Size comparisons, drawn to scale

Every page below takes two things that have actually been set against each other in the game, puts their outlines on one ground line at a single scale, and gives the two real measurements with the axis each one belongs to. There are 178 of them.

How to read these pages

A size is never one number. A giraffe measured to the top of its head and a giraffe measured at the shoulder differ by nearly two metres, and both figures are correct. So each comparison states what is being measured before it states how much: length or height, what the figure includes, and what it leaves out. The ratio is then arithmetic rather than opinion.

The drawings are scaled on the measured axis, not on the outline. A whale is set by its length and a tower by its height, which is why a shape can look smaller on screen while carrying the larger number. That gap between what a drawing shows and what a measurement says is most of what makes any of this interesting.

Everything here is taken from the same set of 393 measured objects the daily game is built from. If you would rather guess before you read, today’s set is waiting, and so are Pop Culture and Geography.

Animals, living and extinct

Whales, sharks, big cats, bears and the animals that stopped existing sixty-six million years ago. Every figure here states the axis it belongs to, because a shoulder height and a nose-to-tail length describe the same animal and answer different questions.

Towers, ships and machines

Things built to a drawing, where the measurement was decided before the object existed. Even here the numbers move: a tower has one height to the roof and another to the tip of a spire, and only one of those is the figure that gets quoted.

Everyday reference objects

The things people reach for when they describe a size out loud: a sheet of paper, a bottle, a battery, a card. They work as references because their sizes are standardised, which is unusual and worth knowing.

Characters, creatures and craft

Invented things have no tape measure, only a stated figure. Some come from an author, some from a game entry, some from a production design, and each kind of source carries a different weight. Where the number is soft, these pages say so.

Countries, states and features

Every world map distorts something. These comparisons take the measured span of each outline, north to south or east to west, and draw the two at one scale so the projection stops mattering.