These puzzles demonstrate the broad versatility of PuzzleMap.  "Beautiful Japan" provides a unique presentation of a major world country, "The United States in 1776" is a historical puzzle designed by a group of elementary teachers, "Washington Counties" is currently being used to beta-test new editing tools for subscriber-authored clues and "The United States Today" reflects an earlier design used to study classroom efficacy. 

Please fee free to give any of them a try!

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Beautiful Japan

The 47 "prefectures" of Japan are like states or provinces in other countries.  Each has its own elected legislature and governor and they are traditionally grouped into 8 informal regions that correspond to the color of each piece in this puzzle.

Most prefecture names refer to a distinctive feature or describe the landscape.  Placenames like this are called toponyms.  Toponyms are very common everwhere in the world and you should be able to think of some near you.

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The United States in 1776

These are the 13 newly-minted US states as they were understood by the Founding Fathers in 1776.  Some borders were poorly defined and there were conficting claims to the unexplored territory in the west but most of these original states already had their familiar shape.  What is now Maine, however, was a part of Massachusetts and Virigina included all of the vast Northwestern wilderness.  What other differences can you find?

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Washington Counties

This is a puzzle of the 39 counties in the US State of Washington.  The color of each piece represents its population density, creating an effective choropleth when the puzzle is complete.  Since population distribution is always quite distorted, a logrithmic scale is used — from less than 1 person per square mile to 3,000 or more.  Although population density is much higher than that in a few metropolitan areas, 99.9% of US counties are within this range.

1
7
55
400
3000
Persons per Square Mile
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The United States Today

This is the original PuzzleMap and it's packed with information about the landscape, climate, people and economies of all 50 US states plus the District of Columbia.  You can click or touch on those items in the Clue Window to learn what makes each one unique.

The Climate topic, for example, provides average temperatures and precipitation.  Drier states are more red in color and wetter state are more green.  The typical pattern of precipitation in the US becomes very apparent when the puzzle is complete.