Geography trivia questions and answers.

The short answer

Below are 45 geography trivia questions with answers, in eight rounds that run from capitals and borders to time zones and food. Some make easy warm-ups: which city did Australia build as its capital? (Canberra.) Others catch out strong players. Measured from its base, which mountain is taller than Everest? (Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, most of it under the sea.) And which sea has no coast at all? (The Sargasso Sea.)

Each answer sits under its question with a line on why, so slide a sheet of paper down the page if you're testing yourself. Nine of the questions carry a hard label. Rounds run from five to eight questions, so you can play one at a time at a quiz night.

Capitals

1. What is the capital of Australia?
   Canberra. Sydney and Melbourne both wanted the title, so Australia chose a new site in 1908 as a compromise and named the city Canberra in 1913.
2. Which city replaced Istanbul as the capital of Turkey?
   Ankara, in October 1923, the month Turkey declared itself a republic. Istanbul, then called Constantinople, had been the Ottoman capital.
3. Which country has three capital cities?
   South Africa. The government runs the country from Pretoria, Parliament sits in Cape Town, and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital.
4. Which city took over from Rio de Janeiro as Brazil's capital in 1960?
   Brasília, a planned city laid out by Lúcio Costa, with most of its public buildings by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. Rio had held the title since 1763.
5. What is the northernmost capital of a sovereign country? (hard)
   Reykjavík, in Iceland, at 64°08′ north.
6. Which two national capitals face each other across a river? (hard)
   Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo. They grew up on opposite banks of the Congo River, within sight of each other.

Borders and neighbours

7. Which two countries share the longest border in the world?
   Canada and the United States. The International Boundary Commission puts the border at 8,891 km (5,525 miles), Alaska's stretch included.
8. Which two countries have the most neighbours?
   China and Russia. Each shares a land border with 14 countries.
9. Which country does South Africa surround on every side?
   Lesotho. It is also the only independent country where every patch of ground lies above 1,000 m.
10. Name the two doubly landlocked countries, where every neighbour is landlocked too. (hard)
    Liechtenstein, between Austria and Switzerland, and Uzbekistan, surrounded by Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Uzbekistan counts only if you call the Caspian Sea a lake.
11. Brazil borders every country in South America except two. Which two?
    Chile and Ecuador. Brazil has ten neighbours, and one of them is France, through French Guiana.

Rivers

12. What is the longest river in the world?
    The Nile, by most counts. The US Geological Survey lists it at 4,132 miles (6,650 km) and the Amazon at 4,000 miles (6,437 km). A 2008 claim from Brazil's space research institute put the Amazon ahead, and the result turns on which stream you count as each river's source.
13. Which river carries the most water?
    The Amazon. It delivers about a fifth of all the river water that reaches the oceans.
14. Which river flows through four European capitals?
    The Danube, through Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. On its way from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea it passes through or along ten countries.
15. What is the longest river in the United States?
    The Missouri, at 2,540 miles by the US Geological Survey's count. The Mississippi comes second at 2,340 miles.
16. Which major river crosses the equator twice? (hard)
    The Congo, the only major river that does. It is also the deepest river on record, with measured depths of about 220 m.

Mountains and deserts

17. What is the highest mountain above sea level?
    Mount Everest, at 8,848.86 m. Nepalese and Chinese surveyors arrived at that figure together in 2020, and the summit sits on the border between their two countries.
18. What is the highest mountain in Africa?
    Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, at 5,895 m. The dormant volcano is also the highest free-standing mountain above sea level.
19. Measured from base to summit, which mountain is taller than Everest?
    Mauna Kea, in Hawaii. Guinness World Records puts it at about 10,205 m from its base on the sea floor, though only 4,205 m of that rises above sea level.
20. Which summit lies farthest from the centre of the Earth? (hard)
    Chimborazo, in Ecuador. The Earth bulges at the equator, so Chimborazo's summit, at 6,263 m above sea level, sits about 2.1 km farther from the planet's centre than Everest's.
21. What is the largest desert in the world?
    Antarctica, a cold desert of about 14.2 million km². The Sahara, at about 9.2 million km², is the largest hot desert.

Islands and coastlines

22. What is the largest island in the world?
    Greenland, at 2,166,086 km². It is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
23. What is the largest island in the Mediterranean?
    Sicily, which also has more people than any other island in that sea.
24. Which island do Haiti and the Dominican Republic share?
    Hispaniola. Haiti holds the western part and the Dominican Republic the eastern. In the Caribbean, only Cuba is bigger.
25. Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei share which island?
    Borneo, the third-largest island in the world. All of Brunei lies on it.
26. Which country has the longest coastline?
    Canada, at 202,080 km by the CIA World Factbook's count, more than twice the figure for Norway in second place. A coastline has no well-defined length, so totals vary between sources, but Canada also comes first in the World Resources Institute's figures.
27. Which sea has no coastline? (hard)
    The Sargasso Sea, in the Atlantic. Four ocean currents mark its edges, with the Gulf Stream on the west.

