The answer to this week's geopoliconomic question is that, at some time during the past century, the yellow countries have had coins struck at the Royal Canadian Mint.

What does this have to do with the hint? On 31 July 2006, New Zealand will begin the change to new coins. The new coins are smaller and lighter than the current coins. The current 50 cent piece is one of the largest and heaviest coins in circulation today. Last year, the Royal Canadian Mint was selected to mint New Zealand's new coins.

This question was perhaps a bit too obscure and nobody managed to come up with the correct answer (or indeed, any answers at all). However, thanks to Amy for the idea for the question!

I almost forgot to post the hint for this week's geopoliconomic question! The hint is that the answer relates to an upcoming change in New Zealand on 31 July.

I apologise in advance if this one ends up being too obscure. But I think the answer will be interesting in any case. Comments are enabled on this post, feel free to ask questions if you like.

The countries in this map are coloured grey or yellow, according to a particular distinguishing property about those countries. What is the property?



I will post the answer this coming weekend. I may post a hint in a few days!

The answer to the latest geopoliconomic question is:

The highlighted countries (or some portion of them) observe Daylight Saving Time (or a better list of countries).

I chose to represent each country as a whole, even though certain parts of or localities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Australia do not observe DST. Omitting these exceptional regions would have been hard to represent accurately on the map, and would probably have also made the question too easy! I also just noticed that I included Mongolia when I shouldn't have (they apparently stopped using DST in 2002).

Congratulations to kvarko, who skilfully used an impressive google search to help find the answer.

Daylight Saving Time ended in New Zealand this weekend. I've got two world clocks on my desktop, one representing GMT and one representing New Zealand time, and they are exactly 12 hours apart now. It's going to weird living in the southern hemisphere with the largest time offset possible from GMT!

The countries in this map are colored grey or yellow, according to a particular distinguishing property about those countries. What is the property?



I will post the answer this coming weekend.

The answer to the latest geopoliconomic question is:

The highlighted countries have English as an official language.

I think this one may have been too easy. I have to give credit to NevDull for this response:

20:13 <gregh> http://hewgill.com/journal/entries/220
20:14 <NevDull> Something about speaking English

Next month, I'll try to select something a bit different.

The countries in this map are colored grey or yellow, according to a particular distinguishing property about those countries. What is the property?



I will post the answer on this coming saturday.

The answer to the latest geopoliconomic question is:

The highlighted countries currently have a female head of government.

Congratulations to goulo who was the first to report the correct answer.

The most frequent statement among people who found the answer was, "You forgot Ireland!" Mary McAleese is the president of Ireland, which in their system of government is "largely a ceremonial office". The head of government of Ireland is Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. If the map were to include female heads of state, it would also include at least Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark and probably some others.

Having said that, I must make an apology. The list should perhaps not have included Finland, because Tarja Halonen is the President (head of state), not the Prime Minister (head of government). Similarly, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is the President, not the Prime Minister of Latvia. The Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership is a good reference for this. The Wikipedia category of Current female heads of government incorrectly included the presidents of Finland and Latvia when I created this question, but I have since corrected that list (edits here and here). In that vein, I also corrected the List of state leaders to include Luisa Diogo, the Prime Minister of Mozambique.

I thought of this question last week when both Liberia's new president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was sworn in, and Chile's president-elect Michelle Bachelet was elected. (Technically, Michelle Bachelet is not the president of Chile yet, but I'm going to overlook that distinction).

Again, my apologies for not clearly and correctly making the distinction between head of state and head of government. Hope you enjoyed this puzzle! I've got several more ideas and will try to post them approximately monthly.

The countries in this map are colored grey or yellow, according to a particular distinguishing property about those countries. What is the property?



I will post the answer on this coming saturday.

The answer to the geopoliconomic question I posted the other day is:

Orange areas use 100-127 V electrical systems, while blue areas use 220-240 V electrical systems. The map is a simplified version of the map found here.

This is important to us because almost all our consumer electronics stuff that we have here won't work in New Zealand. Some things such as wall warts and battery chargers may accept 240 V, but we'll need a few plug converters (the plug shape is diagonal / \ instead of vertical | |). Other things, such as any appliance with an AC motor, won't work. My desktop computer has a switch on the back of the power supply to change the accepted voltage; I just need a new power cord which I'll be able to buy there. Similarly, Amy's Mac Mini has an external power supply which we'll have to replace once we get there too.

We recently received formal confirmation by letter that our application submission has been accepted by New Zealand Immigration. Since I do not have a New Zealand job offer yet, our application is in the slow queue and they are estimating up to four months before our application is assigned to a visa officer, and then up to a further three months after that. However, the current processing times bulletin shows that they only have a two month backlog on skilled migrant applications. Futhermore, we don't have any special circumstances like existing medical conditions or criminal convictions that might make our application take longer to process, so my best guess is we will receive approval around april.

April would put us in New Zealand near the end of summer in the southern hemisphere. We had hoped to get there earlier to enjoy more of the summer, but we may have to settle for autumn instead.

The countries in this map are coloured either orange or blue, according to a particular distinguishing property about those countries. What is the property?

(Note: Brazil has a regional difference that separates it into two parts. This information probably won't be helpful in figuring out the answer.)



I will post the answer no sooner than this coming saturday.