Puzzle #32 — 2026-08-20
The answer was Ghana. The scene was built from Techiman. Difficulty: hard.
The clues, in the order they were revealed
- Orange-red earth showing through everywhere, forest thinning into savanna.
- Rendered blockwork painted in advertising colours under corrugated roofs.
- Minibuses wait to fill and rubber speed humps cross the road, traffic on the right.
- The signs are in English.
- The country was the first in sub-Saharan Africa to become independent.
What the scene was built from
The location is chosen first, from a hand-curated whitelist, and the image is generated to match the description below. That order is what makes the answer checkable: the scene is built for the place, not guessed from the picture.
| vegetation | orange-red earth showing through everywhere, mango and teak along the road, yam mounds in the plots |
|---|---|
| terrain | low undulating ground under a wide sky, forest thinning into savanna |
| architecture | single-storey rendered blockwork painted in advertising colours, corrugated roofs, timber market stalls under blue tarpaulin |
| roadside | right-hand traffic, minibuses waiting to fill, rubber speed humps across the road, roadside sellers with trays |
| signage | Latin script, English (never rendered legibly) |
| light | bright hazy light with dust in the air |
Where this actually is
Techiman, Ghana sits at 7.58, -1.93 — see Techiman, Ghana on OpenStreetMap. The clue ladder and the table above were both written from that place before any picture existed.
This day was not in the image-quality sample — its answer key was checked, its picture was not second-guessed. How the pictures are made, and why none of them is a photograph.