Countries, capitals, coastlines and the people who mapped them.
Geography is the subject that makes the news make sense. Once you know where the Strait of Hormuz is, or why so many capital cities sit on rivers, a lot of history and politics stops being a list of names and starts being a map you can read.
These quizzes cover the physical world and the human one: the countries and capitals, the islands and coastlines, the flags nations chose for themselves, and the explorers and cartographers who worked out the shape of it all. Some of it is recall — you either know the capital of Kyrgyzstan or you don't. Most of it isn't. The better questions here are the ones where the answer has a reason behind it, and the explanation tells you what that reason is.
Start anywhere. If a topic looks unfamiliar, that's usually the one worth playing.
Capitals, borders, rivers and the shape of the planet.
The world's cities, including the ones that catch people out.
National symbols and the meanings packed into them.
How islands form, and the ones worth knowing.
The voyages that redrew the map, and their costs.
How the round world gets flattened onto paper.
Ships, rails, roads and the routes that connect them.
Coats of arms, national animals, plants and personifications — the symbols countries use when a flag will not do.
Which flower is the emblem of the Japanese imperial family?
Dragons, lions, temples and one island drawn in copper — ten things countries put in the middle of their flags.
Which country's flag features a temple complex?
Square flags, two-sided flags, a flag with a rifle on it and one that is flown upside down in wartime.
The off-centre cross used by Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland is known as what?
Where the colours on national flags come from, and the families of flags that share them.
On the flag of Ireland, the orange band is generally understood to represent which group?
Hotspots, subduction, sinking volcanoes and drowned hills — the four or five ways land ends up surrounded by sea.
The Hawaiian island chain formed as the Pacific plate drifted over what?
Prisons, exiles, monasteries and one very expensive swap involving nutmeg.
Which island in New York Harbor processed arriving immigrants between 1892 and 1954?
Ten questions on the ocean that holds more islands than all the others put together.
Easter Island, home of the moai statues, is administered by which country?
Ten countries that have no land border with anybody, from the Caribbean to the central Pacific.
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Read article24 published quizzes across 7 topics, 240 questions in total. Every one is researched, written and checked by hand.
The mix here is 7 easy, 14 medium and 3 hard. Difficulty is about how obscure the answers are, not how fast you have to be — there is no timer on any quiz.
About 7 minutes on average, ranging from 6 to 9. Playing every quiz in this section would take roughly 3 hours.
No. Every quiz is free and playable straight away. An optional free account only saves your scores across devices.
Yes — every question has a short explanation of why the right answer is right, shown the moment you answer, whether you got it or not.