Countries, islands, maps and the odd places people call home.
About this quiz
This Geography Quiz goes well beyond naming capitals, though there are plenty of those. Expect rivers, mountains, lakes, seas and islands, time zones that behave oddly, and the planet's extremes: the most remote spot in the ocean, the highest town and the northernmost capital. One strand is about maps themselves, from the surveyors who measured whole countries to a well-known legend about old maps.
Some questions are quick wins and some are proper head-scratchers built around one odd fact about a place. A round serves 10 of them with 20 seconds each, and every answer comes with the story behind it, so even a wrong guess teaches you something about the world.
Try a few questions
Tap an answer to check it, or open the answer underneath.
A tiny rock island off Labrador, added to Canada's charts in 1976, was found in an unusual way. How?
- By studying satellite images
- From a lighthouse keeper's report
- Through a submarine's sonar sweep
- When a trawler ran aground on it
Answer: By studying satellite images
Did you know? Elizabeth Fleming of Canada's topographical survey spotted it on Landsat 1 images from 1973 and 1974, and it was named Landsat Island. When Frank Hall was lowered from a helicopter to confirm it, a polar bear swiped at him. The 25-by-45-metre rock added about 68 square kilometres to Canada's waters.
The Uros people of Lake Titicaca live on man-made floating islands. What are the islands built from?
- Layers of totora reeds
- Lashed balsa logs
- Old oil drums and planks
- Rafts of pumice stone
Answer: Layers of totora reeds
Did you know? Each island rests on blocks of buoyant totora roots topped with layer upon layer of cut reeds. The lower layers rot, so fresh reeds are added every few weeks or months. The islands began as a defence, since a settlement could be moved if danger appeared.
Reykjavík's name means 'smoky bay'. What kind of 'smoke' is the name thought to describe?
- Ash from an erupting volcano
- Steam from hot springs
- Fog rolling in off the sea
- Smoke from wildfires
Answer: Steam from hot springs
Did you know? The name joins Old Norse reykr, smoke, and vík, bay. By tradition Ingólfur Arnarson set up the first permanent Norse farm there around 874, and the plumes of steam rising from the area's geothermal springs gave the place its name.
The Rhine River empties into which sea?
- Baltic Sea
- Mediterranean Sea
- North Sea
- English Channel
Answer: North Sea
Did you know? The Rhine travels through six countries before fanning out into a broad delta in the Netherlands and draining into the North Sea near Rotterdam.
The world map al-Idrisi engraved on silver for Roger II of Sicily in 1154 looks upside down to a modern eye. Why?
- The whole map is drawn as a mirror image
- The map is centred on the south pole
- West is at the top, so Asia lies along the bottom
- South is at the top, with Africa above Europe
Answer: South is at the top, with Africa above Europe
Did you know? Al-Idrisi spent some fifteen years at the Norman court in Palermo gathering travellers' reports, and south-up was normal in the Arabic mapping tradition he worked in. The silver disc itself, said to be about two metres across, is long lost; the map survives only through copies in his book.
At the North and South Poles, there is officially no what?
- Time zone
- Daylight ever
- Solid ground anywhere
- Gravity
Answer: Time zone
Did you know? At the poles every line of longitude meets at a single point, so all time zones converge and none applies. Polar expeditions simply pick whatever time zone is convenient — often that of their home base or supply station.