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Can you place all 514 kabupaten and kota of Indonesia?
Can you locate all 47 prefectures of Japan?
Can you locate all 83 federal subjects of Russia?
Can you locate all 77 provinces of Thailand?
The Philippines is thousands of islands administered as provinces, and the provinces are how anything local is addressed, reported and signposted. They are also, once you have the three island groups straight, one of the more learnable maps in Asia: most provinces are an island, a peninsula or a valley with a name that tells you which half of something it is. This page is the whole list, and the game puts each name on the map.
A province is the first level of local government below the national one, run by an elected governor. Above them sit the regions, which are administrative groupings rather than governments, and the three island groups (Luzon in the north, the Visayas in the middle, Mindanao in the south) which are geography rather than administration. Below them are the cities and municipalities, and a handful of cities are independent of any province: this game folds those back into the province around them, so Cebu is one target rather than three.
Metro Manila is the exception the map cannot hide. The National Capital Region is not a province and has no provincial government; it is sixteen cities and one municipality, and in the boundary data behind this game the whole region carries the name of one of them. Treat that target as Metro Manila.
The list of provinces also moves, and this game's map is a few years behind the current one. Davao Occidental, Dinagat Islands and the 2022 split of Maguindanao into a northern and a southern province are not in it, and Davao de Oro appears under its former name, Compostela Valley. Everything else matches.
The traps are the small islands that are provinces in their own right: Siquijor, Camiguin, Guimaras, Biliran, Batanes, Marinduque, Romblon and Catanduanes. Each is one click, and each is easy to miss when you are scanning for something province sized.
The four groups are quarters of the archipelago rather than the island groups: the southern one is essentially Mindanao, the northern one is northern Luzon, and the eastern and western groups split the middle of the country down the Visayas. The Surigao provinces on the northeast corner of Mindanao sit with the eastern group, which is worth knowing before you switch a group off. Any of them can be played on its own from the game's start dialog.
The long island running southwest towards Borneo, and the largest province by area. It is unmistakable on the map and a good anchor: everything else in the west is a short hop north or east of it.
The National Capital Region, which is not a province and appears here under the name of one of its component cities, because that is how the boundary data names the merged region. It is the small dense patch on the eastern shore of Manila Bay, halfway down the west coast of Luzon.
The northernmost province, a scatter of small islands in the strait between Luzon and Taiwan, and the smallest by both area and population. Nobody finds this by guessing; it is worth clicking once on purpose so you know where the map puts it.
The western of the two Misamis provinces, on the north coast of Mindanao, facing its Oriental twin across Iligan Bay. This is the pair to drill until the rule is automatic, because Occidental and Oriental cost more points in this game than any shape does.
82 as of the 2022 split of Maguindanao. This game is built on boundary data that predates the newest ones, so Davao Occidental, Dinagat Islands and the two Maguindanao provinces are not in it, and Davao de Oro still appears as Compostela Valley.
They are the halves of a province that was divided. Norte is north and Sur is south, so Ilocos Norte sits above Ilocos Sur. Occidental is west and Oriental is east, so Misamis Occidental sits west of Misamis Oriental. The words are Spanish, left over from three centuries of Spanish administration.
No. The National Capital Region is a region made up of sixteen cities and one municipality, with no provincial government above them. It appears on this map as a single target because the boundary data treats it as one unit, and it carries the name of one of its cities.
A province is a unit of local government with an elected governor. A region is a grouping of provinces used to organise national government offices, and it has no elected government of its own. The Bangsamoro region in the southwest is the exception, with its own parliament.
The paired ones, because the shapes are similar and only the second word differs: the Norte and Sur pairs in Ilocos, Agusan, Surigao, Lanao, Camarines, Davao and Zamboanga, and the Occidental and Oriental pairs in Misamis, Mindoro and Negros. After those, the small single island provinces such as Siquijor, Camiguin, Guimaras and Biliran.
More administrative maps in the region: Japan Prefectures, India States, Thailand Provinces and Vietnam Provinces.
