Origin Food Game: Where Your Food Comes From

The Origin food game asks you to place five foods on a world map and scores you by how close you land. Some foods have clear homes. Others are argued over, and the game shows you every claim with its source. It is one of three daily puzzles in the Mosey app, and the day's set arrives at your own midnight.

How does the Origin food game work?

You get five foods a day, a mix of dishes and ingredients, and the screen labels each one, such as Dish 2 of 5. For each, you tap the map where you think it comes from, then lock in your pin. If you would rather not use the map, you can type a country or region and the answer scores from the center of the place you choose.

The map has no country names on it, which is the point. A faint layer of cities helps you get your bearings, though the game hides some of them so that the city labels never give away an answer. Pinch to zoom, and tap again to move your pin.

How does Origin scoring and distance work?

Each food is worth up to one thousand points, so a day is worth up to five thousand. A pin inside the right region scores the full thousand. Outside it, the score falls with distance, so a pin a long way off earns a small score and one very far away earns nothing. The exact curve belongs to the game, and the in-app example says only that a pin a given distance away scores about five hundred.

Distances show in miles in the United States, and you can switch to kilometers in settings. It changes only what you read, not how the game scores.

What happens when a food's origin is disputed?

Plenty of famous foods have more than one credible story, and Origin does not choose between them. A disputed origin scores to the nearest credible claim, and afterward the game shows every claim with its source, so a wrong pin can still teach you something. The in-app line says it plainly: people disagree about where this comes from, and here is every claim.

Real examples show why. Caesar salad is credited, as the story goes, to Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who ran a restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, in the 1920s. His daughter told that story, and other accounts credit his brother or former staff. Pad thai was popularised from the 1940s, when the Thai government under Plaek Phibunsongkhram promoted noodles during wartime rice shortages, though one historian dates the recipe to the 1960s, and another writer argues that Thai Chinese immigrants invented it. Al pastor tacos trace to Lebanese immigrants in Mexico, with the older tacos arabes in Puebla and the pork-and-pineapple version taking shape in Mexico City.

Why do the lobster roll and other American foods get argued over?

The lobster roll is another good case. Both Maine and Connecticut claim it, and accounts differ on who served the first one. Maine is known for the cold version with mayonnaise and Connecticut for the hot version with butter, so the roll has two homes because it has two traditions.

When a food has two answers, Origin rewards you for the closer one. That is a fair way to play with something that the people who love it have not settled.

What kinds of foods does Origin ask about?

The five foods mix finished dishes and raw ingredients, and the screen labels each as a dish or an ingredient. Dishes tend to have a city, region or country of origin. Ingredients usually trace to where the plant or animal was first domesticated, which can span a whole continent, so the rounds for ingredients are generous.

Some foods are left out on purpose. Dishes whose origin is politically charged are not in the game, which keeps the puzzle about food and not about borders.

A strategy for five pins

Start with the food you are surest about, so you bank a thousand points early. For ingredients, think about where the plant or animal was first domesticated, since the game's ingredient regions are generous and can run to thousands of miles. For dishes, think about where the dish was first cooked as a dish, not where it is most popular today.

When you are unsure, aim for the middle of the likely region. A pin in the center of a large area is safer than a bold guess at the edge.

Why does this help you eat better?

Knowing where a food comes from changes how you taste it. You begin to see that the tomato sauce on an Italian menu is young, that chilies crossed oceans, and that a dish on a diner menu may have started with immigrants a century ago.

Mosey is a food app for finding, rating and sharing places to eat. When you eat a dish you learned about in Origin, rate it by the dish and add a tag, keep a list of what you want to try, and follow friends whose taste you trust.

The daily food games overview covers all three puzzles, and the Ladle guide explains the dish puzzle. The daily food games page sums them up, and the US food guides list where to eat.

The seven-question dish puzzle is covered in the Ingredient guide.

Get the Mosey app, play today's five pins and rate the next dish you meet in Origin, so what you learn on the map shows up at the table.