Random country generator

Press Generate and this random country generator picks one of the 195 countries of the world: Bhutan, say, or Uruguay, or Mozambique. You get its flag in its real shape, its capital, population and area, the currency it pays in, the languages it speaks and the countries it borders. If it has no coastline, the card says so; 44 countries are landlocked.

The 195 follows the count most atlases and classrooms use: the 193 member states of the United Nations plus its two observer states, Vatican City and Palestine. Taiwan and Kosovo govern themselves but hold no UN seat, so they stay out, and so do territories such as Greenland, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong. China with 1.4 billion people and Vatican City with under a thousand get the same odds.

Teachers hand each pupil a different country to research and pin the fact files up as a wall map. You can run your own geography quiz: roll a country and name the capital before you read the card. Stuck choosing a holiday to daydream about? Let the draw pick. A supper club can roll for its next cuisine, a writer for a setting they would never have chosen, a language learner for a new playlist of songs.

Use the continent filter to stay on topic: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America or Oceania. North America runs down through Central America and the Caribbean to Panama, as in most school atlases. Draw 5 or 10 at once and no country appears twice in the list, so you can hand out all 54 African countries across a class without a clash.

The table at the foot of the page lists all 195, grouped by continent, with capitals and populations to check at a glance. For flags alone, the flag page draws from the same set and shows the flag first.