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Answers for 6 September 2026

Atlas Daily #5, Sunday 6 September 2026: five places, each with clues from hardest to easiest. Try to name each place before you open the answers.

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The clues

Round 1

  1. An island that sits on the seam between two tectonic plates and widens by about two centimetres a year.
  2. Its parliament, founded in 930, is often called the oldest still in existence.
  3. It has no standing army and heats most homes with water from the ground.
  4. A volcanic eruption here grounded European air traffic for a week in 2010.
Hint: which continent?

Europe

Round 2

  1. A cluster of volcanic islands 1,000 kilometres off its coast inspired a famous theory of evolution.
  2. Its capital is the second-highest in the world, at about 2,850 metres.
  3. The point farthest from Earth's centre is the summit of its volcano Chimborazo.
  4. It has used the United States dollar as its currency since 2000.
Hint: which continent?

South America

Round 3

  1. A highland nation that kept its independence through the colonial scramble and follows a 13-month calendar.
  2. Coffee was first cultivated in its forests, according to tradition, and bears the name of one of its regions.
  3. It defeated an Italian invasion at Adwa in 1896.
  4. Rock churches were carved downward into the ground at Lalibela in the 12th century.
Hint: which continent?

Africa

Round 4

  1. A medieval city whose reservoirs and canals may have supported close to a million people before it was abandoned.
  2. Its central temple, facing west, was built by a king in the early 12th century as a Hindu shrine.
  3. The complex appears on the flag of the country that contains it.
  4. The French naturalist Henri Mouhot's 1860 account drew European attention to the ruins.
Hint: which continent?

Asia

Round 5

  1. One of only two doubly landlocked countries, whose cities lit the Silk Road with blue-tiled domes.
  2. Its cotton monoculture under Soviet rule drained one of the world's largest lakes.
  3. A conqueror who built a 14th-century empire made Samarkand his capital.
  4. Its cities include Bukhara, Khiva and Samarkand.
Hint: which continent?

Asia

Answers

Round 1 answer

Iceland · Europe

Clue 5: The location is Iceland.

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge runs across the island, visible as a rift at Þingvellir where the Althing first met in 930. About 90% of homes are heated geothermally. The 2010 Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud cancelled around 100,000 flights.

Round 2 answer

Ecuador · South America

Clue 5: The location is Ecuador.

Darwin spent five weeks in the Galápagos in 1835. Because Earth bulges at the equator, Chimborazo's summit is about 2 kilometres farther from the centre than Everest's. The country dollarised in 2000 after a banking collapse and runaway inflation.

Round 3 answer

Ethiopia · Africa

Clue 5: The location is Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian calendar has twelve months of 30 days and a thirteenth of five or six, running seven to eight years behind the Gregorian. Kaffa province in the south-west is the traditional home of arabica. The eleven churches of Lalibela were hewn from solid rock, roofs at ground level.

Round 4 answer

Angkor, Cambodia · Asia

Clue 5: The location is Angkor, Cambodia.

The Khmer capital sprawled over some 1,000 square kilometres, with barays and canals feeding rice fields, and lidar surveys keep finding more. Suryavarman II built the main temple around 1113 to 1150, facing west toward Vishnu's realm. It is one of very few buildings to appear on a national flag.

Round 5 answer

Uzbekistan · Asia

Clue 5: The location is Uzbekistan.

Liechtenstein is the other doubly landlocked state. Irrigation for cotton diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, and the Aral Sea shrank to a tenth of its 1960 area. Timur, known in the West as Tamerlane, ruled from Samarkand and lies in the Gur-e-Amir mausoleum.

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