TravelPod, the first ever travel
blogging site, today announced the highest and lowest travel IQs on the web
as determined by more than 170,000 people who have tested their knowledge
of geography with TravelPod’s Facebook application, Traveler IQ Challenge.Test scores range from 64
to 142 after a few weeks of play, and the results reveal who’s been paying
attention in class and in the news.

The game’s popularity is growing
rapidly, and it’s at the top of the most recently popular list of travel
applications on Facebook. All data presented in this announcement are as of
18:00 ET, July 29, 2007.
  The Challenge shows players a map, and then in rapid-fire succession
pops names of cities around the world onto the screen. Players then
position their cursor and click on their best guess for the location of the
city. The 12- round game gets successively more difficult with islands in
unmarked areas of the oceans challenging the most ardent geogrophiles.
Travel IQs are calculated in the same manner as the generally accepted IQ
tests.
  “Whether they’re bitten by the travel bug, are news junkies or just
love maps, it’s clear from the results of the Traveler IQ Challenge that a
lot of people are passionate, and very competitive, about geography,” said
Luc Levesque, founder of TravelPod. “Occasionally we’ll hear a news report
that today’s average person (or politician) can’t find this or that country
on a map. Now there’s a place to put that assertion to the test.”
  “I have a lot of great memories of playing geography games with other
avid travelers as we’d wait for buses in far off destinations or pass the
time on long train rides through remote regions,” Levesque recounted. “The
games were wildly addictive and with the new Facebook platform, we thought
a Traveler IQ Challenge would be a perfect application that feeds our
members’ interests.”
  They don’t need directions
  Tabulating scores from Facebook users literally around the globe shows
that men outscore women on the geography test with average scores of 105.41
compared to 97.99 respectively.

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