Travle Unlimited

You get a start country and an end country with a land route between them. Guess the countries that lie in between: type a country or territory, pick it from the list and press Guess. Each guess is filled in on the map, together with a mark that says how it sits against the shortest routes. As soon as the countries you have guessed, plus the start and the end, form an unbroken chain of neighbours, you win. Run out of guesses and a shortest route is drawn on the map. Press Next puzzle for a new route, as often as you like.

The number of guesses is the number of countries in between on a shortest route, plus a few spare. Easy routes have 1 to 2 countries in between and 5 spare guesses, so 6 to 7 guesses in all. Medium routes have 3 to 4 in between and 4 spare, so 7 to 8 guesses. Hard routes have 5 to 7 in between and 3 spare, so 8 to 10 guesses. Easy also uses well-known countries at both ends. The dots above your list of guesses show how many are left.

Every guess gets one of three marks, and each has its own shape as well as its own colour. A diamond means the country lies on a shortest route from start to end, on any one of them if there are several. A triangle on a striped country means it is not on a shortest route but borders a country that is, the start and the end included. A ring on a dashed country means it is further away. The list beside the map says the same thing in words, and Hint names a country of a shortest route without using a guess.

No. Any chain of neighbours from the start to the end counts, however long. A guess that is marked as being further away can still be part of a winning chain; it just uses up one of your guesses. The shortest route only decides how many guesses you get, and which countries are marked with a diamond. If you lose, a shortest route is drawn on the map.

Because a route has to cross land borders, and an island has none to cross. Of the 238 countries and territories in the list, 162 share a land border with another one; the rest are islands or otherwise cut off, and none of them can join two others. You can still guess one, and it costs a guess and is marked as further away. Ferries, flights and links over water do not count, so a few crossings that other maps draw, such as Singapore and Malaysia, are treated as having no border here.

Yes. Press Next puzzle for another route at the same level, with no sign-up and no daily limit. There are 300 routes on Easy, 300 on Medium and 300 on Hard (900 in all), and the ones you played most recently are skipped. Switch to Daily if you would rather have the one route everybody gets today at each level.

No. The Dles is an independent site. We wrote this version ourselves, with our own look, our own levels and a new route every time you press Next, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the original game’s makers.

According to the team page on teuteuf.fr, the original was created by Oisin Carroll, and the copyright line on the game’s own site now names Teuteuf Games. It is a different game from this one, which was written separately for this site.

The borders come from Natural Earth, version 5.1, fetched in 2026: its land boundary lines say which countries touch, and its country outlines, which are public domain, are the shapes on the map. Natural Earth draws the borders as most maps do, including a few that are disputed, so treat them as a game and not as a statement about any border. The route checks, and what counts as a neighbour, are worked out by this game from that data.

Yes. Hint costs no guess: it names one country of a shortest route that you have not guessed yet, starting from the start end, and marks it with a dashed outline on the map. Guess that country if you want it in your chain. When every country of the route is guessed or named, Hint has nothing left to give.