in which I earn my geography geek badge

[martasfic]

Someone apparently asked Brits to label a map of US states. It’s pretty funny. To be fair, there are an awful lot of them, and many look entirely too alike.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/robinedds/its-thanksgiving-so-we-asked-some-brits-to-label-the-us-stat

Curious at how well I would do, I hunted down a quiz on US states and took it myself. There were several, but on the one I attempted I got 98%. The one state I missed was Michigan, which I confused with Minnesota. I actually knew the state they were asking for as “the one with Detroit in it” and where I took Greyhound and visited a friend one New Year’s while I lived in Cleveland. I just have this thing where I swap similar sounding names or shapes that are close to each other. So in this case I knew what the state was and where it was on the map, but got the names switched in my head.

I can’t complain, though, because I lucked out and got New Hampshire/Vermont and Iowa/Wisconsin and Mississippi/Alabama correct. Which really, I shouldn’t have. Law of averages and all that. Still, I think I’m better at this than a lot of people, not because I’m a map geek (there’s that, too). Rather, I grew up with a Tandy Commodore computer, and one of the games was to match state names to a map. Incidentally, that’s the same reason I can type as quick as I can. Someone had to protect the skyline from those aliens, you know.

I’m not nearly so good on the Europe map - 67% at the point I gave up. I’d be curious how many of my European friends can pick their Slovenia from their Belarus, to say nothing of their San Marino from their Liechtenstein. You guys have a hard map. Although I suspect Wyoming and Colorado would be just as puzzling to many non-Americans.

How would you do on these quizzes? Any surprises?

And do check out the Buzzfeed post. The ones toward the bottom are pretty hilarious.

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.