North America Country Shapes Quiz

About this quiz

Some countries are famous for their shape: the boot of Italy, the long thin ribbon of Chile along the Pacific, the jagged coast of Norway. Others are much harder. Could you tell Paraguay from Uruguay, or Chad from Niger, by their outline alone? In this quiz you see the shape of one country, with no names, borders or neighbours, and choose the right country from four, all from the same part of the world.

Each outline has north at the top and keeps the islands close to the mainland, such as Sicily and Sardinia with Italy or Corsica with France; lands far away, such as Alaska, Hawaii or French Guiana, are left out. Very small countries and tiny island nations, which would be little more than a dot, are not in this quiz. At the end of the round you see every shape you missed, with its flag.

North America

North America’s shapes run from huge to small: Canada with its maze of Arctic islands, the United States (shown here with its 48 neighbouring states), Mexico curving down to the Yucatán Peninsula, and Greenland, the largest island in the world. Panama is the S-shaped bend that joins the continent to South America, and Cuba is the long, thin island that is the biggest in the Caribbean.

Map outlines: Natural Earth (public domain).