Just for fun

104

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site

I have no intention of filling this blog with quizzes, however I'll make an exception to this one. It's particularly addictive. You have 5 minutes to type in as many countries as you can think of. The clock starts counting as soon as the page loads so immediately you'll find yourself frantically typing away. Of course, that's half the catch right there - this is not so much as an exercise in geographical knowledge than it is an exercise in speed-typing.

Another challenge is that there is only one correct name for each country. You wouldn't think this would be a problem, that is, until you run into it. For example, it will only accept United States, not USA or The United States of America. Northern Ireland, Scotland, or England doesn't register, only United Kingdom does. I never bothered with Great Britain. St Lucia doesn't accept, but Saint Lucia does. And so on. And of course, since spelling, spacing and punctuation counts, if you forget exactly how many letter L's and P's are in the Philippines, you could waste a good 10 seconds just typing it out until the answer accepts. Needless to say, when you type in Azerbaijan or Uzbekistan in one try, it's particularly pleasing! :) However, I did notice that the more I thought up all the "obscure" countries like Turkmenistan, I realized that I failed to remember the more "obvious" countries, like Belgium.

Another funny observation is that when I attempted this test more than once, I noticed how I fell back on similar psychological patterns. I usually start at the top of my local geographical realm: Canada. Then I'll head south to the United States and Mexico. It's in Mexico where I hear The Beach Boys song "Kokomo" in my head: "Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya to Bermuda, Bahamas...". However, that's often where that pattern ends. By then I might realize that I missed Greenland and Iceland. And then I'll want to continue across to the Scandinavian countries and across Europe. Or if I keep with my tropical island theme, I'll often mentally jump across the world to Fiji and will attempt the southern hemisphere in reverse: New Zealand, Australia, then Papua New Guinea. But before I make my way to Malaysia or Indonesia, my mind keeps screaming (thanks to Papua New Guinea) "Equatorial Guinea" or just "Guinea"! And then Equatorial Guinea would remind me of Ecuador and so I'd feverishly type out every country of South America.

I get so caught up in these mental maps that usually by the end of 5 minutes, I still had more countries to type out. But just recognizing these mental map clusters are half the fun.

104 countries in 5 minutes is my best record in 5 tries.