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Can you match every Canadian area code to its province?
Can you tell which part of Mexico a dialing code comes from?
How well do you know the United States dialing codes?
Can you locate all 23 provinces of Argentina, and its capital city?
Brazilians advertise with a phone number, and the two digits in brackets in front of it are a location. The code is called a DDD, there are fewer of them than you would fear, and they were handed out in blocks: the first of the two digits alone puts you in the right part of a very large country. This page is the whole plan, and the game drills it.
DDD stands for Discagem Direta a Distância, the direct long distance dialing
that the codes were introduced for. A Brazilian number written out in full runs
(11) 91234-5678: two digits of area code in brackets, then the subscriber
number. Landlines take eight digits after the code, mobiles take nine, because
mobile numbers gained a leading 9 during the changeover finished in 2016. An
older sign may show a mobile with only eight, and that is a dating clue rather
than a mistake.
Every code is two digits, and the second digit is never a zero. Dialling one
means putting a carrier selection code in front of it, so long distance numbers
appear as 0 xx 11 ... on paperwork; on a shopfront the bracketed pair is what
you get, and it is the part that matters here.
The first digit runs roughly clockwise from the southeast: 1 is São Paulo state and nothing else, 2 is Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo, 3 is Minas Gerais, 4 is Paraná and Santa Catarina, 5 is Rio Grande do Sul, 6 is the centre west with Brasília in it, 7 is Bahia and Sergipe, 8 is the northeastern coast, and 9 is the north, the Amazon and Maranhão. Nine digits, nine parts of Brazil, and the game's own groups are exactly those.
Each of those groups can be switched on and off on its own in the game's start dialog, which is the sane way to learn the set: one block at a time, until the first digit is automatic and the second is recognition.
São Paulo and its metropolitan area, the largest urban region in the southern hemisphere, so this is the code most likely to turn up on a sign anywhere in Brazil. Seeing an 11 is not proof you are in São Paulo, but it is the single best default in the game.
Brasília and the Federal District, plus the stretch of Goiás around it. The 6 block covers the centre west and the two states out west towards Bolivia, so a code starting with 6 is worth a guess a thousand kilometres from where a blind pin would land.
Manaus and the middle of the Amazon. Every code beginning with 9 sits in the north, which matters more here than anywhere else in the plan: the region is huge, thinly covered and easy to lose a round in, and one digit rules it in or out.
DDD stands for Discagem Direta a Distância, direct long distance dialing. It is the two digit area code written in brackets in front of a Brazilian phone number, and it identifies the metropolitan area or the stretch of a state that the line belongs to.
Ten or eleven, area code included. Two digits of DDD, then eight digits for a landline or nine for a mobile. Mobile numbers took on a leading 9 in a changeover that finished in 2016, so an eight digit mobile on a sign means the paint is at least that old.
11 is São Paulo city and its metropolitan area, and the rest of the state fills out the 1 block from 12 to 19. Rio de Janeiro city is 21, Belo Horizonte 31, Brasília 61 and Salvador 71.
Yes, and it is the fastest thing to learn about Brazilian numbers. The codes were handed out block by block, so each first digit belongs to one part of the country: 1 is São Paulo state, 4 and 5 are the south, 6 the centre west, 8 the northeastern coast and 9 the north. A code starting with 4 will not turn out to be in the Amazon.
Painted across shopfronts and workshop walls, on the sides of vans and trucks, on billboards and on for sale boards. Brazil advertises with phone numbers heavily, and a painted number is often readable when the street name is not.
The same clue has games of its own elsewhere: Mexico Dialing Codes, US Dialing Codes and Spain Dialing Codes.
