How to play Flag Rush, the free multiplayer guess-the-flag game
A flag uncovers tile by tile. Name the country first.
- Players
- 1–8 (solo too)
- Length
- ~5 min
- Type
- Geography
- Price
- Free
Flag Rush is guess the flag, played as a race with your friends. Everyone sees the same flag, hidden under a grid of tiles. The tiles lift one by one, and the first person to type the right country scores the most.
You don't need to know every flag in the world. A corner of red and white narrows it down, a star or a stripe narrows it more, and sometimes you just have to guess before someone else does. Wrong answers cost nothing, so a wild guess on three tiles is always worth a try.
Free, no app and no sign-up to join — players hop in with a 4-letter code on their own phone.
How to play Flag Rush
The host picks how many flags
Ten is the default. In the game setup the host can also pick a region (the whole world, or just Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas or Oceania), set the difficulty and turn off speed points.
A flag starts to uncover
Everyone sees the same tiles lift in the same order, at the same time. By the last few seconds the whole flag is showing.
Type the country
Common short names work: USA, UK, Ivory Coast, Czech Republic, Holland. A small typo is forgiven. Typing a different country's name is not, so Romania is wrong for Chad's flag even though they look almost the same.
Guess as often as you like
A wrong guess costs nothing. You get twelve tries per flag, which is plenty for a person and too few to type every country in the world.
See the flag
When everyone has named it, or the timer runs out, the full flag appears with its name. For the flags people mix up, the reveal tells you how to tell them apart.
What Flag Rush looks like
How scoring works
A right answer scores between 300 and 1,000 points. The earlier you name it, the more you get.
Whoever names the flag first gets 200 more on top.
Right answers in a row build a streak. Missing a flag ends it.
With the no speed points rule on, every right answer is worth 600 and there is no bonus for being first.
Points add up over the game and the highest total wins.
Tips for winning Flag Rush
- Look at the colours first. Only red and white? That leaves about two dozen, among them Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Poland, Indonesia, Monaco, Peru, Latvia.
- A blue corner with stars in it usually means the USA, Australia, New Zealand or Samoa.
- Green, yellow and red together often point to West or Central Africa. Green, white and red to Italy, Mexico, Iran or Hungary.
- A cross that sits towards the left is Nordic: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland or Iceland.
- A crescent and a star usually mean Turkey, Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Malaysia or Azerbaijan.
- If you see a coat of arms in the middle, think Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Ecuador or one of the Central American flags.
Frequently asked questions
How many players do you need?
One to eight. Everyone scores on their own, so you can play alone against the clock. You can also fill seats with Blips, computer players that get it right about a third of the time.
How many flags are there?
196, one for every country in Globe Grab: the UN members except Tuvalu, plus Vatican City, Palestine, Taiwan and Kosovo. You won't see the same flag again until you've seen the rest.
What is Colors mode?
There's no picture at all. You see the flag's colours as bars, with how much of the flag each colour covers, and one dash per letter of the country's name. The flag only appears when the round ends. It's a lot harder than it sounds.
What does the difficulty change?
Easy starts with the flags most people know, like Japan, Brazil and Canada. Hard starts with the lesser-known ones. Mixed, the default, can show any flag.
Where do the flag pictures come from?
From flag-icons, a free set of flag drawings by Panayiotis Lipiridis, shared under the MIT licence. National flags themselves are public domain.
How long is a game?
About 5 minutes at the default ten flags.
Is it free?
Yes. It's free to play and free to host, and joining only needs the room code.
Free, no app and no sign-up to join — players hop in with a 4-letter code on their own phone.