Oceania · Micronesia
How to draw Nauru from memory
Nauru is a single continuous landmass, roughly as wide as it is tall. Lock that proportion in before you worry about any individual stretch of border. Its border is simple by world standards, which makes it a good place to build confidence — and also means a low score here has nowhere to hide.
- Difficulty
- easy
- Population
- 13 k
- Code
- NRU
Draw Nauru
Practice · draw from memory
Nauru
A four-step strategy for Nauru
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Nauru is close to square overall, so a lopsided sketch loses points fast.
- 02
Anchor one unmistakable feature — the straightest border section or the sharpest cape — and draw outward from it in a single continuous stroke.
- 03
Close the loop back to where you started. An open shape gets filled unpredictably and drags your score down.
- 04
Submit, read the nine-sector grid, and redraw immediately. The sector readout names the region you under-drew, and a second attempt typically gains 10–20 points.
Top scores for Nauru
Nobody has submitted a score for Nauru yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Oceania
- Subregion
- Micronesia
- Outline pieces
- 1
- Detail score
- 1.12
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Nauru
Each one is measured off the outline the game scores, not copied from a reference atlas: the proportions, the straight sections and the way the shape breaks into pieces are all properties of the coordinates your stroke gets compared against.
The east edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 22% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the east. Rivers and capes do not do that; a border was drawn on a map. Straighten it deliberately — a wobbly line there throws the whole bounding box.
Nauru is close to square
Width against height comes out at 0.84 to 1, so the shape neither runs away sideways nor stretches vertically. Set that box first: with a near-square country almost every lost point comes from the coast detail inside it, not the footprint.
Close the loop before adding detail
Nauru occupies a 368×440 unit box on the game canvas. Fill that box with one continuous closed stroke first: the scorer compares filled area, so an open outline loses the interior it never enclosed.
Answer key: the real shape of Nauru
- Box on the canvas
- 368 × 440 units
- Width to height
- 0.84 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 22% of the perimeter, along the east
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.16× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Nauru at least once. Seeing the shape first replaces the recall the score is meant to measure with tracing, and tracing always scores higher than remembering.
Why Nauru is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Nauru. It scales and centres both your stroke and the real border into the same box, fills them, and measures how much of the two shapes overlap relative to their combined area. That means you are never punished for drawing Nauru small, off to one side, or rotated slightly — only for getting the shape itself wrong. The nine-sector grid then splits the real border into a 3×3 mesh and reports coverage per cell, which is how it can tell you that you lost the whole eastern edge rather than just handing you a number.
Nauru by the numbers
Nauru covers 21 km², which makes it the 188th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 14th largest in Oceania. The capital is Yaren at about 1°S, 167°E, and it sits in Micronesia. It shares no land border at all, so every metre of the outline you have to draw is coastline.
Next to Nauru: regional peers
Size is what the outline has to fill, so comparing countries of the same region side by side is the fastest way to get the proportions into your head before you draw.
| Country | Area | Population | Capital | Pieces | vs Nauru |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nauruthis page | 21 km² | 13 k | Yaren | 1 | — |
 Kiribati | 811 km² | 118 k | South Tarawa | 14 | 39× |
 Marshall Islands | 181 km² | 59 k | Majuro | 5 | 8.62× |
 Micronesia | 702 km² | 114 k | Palikir | 5 | 33× |
 Palau | 459 km² | 18 k | Ngerulmud | 2 | 22× |
 Australia | 7,692,024 km² | 25.4 m | Canberra | 1 | 366287× |
 Fiji | 18,272 km² | 890 k | Suva | 4 | 870× |
 New Zealand | 270,467 km² | 4.9 m | Wellington | 2 | 12879× |
 Papua New Guinea | 462,840 km² | 8.8 m | Port Moresby | 3 | 22040× |
Draw these next
Countries near Nauru share border conventions and coastline styles, which makes them the most useful follow-up practice.
Working through one country at a time is slow. Take the blank map of the world and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.
Nauru drawing questions
How big is Nauru?
Nauru covers 21 km², ranking 188th of 190 countries here by land area and 14th in Oceania. Small enough to lie inside a square roughly 4.6 km on a side.
What is the capital of Nauru?
The capital is Yaren at about 1°S, 167°E. The game scores the shape of the border rather than the position of any city, so the capital and its coordinates are here to help you place Nauru on a blank map.
Is Nauru hard to draw?
It is rated easy, and carries more outline detail than 0% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with about 22% of the perimeter running dead straight along the east.
Does Nauru border any country?
Nauru has no land borders: every metre of its outline is coastline, which is why it rates as easy even so — the coast simply does not fold back on itself.