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Most Populous Countries By Category

For each category, name the country with the largest population.
Answer must correspond to yellow box
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: November 19, 2023
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First submittedMay 28, 2018
Times taken61,409
Average score60.0%
Rating4.64
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Category
Country
in the world
India
in the world (year 2000)
China
entirely in Europe
Germany
in Africa
Nigeria
landlocked
Ethiopia
entirely on islands
Indonesia
Spanish-speaking
Mexico
with an average elevation
less than 50 meters
Netherlands
less than 1,000 km2
Singapore
less than 40,000 km2
Taiwan
Category
Country
Arabic-speaking
Egypt
whose name starts with H
Haiti
in Central America
Guatemala
with a 4 letter name
Iran
without land borders
Japan
in Oceania
Australia
with no rivers
Saudi Arabia
Portuguese-speaking
Brazil
with no standing army
Costa Rica
with more immigrants
than citizens
United Arab Emirates
61 Comments
+15
Level 76
May 28, 2018
Great quiz
+18
Level 68
May 29, 2018
Fantastic idea! Great mix of answers and some which require a lot of thinking
+7
Level 76
Jun 3, 2018
Missed one - Costa Rica - and got Taiwan by a lucky guess. Very challenging quiz!
+18
Level 73
Jun 5, 2018
Good quiz, but I had absolutely no idea about the sizes. Without knowing the size of at least one country it's pure pot luck, beyond the assumption the first is 'pretty small' and the second is 'slightly small'.
+5
Level 88
Jul 9, 2018
Maybe it's because I haven't had my coffee yet, but what is the difference between a country "entirely on islands" and a country "without land borders"?
+26
Level 66
Jul 9, 2018
A country made up entirely of islands could have borders with another country which is also an island.
+31
Level 88
Jul 9, 2018
Yup, that makes sense now that I've had my java.
+9
Level 80
Oct 25, 2020
Incidentally Java is in the most populous country located entirely on islands.
+2
Level 28
Feb 25, 2024
No, it's the most populous island. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-_QUBDxIgm-tqAI7QmKKu-5LH0rm0cky
+1
Level 50
Feb 27, 2024
Java the country
+2
Level 61
Oct 25, 2020
But it's still a border on land isn't it? Shouldn't "mainland border" be used instead of just "border"?
+4
Level 74
Oct 27, 2020
Indonesia has land borders, but only on islands; Japan has no land borders at all. Indonesia is more populous than Japan, so wins the "islands" category, but it doesn't qualify for the "no land borders" category.
+3
Level 65
Jul 9, 2018
Indonesia is entirely on islands but shares a land border with Malaysia and East Timor
+10
Level 80
Jul 9, 2018
Thats why Fuanacdc needed Java
+1
Level 81
Oct 25, 2020
Borneo or Timor would have been more helpful clearing that up than Java.
+2
Level 83
Jan 18, 2021
He is referring to coffee. It's like a joke. You know what jokes are?
+4
Level 62
Oct 19, 2022
EcceHomo’s comment is quite ironic
+1
Level 33
Jul 9, 2018
That threw me too and I missed Japan because of it but Indonesia borders Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Brunei, and Timor Leste but is entirely on islands while Japan doesn’t have any land borders.
+5
Level 72
Oct 13, 2018
Nitpick: Brunei doesn't border Indonesia.
+1
Level 75
Jul 9, 2018
Read the clue "whose name starts with H" and then for some reason I read the next clue as connected to that one and couldn't figure out why Honduras wasn't working. Wasted a lot of time trying different spellings thinking someone had made an error. Silly brain.
+2
Level 42
Oct 27, 2020
I answered Haiti for both
+2
Level 56
Jul 9, 2018
I got half of them... fail
+2
Level 81
Jul 9, 2018
Hmmm - I am an immigrant to a country of which I have now become a citizen.
+2
Level 50
Jul 19, 2018
Taiwan is not a country
+22
Level 64
Jan 29, 2020
it is
+1
Level 20
Feb 25, 2024
yeah it's an independent island country off the coast of China

Its known to as ' The Republic of China ' or ' Chinese Taipei ' too

+9
Level 74
Sep 6, 2019
Wow. I know it's mostly desert but I still find it unique that a country as big as Saudi Arabia doesn't have a single river!
+5
Level 70
Oct 25, 2020
That threw me off too
+2
Level 39
Feb 15, 2020
no idea how i knew the costa rica one
+2
Level 82
Oct 25, 2020
Wow! That 40000km2 question...type in as many medium-sized countries in you can with the time left.
+1
Level 73
Oct 25, 2020
Got it with two seconds left. Great quiz!
+1
Level 74
Oct 25, 2020
Great one!
+1
Level 48
Oct 25, 2020
Great quiz, one of my favourites on here.
+1
Level 60
Oct 25, 2020
nice one matey
+1
Level 64
Oct 25, 2020
I am really proud of myself, I got it on my first try.