Flags and names

28. Which country's flag is not a rectangle?
    Nepal's. It joins two pennants into one shape, with a white moon in the upper part and a sun in the lower, and it is the only national flag taller than it is wide.
29. Which national flag shows an AK-47?
    Mozambique's. Its emblem lays the rifle, bayonet fixed, across a hoe on top of an open book. Guatemala's flag has crossed rifles too, but Mozambique's is the only one with a modern assault rifle.
30. Which country takes its name from a line on the map?
    Ecuador. Its name is the Spanish word for equator.
31. Which country's name comes from the Latin word for silver?
    Argentina, from argentum.
32. Which Asian country takes its name from a Spanish king?
    The Philippines. The Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the islands in the 1540s after the prince who became King Philip II.

Time zones and the map

Meridish takes its name from meridian plus dish, so this round covers the lines drawn across the map and the clocks that follow them.

33. Which line marks 0° longitude?
    The prime meridian, which passes through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. Delegates from 25 nations chose it at the International Meridian Conference in Washington in 1884. France abstained and went on using the Paris meridian on its maps for decades.
34. How many degrees of longitude make one hour of time?
    15. A 15° difference in longitude makes a one-hour difference in local time, and 24 hours of 15° each add up to the full 360°.
35. The International Date Line follows which meridian, give or take a few bends?
    The 180th. Cross it heading west and the date jumps a day ahead. The line zigzags around eastern Russia and Alaska's Aleutian Islands.
36. How many official time zones does China use?
    One, Beijing Time (UTC+8), though the country spans five geographical time zones.
37. Which country has the most time zones? (hard)
    France, thanks to its overseas territories: 12 time zones, or 13 if you count its claim in Antarctica.
38. Which country sets its clocks 5 hours 45 minutes ahead of UTC? (hard)
    Nepal. Its zone is one of only three with a 45-minute offset; the others are Chatham Island Standard Time (UTC+12:45) and the unofficial Australian Central Western Time (UTC+8:45).
39. Which country do both the equator and the 180th meridian cross? (hard)
    Kiribati, so its islands lie in all four hemispheres. In 1995 Kiribati moved the date line east around its Line Islands, which now keep UTC+14, the time zone furthest ahead on Earth.
40. On a Mercator map, which island looks about as big as Africa?
    Greenland, though Africa covers 14 times its area. Gerardus Mercator published his projection in 1569.

Food and places

Each answer here is a place that lent its name to something you eat or drink, or the place a crop came from.

41. The city of Reims lies in which French wine region, the one that gives its name to a sparkling wine?
    Champagne. European law and an 1891 treaty protect the name.
42. Parmigiano Reggiano takes its name from which two Italian provinces?
    Parma and Reggio Emilia. Cheesemakers in Modena and parts of Bologna and Mantua may also use the name, which has protected designation of origin status in the EU.
43. Cheddar cheese takes its name from a village in which English county?
    Somerset, in southwest England. Cheesemakers matured it in the caves of Cheddar Gorge, and some still do.
44. Tequila takes its name from a town in which Mexican state?
    Jalisco. Blue agave is native to the area around the town of Tequila, and UNESCO listed its agave fields as a World Heritage Site in 2006.
45. Farmers first domesticated the potato around which South American lake?
    Lake Titicaca. They tamed it in southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago.

How to get better at geography quizzes

Play a map game every day. A few minutes a day adds up, and a game is easier to keep up than a list of capitals. Worldle shows you a country's silhouette and gives you six tries to name it, and the guide to daily geography games compares it with five others.

Learn countries in groups that share a feature: the seven countries the Andes run through (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela), say, or Uzbekistan's five landlocked neighbours. After a wrong answer, find the place on a map and look at what lies around it.

Watch the measuring words, since quiz setters like to hide hard questions in them. Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, Mauna Kea the tallest from its base, and Chimborazo's summit the farthest from the Earth's centre. If a question looks too easy, check what it measures.

In Meridish the answer is a town or city. Every day everyone gets the same seven-course tasting menu, and for each dish you read a clue and tap the map where you think it was born. You score up to 100 points a course, the full 100 within 25 km, and after each course you see how much closer you were than other players. A menu takes about three minutes, and a new one arrives at midnight UTC, the same moment everywhere. Play today's menu, or read how to play first.

Questions

Sources

1. Capitals: Wikipedia, Canberra, Ankara, South Africa, Brasília, Reykjavík and Brazzaville.
2. International Boundary Commission, About us.
3. Borders: Wikipedia, List of countries and territories by number of land borders, Russia, Lesotho, Landlocked country and Brazil.
4. US Geological Survey, Rivers of the world: world's longest rivers.
5. Rivers: Wikipedia, Amazon River, Danube and Congo River.
6. Mountains and deserts: Wikipedia, Mount Everest, Mount Kilimanjaro, Chimborazo, Andes and Desert.
7. Guinness World Records, Tallest mountain.
8. Islands and coastlines: Wikipedia, Greenland, Sicily, Hispaniola, Borneo and List of countries by length of coastline.
9. NOAA Ocean Service, What is the Sargasso Sea? and What is the International Date Line?
10. Flags and names: Wikipedia, Flag of Nepal, Flag of Mozambique, Ecuador, Argentina and Philippines.
11. Time zones and the map: Wikipedia, Prime meridian (Greenwich), Longitude, Time in China, Time in France, Nepal Standard Time, Kiribati and Mercator projection.
12. WorldAtlas, The only country in the world that spreads across all four hemispheres.
13. Food and places: Wikipedia, Champagne (wine), Parmigiano Reggiano, Cheddar cheese, Potato and Tequila, Jalisco.
14. Worldle, FAQ.