I find it oddly thrilling to check the latest data on the number of countries from which a web-surfer has - I acknowledge often randomly - chanced upon the MoS website.

At the latest count, as of 9:30pm tonight, the count is 166 countries. I'd estimate I've visited no more than a dozen of them.

Drilling down a little deeper (which you can also do by clicking on the "See more" link in the flag list at the bottom of any page on MoS), I find that the site has now been viewed by someone from all 51 "regions" in the USA (the 50 States plus the District of Columbia) but that, for example, there are still four holdout Canadian Territories/Provinces.

That gap stirs the completionist within me, but all the more strongly when I look at the list of entire countries that have yet to be MoS-ified. That list is repeated at right and currently spans 75 countries.

I feel as though I've bid for and won the Olympics, but a bunch of countries haven't been able to turn up.

So, for no logical reason at all, I've determined to spend the next 12 months or so trying to whittle this list of countries down to as small a number as I can.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think I've content worthy of being spread widely across the globe, I'd just like to see this list dwindle as much as it might over the course of the next year because - well it'd be fun.

So, if you're a reader of MoS content, I'd respectfully ask that you, should you visit any of these countries, pop into the MatterOfStats website whilst you're there. Barring that, if you've friends or relatives who live in one of these countries or who might visit them, please ask them to do the same.

Pointless? Undoubtedly.

Enjoyable? I hope so.

Self-indulgent? Maybe a little.

Regardless, it's your choice whether to play or pass, but I do plan to update progress here regularly, and if it's you or a family member or friend that ticks off a country, I'll be happy to give acknowledgement if that's okay with you.

I'd also love to hear how and where you've helped winnow the list, so feel free to e-mail or Tweet me with those details.

In the meantime I'll keep checking to see if the list reduces purely as a consequence of random web-traffic and let you all know about that too.

I'm hoping this makes for an enjoyable 12 months for everyone following along.

(And, dammit, I've had a bunch of Guernsey retweets of late after my Tweets about guernseys and team ratings. Surely they could take a moment to visit the site ...)