Trail Mix
Name the national park from its clues.
What is Trail Mix?
Trail Mix is a free daily geography game built from the 63 U.S. national parks, from Acadia to Zion. Every day the site hides one of them behind five clues, and you have eight guesses to name it. Type any park into the guess box and submit it — right or wrong, it adds a new row of feedback that narrows down where, and roughly what, the hidden park is.
How the clues work
Each guess is compared with the hidden park across five facts. Distance and direction measure the great-circle miles between the two parks and read close within 500 miles. State matches if your guess shares any state with the answer — several parks span more than one — and reads close if it is merely in the same one of Trail Mix’s seven regions. Established, the year each place became a national park, matches on the exact year and reads close within ten years either side. Area and 2025 visitors each match within two percent of the true figure and read close within fifty percent. Every numeric clue that misses still points somewhere: an arrow shows whether the true value is higher or lower than your guess.
Why distance comes first
Distance is the clue most players read first, because its arrow always points the same way: from the park you guessed toward the hidden one, whichever direction that happens to be. Guess a park in Utah and the arrow might point northeast toward Colorado, or it might point nowhere useful at all if the answer is thousands of miles away in Alaska or the Pacific. Read the arrow before you read the miles — the direction narrows the map faster than the number alone, and the two together turn a guess into a bearing you can actually follow on your next try.
Fair play and streaks
Three hints are available each round, always in the same order: the park’s region, then its state or states, then the first letter of its name. A hint you reveal for free adds a small light bulb (💡) to the result you share, so friends can tell a clean solve from an assisted one. When a short optional ad is available, you can watch it instead to reveal the same hint without the light bulb. A new park unlocks every day at midnight in your own time zone, everyone gets the same one on the same calendar day, and there is no account to create — your streak and history live in your browser alone.