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October 13th, 2026
Daily puzzle · Medium · Streets map
Theme: Towns Where Winter Truly Bites: The World's Coldest Inhabited Places
These five towns endure some of the most punishing winters on Earth, where mercury routinely plunges far below freezing for months on end. Yellowknife sits on the edge of Canada's subarctic wilderness, while International Falls earned its nickname as America's icebox through decades of record lows. Yakutsk, built on permafrost in Siberia, is widely considered the coldest city of its size on the planet, and Harbin's bitter winters inspired its famous ice-sculpture festival. Even Norway's Karasjok, deep in Sápmi, regularly records temperatures that rival the Arctic's harshest interior stations.
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Yellowknife, CanadaYellowknife is the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories, built on the shores of Great Slave Lake.
2
Harbin, ChinaHarbin is a major city in northeastern China famous for its annual international ice and snow sculpture festival.
3
International Falls, MinnesotaInternational Falls is a small Minnesota city on the Canadian border long nicknamed the 'Icebox of the Nation'.
4
Yakutsk, RussiaYakutsk is a Siberian city built almost entirely on permafrost along the Lena River.
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Karasjok, NorwayKarasjok is a town in Norway's far north and a cultural center of the Indigenous Sámi people.