Main Page

From Geohashing
Revision as of 22:05, 16 September 2009 by imported>Ekorren (Peeron is up again, removing announcement)

Welcome to the Geohashing Wiki. Geohashing was brought to you by the xkcd webcomic.

He says "What were you doing back there." Instead of giving an explanation of geohashing, I say "I was looking for a GPS point." He says, and I wish I could make something up like this, "Well, where did you lose it?"
find some more great geohashing quotations here.



What is this?

The Algorithm as shown in xkcd comic #426, published on 21 May 2008.

Geohashing is a method for finding an effectively random location nearby and visiting it: a Spontaneous Adventure Generator. Every day, the algorithm generates a new set of coordinates for each 1°×1° latitude/longitude zone (known as a graticule) in the world. The coordinates can be anywhere -- in the forest, in a city, on a mountain, or even in the middle of a lake! Everyone in a given region gets the same set of coordinates relative to their graticule.

As such, these coordinates can be used as destinations for adventures, à la Geocaching, or for local meetups. After the fun, please document your expedition! The rest of us would love to read your story, see your photos, and cheer your success (or commiserate with your failure). You can use this wiki to document the daily coordinates (geohashes) you’ve been to or tried to reach.

Learn more

How to geohash:

Other people's expeditions:

Get involved



news archiveEdit What's new on the wiki?

  • The most active graticules for 2024-09 were 47,8 and 55,-4.

More pages needing discussionDiscussion archiveEdit Now discussing - please join in: 


Official xkcd meetups

Felix Dance, Mdixon4, Rhonda, Lachie and Stevage meet up at the 28 December 2015 (a Monday) coordinates for Bairnsdale, VIC, Australia.

Based on the title text from the comic that established geohashing, the "official" meetup day was interpreted as being Saturday; that is, the day one would have the best chance of meeting others -- see also Mouseover Day. Additionally it was decided through convention that a good meeting time would be 16:00 local time (4:00 P.M.)¹

However, neither of these are hard rules, and they were formulated at a very different early stage in the sport's history. Nowadays and for quite awhile actually, any date or time can be good (or bad, depending on how many other hashers are near you) for meeting up, especially if prearranged. Note that this only applies to that day’s normal local geohash or globalhash coordinates, if you try to go to an alternate location without telling anyone else, it's highly unlikely you'd meet up with a hasher there (obviously).

¹Or earlier if that would be too close to sunset during the winter, or other quirks of temporal tradition; see your local graticule page for consensus there.


Recent and Upcoming Coordinates

The coordinates for the next Saturday meetups, scheduled for 2 November 2024, will be based on the Dow’s opening price published at 09:30 EDT (13:30 UTC) on Friday 1 November. See timeanddate.com to convert this time to your local time zone.

Disclaimer: When any coordinates generated by the Geohashing algorithm fall within a dangerous area, are inaccessible, or would require illegal trespass, DO NOT attempt to reach them. Please research each potential location before attempting to access it. You are expected to use proper judgment in all cases and are solely responsible for your own actions. See more guidelines.

Gallery of Recent Expeditions

The gallery for each day is added to this page automatically, but pictures are selected to the gallery by us. Any geohasher is welcome to add a picture from that day. Just add your image name in the list at the “add yours” link. If the gallery hasn't been started yet, copy the format from the previous day, or read the how-to. Please also write an account of your expedition, even if only a short one, so that people can click the link on your picture and find out more.


Template:Geo Hashing:Community Portal