So, the thing about maps…

(Jeffrey Cranor here.) I love maps. Always have. If I find a globe in an antique shop, that’s gonna be my next 20 minutes. 

I play Worldle every day. Not wordle (though I play that too). No, WorLdle with that extra L in there. If you haven’t played it before it give you the shape of a country and you have 6 guesses to get it right. Each time you miss, it tells you how many km away and in what direction the correct country is in. 

I’m batting 1000 at this game with over 95% correct in one try. I also know the world capitals and probably 90% of world flags. Sometimes I get tripped up by the island constituencies/territories. Not stuff like Micronesia or Tonga or Saint Lucia, but shit like Christmas Island, Walls and Fortuna, and Guernsey. 

Anyway, the point is that geographical games are a fun little escape for me. But years of doing this, I realize even the trivia is treacherous. What is the shape of Belize to a Belizean versus a Guatemalan? What about the shape of Guyana, or Palestine, or Armenia? And most recently, what’s the name of the giant gulf between the US and Mexico, and is Taiwan a sovereign nation? I have my own answers to those questions because I love silly trivia (and because I root for the underdogs).

So it’s hard to just relax and have fun with maps anymore. And I can’t really blame the maps. They’re just a visual representation of a broad political climate. It’s me who has gotten older and more informed, more concerned with the changes in nationhood. And I guess it’s possible to still enjoy map trivia while understanding that there’s a story to every single border. Some of those stories are boring (there’s a river there), and some are horrifying (there was a war there), and it’s all part of the game, as it were.

Anyway, I started this post as a fun way to share some of my favorite map facts/trivia, and it turned into a pensive examination of the politics of cartography. Oops! 

Here we go. Enjoy! See if you can answer these without a map, and also please share your fun map facts below.

1. Which is further west: Atlanta or Detroit?
2. Which US state is closest to the continent of Africa?
3. T/F: Oregon and Florida are in the same time zone.
4. Approximately what percentage of Canadian residents live further south than Seattle, Washington?
A) 0% B) 20% C) 40% D) 60% 
5/ Which US City has the same latitude as Rome, Italy?
A) Honolulu B) Miami C) Oklahoma City D) Chicago E) Juneau

Answers:

1. Atlanta; 2. Maine; 3. Mostly False, but during the transition from daylight savings time to standard time (“fall back”) the panhandle of Florida, which is in the Central Time Zone falls back, and for one hour, the Central Time Zone is in the same time as Mountain, which is where Eastern Oregon is. So for one hour once a year, parts of Oregon and Florida are in the same time zone; 4. D; 5. D