps its own streak and counts towards your overall daily streak. Get it in 2 tries or fewer and you unlock the Eagle Eye achievement.
Why close up
This challenge used to show a pixelated flag. It was changed because pixelation hid shapes but not colours, so striped flags were guessed on the first try. Close up it's the other way round: you see real shapes and colours, but only a piece.
Tips
Think about where on a flag that piece could be. Two stripes meeting fit many flags, but not all of them: if you see three colours together, you've already ruled out nearly every two-colour flag. A curved edge or a point is usually part of a coat of arms, a star or a sun. And use your misses: each try rules out a country and shows you more of the flag. If the piece is a single colour, spend your first try on the most likely country and see what appears around it.
What you learn
To know flags by their parts: the exact shade of a colour, the width of a stripe, the shape of an emblem. It's a different way of remembering them, and it helps a lot in the flag modes.