PBS News Hour

LISA DESJARDINS: Finally, tonight, a popular online geography game that takes players around the globe, one Google Street View image at a time.

Our own puzzle master John Yang has our look inside the world of GeoGuessr.

MAN: Would you believe that those contexts at home?

This is where we are right now.

You guessers just found us.

JOHN YANG 9(voice-0ver): At the second GeoGuessr World Cup in Stockholm.

players were virtually dropped at random spots around the world and challenged to see how quickly they could identify the location.

Their clues were obscure details, like signs, buildings, even the plants and trees.

The game has been described as incredibly addictive, and the GeoGuessr site has tens of millions of player accounts.

JOHN YANG: You said that you in the general you anyone could do this as fast as you can I will disprove that right now.

TREVOR RAINBOLT: I didn't say how long anyone could do it.

JOHN YANG (voice-over): I sat down for a round with perhaps the game's most famous player, Trevor Rainbolt.

JOHN YANG: I'm going to put my reading glasses on for this.

I'm looking for road signs.

This looks European because of the crosswalk, the pedestrian sign.

TREVOR RAINBOLT: We also birch trees.

Usually birch trees are kind of more colder climate in the north, so.

JOHN YANG: Shame on me for not knowing my flora.

JOHN YANG (voice-over): How does Rainbolt play the game?

TREVOR RAIBOLT: All right, so round one here, it looks like it's going to be Kurdistan.

JOHN YANG: What told you was Kurdistan?

TREVOR RAINBOLT: It looked like it that's Romanian.

Looks like it's Eastern Romanian.

JOHN YANG: It looked generic to me.

And you said, oh, that looks like Romania.

TREVOR RAINBOLT: We call it a vibe guess where it just is like somewhere in my brain, I feel like I've seen something that looks like this before in this area.

So it's all up there somewhere.

You just have to kind of find it.

JOHN YANG (voice-over): Rainbolt discovered GeoGuessr during the pandemic, watching YouTube videos and then studying Google Street View.

TREVOR RAINBOLT: Especially during COVID, where you couldn't really go anywhere.

The game was my plane ticket, really, and they kind of gave me this like newfound curiosity and appreciation for all these different countries in the world that, candidly, I didn't really know much too much about at all.

JOHN YANG (voice-over): Social media videos of rainbow playing the game at his desk have millions of views and legions of fans, whether it's simply looking at the soil or pixelated details.

TREVOR RAINBOLT: Just Brazil pretty free.

JOHN YANG (voice-over): Sometimes only seeing an image for a 10th of a second.

TREVOR RAINBOLT: Iceland, no.

I really, genuinely don't think I'm some sort of superhuman in the sense of this.

It's a lot of just practice and a lot of.

In recognition, I know where to look for that one distinct thing, whether it's a telephone pole, it's a bothered on the side of street, it's distinct road lines in a single country, the vegetation a certain mountain.

You know, it's all these things combined that go into this game that you kind of have to look for.

There's language here.

This would be Hong Kong, Netherlands with the bike paths.

Classic Netherlands move with bike paths.

JOHN YANG (voice-over): A community of players is built up around the game.

TREVOR RAINBOLT: We're all also just curious.

You know, I think that's what you have to be if you want to succeed in this game.

You get people from all walks of life, India, China, Europe, you know, all like South America.

It's a really global game with global community.

And it's -- that's awesome.