What is Meridiano
Meridiano is a set of nineteen geography puzzles that never ask a question. Three mechanics carry the game. In Border Grid you drag countries into a grid where every symbol between two squares is a rule that must hold: these two share a land border, these two do not, this arrow points at the larger population. In Land Chain you cross land borders only, in an exact number of steps, avoiding banned countries and hitting compulsory stops. In Mosaic you drag real country silhouettes back onto the map. Each level is worth one to three stars.
The difficulty comes from the map withdrawing its labels. Chapters I and II name every country. From Chapter III only initials remain. From Chapter V nothing is named, and you recognise a country by its outline and its place among its neighbours. The Mosaic then starts delivering pieces turned by up to 180 degrees. Every rule uses real data, so each puzzle has exactly one consistent answer you can reason your way to.
How to play
- Pick a chapter on the home screen and open a level. Levels unlock in order, and the tags on each card warn you whether names are shown, whether pieces arrive turned, and whether stops must be visited in order.
- Border Grid: drag countries from the tray into the squares. Symbols between squares mean shared border, no border, same continent, different continents, or an arrow towards the bigger population or area. Labels inside a square are conditions on that country alone, and extra countries are decoys.
- Land Chain: click a highlighted neighbour to move. Reach the destination on exactly the step count given, never entering a country twice. Undo steps you back, but in the unnamed chapters it costs a mistake.
- Mosaic: drag each silhouette to its true position. Later levels hide outlines and names and add rotation, corrected with the turn buttons or the mouse wheel. Hint solves one step, Restart clears the level, Progress gives a code to resume.
Strategies that work
- Read the labels inside the squares before any symbol. Landlocked or coastal splits the pool in half, and a minimum neighbour count usually leaves two or three candidates. One certain square lets the surrounding symbols do the rest.
- The no-border symbol looks weak and is often the strongest. Most pairs in a small pool do not touch, so alone it says little, but next to a shared-border symbol it pins a country down at once.
- Population and area arrows only appear when one country is clearly ahead, roughly a third larger. If two countries in the pool are close in size, the arrow is not about them, and that eliminates pairs.
- In Land Chain, do the arithmetic first. The panel gives the shortest possible route and the exact steps required, and the difference is the detour you must build. A gap of two is one loop through an extra country, a gap of four a whole side branch.
- In Mosaic, place the largest and least symmetrical pieces first and use the fixed grey countries for scale. On a turned piece, align its longest straight edge, usually a coast. If the game says a piece is close, it belongs one country over.
A little history
Meridiano is an original game, made for Puzzle-Me rather than adapted from anything else, but each mechanic sits in an old tradition. The Border Grid is a constraint satisfaction puzzle of the logic grid family, where statements about a set of items admit exactly one arrangement, the structure behind the classic zebra puzzle. The Land Chain is a walk on a graph: countries are nodes, land borders are edges, and asking for a route of exact length that visits some nodes and avoids others is standard graph theory. The Mosaic descends from dissected maps, the ancestor of the jigsaw, cut from mounted maps by the London engraver John Spilsbury in the 1760s to teach geography. The data behind the rules is real, with country outlines derived from Natural Earth.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to memorise capitals or flags?
No. Meridiano never asks a factual question. What you need is on the board or deducible from the rules: which countries touch, which are landlocked, which is bigger, and what each outline looks like.
How are the stars calculated?
A mistake costs one penalty point and a hint costs two. No penalty gives three stars, three points or fewer gives two, more than that gives one. Your score is the sum of stars across every level solved.
Is my progress saved when I close the page?
Not by itself. It lives in the session only. The Progress button shows a short code holding your unlocked levels and stars: copy it before leaving and paste it back to resume.
