# Zipvia city pool audit (September 2026)

The web and Expo app use the same ordered set of **1,000 distinct places and featured five-digit ZIPs**. The first 125 places keep their original order. A city can have several valid mailing ZIPs; the game chooses one featured answer per round and says so in How to Play.

## Sources and selection

- Place names, 2025 population estimates, and city/town ranking: [U.S. Census Bureau SUB-EST2025](https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-total-cities-and-towns.html).
- Place coordinates and ZIP tabulation area coordinates: [2024 Census Gazetteer](https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/time-series/geo/gazetteer-files.2024.html). ZCTAs approximate ZIP delivery geography; they are not USPS ZIP Codes.
- Postal city/ZIP pairs: [GeoNames US postal codes](https://download.geonames.org/export/zip/) (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; accessed September 28, 2026). GeoNames data is provided as-is, so errors can be reported and corrected.
- Representative answers for Los Angeles (90012), Beverly Hills (90210), San Francisco (94102), Lexington (40507), Yuma (85364), and Casper (82601) were checked against their municipal government addresses. Other new entries require an exact GeoNames city/state match, a 2024 Census ZCTA, a non-tiny mapped area, and a ZCTA center near the Census place center. The pool favors more populous places, keeps all original 125, and includes nearby separate municipalities where each has its own ZIP.

The audit found no duplicate city names or ZIP answers among the original 125. All 125 city/ZIP pairs appear in GeoNames (including its “Saint Louis” spelling). Fifteen answers were specialized government ZIPs with no 2024 ZCTA. For regular modes, they now use these mapped ZIPs:

| Place | Previous | Featured now |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Dover, DE | 19903 | 19901 |
| Baton Rouge, LA | 70804 | 70802 |
| Augusta, ME | 04333 | 04330 |
| Lansing, MI | 48909 | 48933 |
| Jackson, MS | 39215 | 39201 |
| Helena, MT | 59620 | 59601 |
| Lincoln, NE | 68509 | 68508 |
| Trenton, NJ | 08625 | 08608 |
| Albany, NY | 12224 | 12207 |
| Nashville, TN | 37243 | 37201 |
| Austin, TX | 78711 | 78701 |
| Montpelier, VT | 05609 | 05602 |
| Olympia, WA | 98504 | 98501 |
| Madison, WI | 53702 | 53703 |
| Cheyenne, WY | 82002 | 82001 |

Daily Challenge still chooses from the original 125 in its original order and uses the original answers for the 15 changed places. This deliberately preserves the same city and answer for a given date across previously installed app versions and the website. The expanded pool applies to Random, difficulty, capital, and region modes. A future coordinated release can version the Daily schedule to include the larger pool.

The data is a curated game pool, not a postal address validation service. Report a city or ZIP that feels wrong and we can check it against local municipal and postal records before changing the answer.