Highest Peaks by Continent Quiz — Rules & What Counts

Eighteen summits: the three highest peaks of every continent except Antarctica. Everyone knows Everest — but do you know the second-highest peak in Africa, or where Europe's roof actually is? Drag each peak's card onto the map to find out.

This is the Seven Summits' bigger, meaner sibling. The names are on the cards, so the game is pure geography: knowing that Denali's runner-up stands across a border in Canada, that Europe's three highest are all in the Caucasus, and that Oceania's giants rise from a single island of New Guinea — and then pinning every one of them to its exact summit.

How to play

• Drag each peak card from the tray onto a ring — rings sit at the real summits' coordinates.
• Exact placement is the rule: every peak scores only on its own ring, so neighbouring summits — Everest and Kangchenjunga, the Caucasus trio, the Papua trio — must each land on the right circle. Zoom in on the tight clusters before you drop.
• Drops snap to the nearest ring within a generous radius, and a sloppy drop prefers an empty ring over bumping a placed one.
• Place all 18, rearrange freely, then press Confirm to grade the lot; the count-up timer records your pace.
• Give up scores what you've placed and reveals where every summit really stands.

What counts in this quiz

• Six continents × their three highest peaks = 18 summits; Antarctica is excluded (sorry, Vinson).
• Europe follows the Caucasus-watershed convention used by the Seven Summits: Elbrus is Europe's highest, joined by Dykh-Tau and Shkhara — not Mont Blanc.
• Oceania's trio all stand in the New Guinea highlands of Indonesia, led by Puncak Jaya — the convention that counts the full continent, not just Australia.
• Only independent mountains count, by the usual prominence rules — subsidiary summits on a taller peak's massif (like Everest's Lhotse-side shoulders or the Carstensz massif's minor tops) don't get their own entry.

What's not included — and why

• Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and everything else in the Alps miss the list — the Caucasus outranks them all.
• Mount Kosciuszko only leads if you stop at Australia's shoreline; widen to Oceania and it's nowhere near the top three.
• Second-tallest-on-the-same-mountain doesn't count: this is a list of mountains, not summits, so K2's neighbours in the Karakoram appear only once each.

Good to know

• K2 is nicknamed the "Savage Mountain" — roughly one climber has died for every four who reached the summit, a far deadlier ratio than Everest's.
• Denali has a greater base-to-summit rise than Everest — about 5,500 m of mountain from its lowlands, versus Everest's roughly 3,700 m above base camp.
• Puncak Jaya is the only one of the 18 with an equatorial glacier — and it's melting so fast it may be gone within a decade.
• Measured from its underwater base, Hawaii's Mauna Kea is taller than Everest — but at just 4,207 m above sea level it doesn't even crack this list.