Geography trivia
A geography quiz with a bit of everything: capitals that aren't the biggest city, deserts that aren't hot, a sea with no coast. Some questions are easy. Others, like the capital of Australia, catch out a lot of people.
There's also a soft spot for Peru and Afghanistan in here, the two countries from our photo game.
How to play
Each round shows a picture or a question, and you have 20 seconds to pick an answer. A game is 5 rounds. A fast right answer is worth up to 1000 points, a slow one half that, and every right answer in a row after the first adds a 100 point bonus. On a computer you can answer with the 1 to 4 keys.
There are 30 questions in this game and each play picks 5 of them, so you won't get the same ones again for a while.
All the answersSpoilers: all 30 questions with the answer and the reason behind it.
What is the capital of Australia?
Answer: Canberra
Sydney and Melbourne both wanted the title, so in 1908 a purpose-built compromise capital was placed between them.
What is the capital of Peru?
Answer: Lima
Cusco was the Inca capital; Lima, on the Pacific coast, has been the capital since Spanish colonial times.
What is the capital of Afghanistan?
Answer: Kabul
Kabul sits at about 1 800 m in a valley of the Hindu Kush. Islamabad is the capital of neighbouring Pakistan.
Which is the largest country by area?
Answer: Russia
Around 17 million km², spanning eleven time zones. Canada is a distant second at about 10 million km².
Which is the smallest country in the world?
Answer: Vatican City
About 0.44 km², entirely inside Rome. You can walk around it in under an hour.
Which continent has the most countries?
Answer: Africa
54 recognised countries. Asia comes next with just under 50, depending on how you count.
Which country has the most time zones, overseas territories included?
Answer: France
Twelve, thanks to territories from French Polynesia to New Caledonia. Russia has eleven. China officially uses just one.
Which mountain is the highest above sea level?
Answer: Everest
8 849 m on the Nepal-China border. K2 is about 240 m lower but is considered the harder climb.
Which country has the longest coastline?
Answer: Canada
Roughly 200 000 km once you include its thousands of Arctic islands, several times more than anyone else.
Which is the largest ocean?
Answer: Pacific
It covers about a third of the planet's surface, more than all the land on Earth put together.
What is the capital of Canada?
Answer: Ottawa
Queen Victoria picked it in 1857. It sits on the border between English-speaking Ontario and French-speaking Quebec, which made it a safer choice than Toronto or Montreal.
What is the capital of Turkey?
Answer: Ankara
Atatürk moved the capital to Ankara in 1923, when the Republic was founded. Istanbul is still by far the biggest city.
What is the capital of Brazil?
Answer: Brasília
It was built from scratch in the middle of the country and became the capital in 1960, taking over from Rio de Janeiro. From above, its plan looks like an aeroplane.
What is the capital of New Zealand?
Answer: Wellington
It became the capital in 1865 because it's in the middle of the country, between the two main islands. Auckland is a much bigger city.
What is the capital of Kazakhstan?
Answer: Astana
It took over from Almaty in 1997. It was renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019 and went back to Astana in 2022. Tashkent and Bishkek are the capitals of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Which capital city is the highest above sea level?
Answer: La Paz
At around 3 600 m, La Paz is where Bolivia's government sits. Technically Sucre is the official capital, which is why Quito (about 2 850 m) is often called the highest official capital.
Which of these countries has no coastline?
Answer: Afghanistan
Afghanistan is landlocked. Its closest sea is the Arabian Sea, several hundred kilometres away across Pakistan. Peru, by contrast, has more than 2 000 km of Pacific coast.
Which two countries share Lake Titicaca?
Answer: Peru and Bolivia
At about 3 800 m it's often called the highest navigable lake in the world. Some communities still live on floating islands made of reeds.
Which of these countries does the Equator NOT cross?
Answer: Peru
Peru's northern border comes very close, but the line passes just north of it, through Ecuador and Colombia. Ecuador is literally named after it.
Which is the longest river in South America?
Answer: Amazon
Its farthest source is high in the Peruvian Andes. No river on Earth carries more water: roughly a fifth of all the river water that reaches the oceans.
Which country has the largest population?
Answer: India
India passed China in 2023, according to UN estimates. Both have more than 1.4 billion people, more than four times the United States.
Which is the largest country in Africa by area?
Answer: Algeria
Sudan used to be the largest until South Sudan became independent in 2011. Most of Algeria is Sahara, and most people live along its Mediterranean coast.
Which is the largest hot desert in the world?
Answer: Sahara
It's about the size of the United States. The biggest desert of all is Antarctica, because a desert is defined by how little rain it gets, not by heat.
Which is the driest non-polar desert on Earth?
Answer: Atacama
In northern Chile, wedged between the Andes and the Pacific. Some of its weather stations have never recorded rain, and NASA tests Mars rovers there.
Which two countries share the longest border?
Answer: Canada and the United States
About 8 900 km once you add the Alaska section. Russia and Kazakhstan come second, and Chile and Argentina third, along the Andes.
Which country holds the most lakes?
Answer: Canada
By most counts, more than half of the world's lakes are in Canada, mostly scraped out by glaciers during the last ice age.
Which is the deepest lake in the world?
Answer: Lake Baikal
In Siberia, about 1 640 m deep. It holds around a fifth of all the unfrozen fresh water on the Earth's surface, more than all five Great Lakes together.
Which sea has no coastline?
Answer: Sargasso Sea
It's a patch of the North Atlantic marked out by ocean currents instead of land. It's named after the sargassum seaweed floating on it.
Which is the largest island in the world (not counting Australia)?
Answer: Greenland
About 2.2 million km², most of it under an ice sheet up to 3 km thick. It looks even bigger on most maps because of the way they stretch areas near the poles.
Which of these countries is partly in Europe and partly in Asia?
Answer: Turkey
The Bosphorus strait runs through Istanbul, so the city itself sits on two continents. Russia and Kazakhstan are also split between Europe and Asia.