Thread: XKCD
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Old 05-23-2013, 06:34 PM   #59
Alex
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 13,354
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight View Post
This one is worth doing for the first one alone, but I'm guessing Alex is going to be pretty spot on.
Comments as I go just to make myself verbalize what clues I'm running off of.

Spoiler:

A. Yes, I know it is Catherine's Palace. Never been there but know it. Unfortunately I have no idea where in St. Petersburg it would be. But because of your comment I didn't settle for just picking a random spot in the city and considering it good enough. I zoomed in and started scrolling all the big parks on the map. Fortunatley got relatively lucky to notice something called Ekaterininskiy Park pretty quickly.

Nailed it to 0.015km.

B. Car driving on the left. Asians in the parking lot so probably Japan. Zoom in on that sign and yep, Japanese. Obviously coastal and mountainous which isn't much help. Based on the shadow direction (since being in Japan shadows probably tend to point northward especially since it appears to be a colder time of year) I'm going to guess it is probably an eastern coastline. But that isn't very reliable for many reasons.

So I'll go random east coast spot north of Tokyo.

And I hit it slightly closer than GD. 383km vs. 459km.

C. First thing is a Swedish flag. Signs on food truck in Scandinavian language make me confident is assuming it is actually in Sweden. Can't really see anything to help me more than that so I'll just pick a random spot on the coast. Since the weather looks nicer (though I honestly have no idea what the weather is like in various parts of Sweden during the summer) I'll go south of Stockholm.

And I miss by 262 km.

D. Well this isn't fair. Pretty sure it is Juneau since A) the store makes it clear it is Alaska and B) I've been to the biggest cities in Alaska and it doesn't really look like Fairbanks, Anchorage, or Kodiak.

Also, that street is just ringing a faint bell so I'm wondering if it is in the area we walked when were there for the Disney cruise.

Zoom in on Juneau first, yep. Egan is main drag along water. There's Egan and Main.

0.009km.

E. Ok, bridge over water. Sign in Spanish. People look more South America than Spain. Mexico or Chile (the only Spanish speaking countries I seem to ever get).

Cars are nicer so I'd guess it is nearer a city or resort area. Can't quite tell if the water looks coastal or more like a big lake. Leaning towards edge of Yucatan region due to the trees.

No. That sign doesn't say "prohibido" it says "proibito." So either it is misspelled or more likely is actually Portuguese and so this is Brazil (I usually rely on extra h's in what looks like Spanish to know I'm looking at Portuguese, so funny that it is a missing h that clues me in if I'm right). Unfortunately that isn't really an improvement in narrowing down space.

No idea where I'd find a mesa like formation in Brazil. So now just to guess something within a couple hundred miles of a big city.

Quick scan shows a lake northwest of Sao Paolo with a bridge over it. Good enough for me.

And it turns out it was another lake about 520km ENE from there but in that same circle around Sao Paulo so I'm pleased with myself.




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