The turnout on the Castlespotting Contest was excellent, and I was amazed by your clever deductions and by strong Google-fu of many of the entries. Fortunately, many of the Castlespotting images were submitted by readers and not available online, and that’s where things got interesting…
I was flat-out impressed at how many people got 20 right, and floored that a few got 21 correct, but only one team got 22 castles right out of 23 possible. Complete answers, castle locations, and winners are after the jump!
Our winners are Georg and Helga, who got all but one castle! Congrats to you, and your prizes will be on the way soon.
Castle List
- Castle Grayskull (fictional)
- Himeji Castle (Japan)
- Neuschwanstein (Germany)
- Malbork Castle (Poland)
- Castle Kronborg (Denmark)
- Hearst Castle (United States)
- Swallow’s Nest, near Yalta (Ukraine)
- Bran Castle (Romania)
- Framlingham Castle (England)
- Mafra National Palace (Portugal)
- Mauterndorf (Austria)
- Pena National Palace (Portugal)
- Burghotel Ehrenburg (Germany)
- Cite de Carcassonne (France)
- Windsor Castle (England)
- Trakai Island Castle (Lithuania)
- Corfe Castle (England)
- Castelo dos Mouros (Portual)
- Agra Fort (India)
- Belvelly Castle (Ireland)
- Kyburg (Switzerland)
- Warwick Castle (England)
- Woodland Park Castle (United States)
Thank you to everyone who participated, I quite enjoyed this tour of military fortifications and royal residences. I hope you enjoyed it, too, and I hope to do another one down the line.
If you like that idea, please email me your own favorite castle pictures (that have not appeared online!), and we’ll go Castlespotting again!
Which castle did not get identified?
Steve
All the castles were identified by *someone*, though of course different people missed different ones. But yes, all three of the “impossible” category were correctly identified at least by one person.
Pretty impressive, given the difficulty of some of these. The English and American castles seem easier from familiarity, and famous ones like Dracula’s castle or Neuschwanstein are fairly straightforward. Others required picking up on some clues in the photos, or a wide knowledge of castles.
congrats! 22 is flat-out amazing. did anyone get #23?
Yep, exactly one entry got #23 correct, but they missed two other castles in the hard category. I think it was a hard-fought contest all around.
coincidentally, here’s a photo from my own collection, taken at warwick castle in 1997…
http://www.bin.sh/images/warwick.jpg
i wonder how many people take that shot?
Cool!
It was my fault, that we haven’t gotten all 23 castles. It was 2.30 in the morning, when we have identified #1-#22. My wife Helga wanted to continue, but I insisted that we get some sleep, before the kids find us asleep before the computer in the morning. :)
Georg