Countries of the World Quiz

How this list was compiled: The 110 countries are the 110 largest member states of the United Nations by area on this drawing, which is equal-area; the smallest of them by real area is Jordan (89,318 square kilometers, after Hungary and Portugal), as ranked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area, checked 2026-09-19; on the drawing, which leaves out small islands, Portugal is the smallest shape. Membership, the names the United Nations uses and the years of joining: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states (193 member states), checked 2026-09-19. The two observer states, the Holy See and the State of Palestine, are not asked: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/non-member-states, checked 2026-09-19. Capitals: the Wikipedia lists of sovereign states and dependent territories in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania and South America, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Africa and the five pages named the same way, checked 2026-09-19. The 25 largest countries and the ranks by area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area, checked 2026-09-19. Landlocked and doubly landlocked countries, the largest and the most populous landlocked country, and Lesotho: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landlocked_country, checked 2026-09-19. The 15 post-Soviet states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_states, checked 2026-09-19. The 14 member states in Oceania and the line between Asia and Oceania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Oceania, checked 2026-09-19. The 30 most populous countries, their order and their populations: United Nations, World Population Prospects 2024 (https://population.un.org/wpp/), estimates for 1 July 2023 as tabled at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_(United_Nations), all 30 rows checked 2026-09-19; that table notes that the figure for China is for mainland China and the one for France for metropolitan France. The 2024 revision is the latest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Population_Prospects, checked 2026-09-19); check the order again when the next one is out. Tanzania: Dodoma is the capital and Dar es Salaam the former capital and largest city (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzania and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodoma, checked 2026-09-19). Ivory Coast and Benin, the official capital and the city the government works from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_multiple_capitals, checked 2026-09-19; Abidjan is accepted as a typed capital, Cotonou is not. Quito as the capital city closest to the equator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito, checked 2026-09-19. Central America from 1821 to 1823: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Republic_of_Central_America, checked 2026-09-19. The detail lines for Europe and the Americas draw on the sources of european-countries-quiz, north-america-map-quiz and south-america-countries-quiz; those pages carry longer lines of their own about neighbors and coasts. The continents are those of Natural Earth, which files Russia under Europe and Turkey and Kazakhstan under Asia. Every shape that is not one of the 110, among them every flagged or disputed shape, is drawn and never asked. Positions in the hints were read off the drawing. Hints and detail lines written for this site. Licence: own work

The drawing: Drawn for this site from Natural Earth 5.1.2, ne_50m_admin_0_countries_lakes (scale 1:50,000,000), https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/v5.1.2/geojson/ne_50m_admin_0_countries_lakes.geojson, downloaded 2026-09-19. Equal Earth projection centred on 11°E. Outlines simplified; small islands are left out. 66 places are too small to draw at this scale and shown as a dot. Licence: public domain (Natural Earth terms of use: https://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/)