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Answers for 13 September 2026

Atlas Daily #12, Sunday 13 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. 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 2

  1. Eight of the world's fourteen peaks above 8,000 metres lie fully or partly within its borders.
  2. Its soldiers have served in the British Army for two centuries under a name derived from a hill town.
  3. A 2015 earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and toppled temples in its capital valley.
  4. Its flag is the only national flag that is not a rectangle.
Hint: which continent?

Asia

Round 3

  1. Its borders have barely changed since 1249, making it one of the oldest nation-states in Europe.
  2. Its navigators rounded Africa's southern tip and reached India by sea in 1498.
  3. A 1755 earthquake destroyed its capital and shook Enlightenment thinking about providence.
  4. It produces about half of the world's cork.
Hint: which continent?

Europe

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. 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

Answers

Round 1 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 2 answer

Nepal · Asia

Clue 5: The location is Nepal.

Everest, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu and Annapurna all rise here or on its borders. Gurkhas, named after the town of Gorkha, have fought for Britain since 1815. The two pennants of the flag stand for the Himalaya and for the two main religions.

Round 3 answer

Portugal · Europe

Clue 5: The location is Portugal.

The Algarve was taken from Moorish rule in 1249 and the frontier with Castile settled in 1297. Vasco da Gama's voyage of 1497 to 1498 opened the sea route to India and a century of Portuguese trading forts. The cork oak forests of the Alentejo still supply half of the world's cork.

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

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.

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