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Answers for 22 September 2026

Atlas Daily #21, Tuesday 22 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 stone city built for an emperor around 1450 on a ridge 2,430 metres above sea level, high above a river bend.
  2. It was abandoned within a century and never found by the Spanish.
  3. An American historian publicised it to the world in 1911.
  4. It sits above the Urubamba valley in the Andes.
Hint: which continent?

South America

Round 2

  1. About 90% of the wildlife on this island exists nowhere else.
  2. Its people arrived by outrigger canoe from Borneo some 1,500 years ago, and its language shows it.
  3. Baobab trees and lemurs are its most famous residents.
  4. It supplies most of the world's natural vanilla.
Hint: which continent?

Africa

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. The largest landlocked country on Earth, whose spaceport launched the first human into orbit.
  2. Its capital was moved north in 1997 to a planned city on the steppe.
  3. Apples are thought to have originated in the mountains near its largest city.
  4. Most of the Aral Sea's northern half lies within its borders.
Hint: which continent?

Asia

Round 5

  1. A battlefield south of a capital where a June 1815 afternoon ended a decade of European war.
  2. The defeated commander was exiled to a South Atlantic island.
  3. The victor is remembered in the name of a London railway station and a rubber boot.
  4. A 40-metre artificial mound topped with a lion marks where a Dutch prince was wounded.
Hint: which continent?

Europe

Answers

Round 1 answer

Machu Picchu, Peru · South America

Clue 5: The location is Machu Picchu, Peru.

The estate is thought to have been built for the Inca emperor Pachacuti and abandoned during the Spanish conquest. Hiram Bingham reached it in 1911 with local guides. About 4,000 visitors a day are now allowed onto the site.

Round 2 answer

Madagascar · Africa

Clue 5: The location is Madagascar.

The island split from India about 88 million years ago, long enough for lemurs, baobabs and chameleons to evolve in isolation. Malagasy is closest to the Ma'anyan language of southern Borneo. The Sava region in the north-east grows roughly 80% of the world's vanilla beans.

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

Kazakhstan · Asia

Clue 5: The location is Kazakhstan.

Yuri Gagarin lifted off from Baikonur in 1961, and Russia still leases the site. The capital moved from Almaty to Astana in 1997; the city was renamed Nur-Sultan for a few years before reverting. Almaty takes its name from the word for apple, and wild Malus sieversii still grows in the Tian Shan foothills.

Round 5 answer

Waterloo, Belgium · Europe

Clue 5: The location is Waterloo, Belgium.

Napoleon met Wellington's Anglo-allied army and Blücher's Prussians on 18 June 1815; by nightfall the French had broken. Napoleon abdicated four days later and was sent to Saint Helena. The Lion's Mound was raised in 1826 from earth that flattened the ridge Wellington had defended.

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