Answers for 12 September 2026
Atlas Daily #11, Saturday 12 September 2026: five places, each with clues from hardest to easiest. Try to name each place before you open the answers.
The clues
Round 1
- An island's larger part, whose population is still lower than it was in 1841.
- A potato blight in the 1840s killed a million and drove another million to emigrate.
- Its constitution names Irish as the first official language, though English is more widely spoken.
- It joined the European Economic Community in 1973 and adopted the euro in 1999.
Hint: which continent?
Europe
Round 2
- The largest island in its sea, lying less than 150 kilometres from a superpower's coast.
- A 1959 revolution installed a single-party government that still rules.
- In 1962 the world came close to nuclear war over missiles based here.
- It is known for cigars rolled from tobacco grown in its western valleys.
Hint: which continent?
North America
Round 3
- A long, narrow country shaped like a carrying pole with a rice basket at each end, as its people say.
- It was ruled from China for about a thousand years and by France for about seventy.
- A war fought here ended in 1975 with the fall of its southern capital.
- It is the world's second-largest coffee exporter, mostly of the robusta variety.
Hint: which continent?
Asia
Round 4
- A small country almost cut in two by a neighbour that follows a single river inland.
- Its capital sits on the westernmost point of mainland Africa.
- An island off its coast was a major departure point for the Atlantic slave trade.
- Its first president was a poet who helped found the Négritude movement.
Hint: which continent?
Africa
Round 5
- A narrow peninsula whose capture was meant to open a sea route to an ally's Black Sea ports.
- Landings here in 1915 gave two southern-hemisphere nations their day of remembrance.
- The strait it guards was bridged with boats by a Persian king's army in 480 BC.
- The officer who held its ridges went on to found a republic and take the name Atatürk.
Hint: which continent?
Asia
Answers
Round 1 answer
Ireland · Europe
Clue 5: The location is Ireland.
The island held about 8.2 million people before the Great Famine; the Republic and Northern Ireland together have roughly 7 million today. The blight of 1845 to 1852 destroyed the crop that most rural families depended on. Four Nobel laureates in literature, from Yeats to Heaney, wrote here in English.
Round 2 answer
Cuba · North America
Clue 5: The location is Cuba.
Key West is about 145 kilometres from the northern coast. Fidel Castro's revolution took Havana on 1 January 1959, and the American embargo has been in force since 1960. The Vuelta Abajo region of Pinar del Río grows the tobacco for the island's most famous cigars.
Round 3 answer
Vietnam · Asia
Clue 5: The location is Vietnam.
The Red River delta in the north and the Mekong delta in the south are the two rice baskets; the narrow central coast is the pole. Chinese rule lasted from 111 BC to 938 AD, French rule from the 1880s to 1954. Coffee arrived with French planters and now covers the central highlands.
Round 4 answer
Senegal · Africa
Clue 5: The location is Senegal.
The Gambia, a former British colony, runs 300 kilometres inland along its river and splits the country nearly in half. Gorée Island, off Dakar, is a memorial to the Atlantic slave trade. Léopold Sédar Senghor, poet and philosopher, led the country from independence in 1960 until 1980.
Round 5 answer
Gallipoli, Türkiye · Asia
Clue 5: The location is Gallipoli, Türkiye.
The Allied plan of 1915 was to force the Dardanelles, take Constantinople and reopen a supply line to Russia. Nine months of trench fighting on the peninsula ended in evacuation and roughly half a million casualties across both sides. Anzac Day on 25 April marks the first landings; the Ottoman colonel who held the high ground, Mustafa Kemal, became Atatürk.
Using this in class? See Atlas Daily for teachers. New to the game? Read how to play.