How to play Halfway
- You get two cities, shown by their airport codes. A plane flies the shortest possible route between them.
- Tap the map where you think the exact halfway point of that flight is, then confirm.
- The real route draws itself. The closer your pin, the more points: up to 1,000 per route, 3 routes a day.
- Share your emoji card and come back tomorrow. Everyone plays the same routes each day.
Why the midpoint is never where it looks
Planes fly along great circles, the shortest path between two points on a sphere. On a flat map, and especially on the Mercator map most of us grew up with, that path bows toward the nearest pole.
So the straight line between New York and Tokyo is not the route. The real flight heads north over Alaska, and its halfway point sits far north of where the flat map suggests. Halfway turns that illusion into a daily puzzle.
Questions
- Is Halfway free?
- Yes. It runs in your browser with no sign-up and no download. Ads keep it free.
- When do new routes come out?
- Every day at midnight in your time zone. Everyone gets the same three routes on the same day.
- How is the score calculated?
- Each route is worth up to 1,000 points. Within 100 km of the true midpoint you get the full 1,000, and points fall off smoothly with distance.
- What do the result squares mean?
- Each route in your result is marked by how close your pin landed:
- under 250 km (bullseye)
- under 750 km
- under 1,500 km
- under 2,500 km
- 2,500 km or more
- Where are my stats saved?
- Only in your browser, on this device. We do not keep an account or your game history on a server.