I really liked the quiz.

Thanks a lot

+4
Level 81
Oct 25, 2020
Fun quiz. Kinda forgot Japan existed for a brief moment and was frustrated Philippines wasn't working. Which is awkward, since I literally have a degree in Japanese language and history.
+2
Level 60
Oct 26, 2020
thats actually very impressive, japanese is extremely hard to learn and almost nobody can speak it except native speakers
+1
Level 42
Oct 27, 2020
I find Japanese far easier to speak (due to a low number of sounds) than to read. 3 alphabets is a bit of a turnoff with learning a language
+1
Level 73
Mar 29, 2025
It does seem like overkill, but once you give it a go you can learn it quite easily, just in a couple of days you could get 80% of it down. There will always be a couple the resist lol.

It helps when you try to see relevant things in the symbols, this could be letters or a picture (which would helpfully start with the same sound).

+1
Level 65
Feb 25, 2024
This is not true at all
+1
Level 73
Mar 29, 2025
I am learning Japanese and I found it quite easy to learn so far. I haven't had a chance to test my knowledge in real life, so I have no idea how good or bad my pronunciation will be. But as Brenno said the sounds are pretty straightforward and consistent.

I feel like for me any of the other Asian languages would be harder to learn, but since I haven't give them a go, it is mainly based on a feeling (though I do spend time on wiktionary comparing all kinds of words in all kind of language, so have at least sóme exposure and of course, the clips of footage you see on documentaries and news etc)

+3
Level 48
Apr 1, 2021
Surely the most populated country with an average altitude of less than 50m is Bangladesh?
+2
Level 82
May 18, 2021
Seconded. Bangladesh's average elevation is 28 meters.
+3
Level 63
Jan 26, 2022
I thought it was Bangladesh too. I googled it and it says 30 feet, which is about 9 meters. But Wikipedia has a list of countries by average elevation and it says Bangladesh is 85 meters. So I guess different sources measure it differently.
+1
Level 44
Mar 19, 2022
ikr
+3
Level 68
Jun 20, 2021
How can a country have 0 rivers such an odd fact
+1
Level 61
Feb 27, 2024
desert
+2
Level 65
Jun 24, 2021
I am so stupid…. Thought it was islands…
+3
Level 62
Oct 19, 2022
I thought it was cities
+1
Level 65
Sep 14, 2023
now you can remove the 2030 thing.
+2
Level 67
Nov 17, 2023
I believe the first one is India now, no?
+3
Level 70
Feb 25, 2024
Has Mexico been thrown out of Central America? If you mean “América Central” or “Centroamérica,” neither of which include Mexico, it seems that should be specified, since this is an English language quiz. But in the US (at least when I was in school), we were taught that Central America includes Mexico and the seven countries between Mexico and Colombia; and that Central America is part of North America. Perhaps the teaching has changed?
+3
Level 84
Feb 25, 2024
I have never heard Central America be defined so as to include Mexico.
+2
Level ∞
Feb 25, 2024
Nothing has changed.
+1
Level 68
Feb 26, 2024
Mexico is considered to be part of Latin America which is basically most of the Western Hemisphere south of the US. Central America includes the countries on the continent of the North American landmass south of Mexico.
+1
Level 23
Feb 27, 2024
The subdivisions of the Americas have been traditionally arbitrary and less consensual than one may think, depending on where/when you attended your geography lessons. In countries that follow(ed) the British pedagogy in defining continents, North and South America are defined as two separate continents, with North and Central America, as well as all the islands of the Caribbean associated with North America. In other countries, such as in Latin Europe, the whole of America is considered as a continent, "América" or "Américas" then subdivided into regions: North, Central and South America. While Mexico integrates the North American continental model in the schooling system of the USA, it definitely figures as part of the Central American region in Portugal and Spain for example (though some sports writers in the last FIFA World Cup wrongly referred to the Mexicans as "sul-americanos" and the members of Team USA as "norte-americanos", oblivious to Canada's presence in the competition).
+1
Level 20
Feb 25, 2024
Scoring

You scored 12/20 = 60%

This beats or equals 51.5% of test takers

The average score is 12

Your high score is 12

+1
Level 70
Feb 25, 2024
Haiti (11M people) also has no army since 1995. So it beats Costa Rica (5 million).

PS cool quiz, just give us more time to think about the answers!

+1
Level 71
Feb 25, 2024
Haiti’s army was actually brought back in 2017.
+1
Level 23
Feb 27, 2024
Got 16. Came short with Haiti, Costa Rica (that was a hard one, l immediately thought of the Swiss as having no regular army), Iran (where l thought Peru was the 4-letter one) and of course, landlocked Ethiopia (there l went for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).
+1
Level 45
Mar 12, 2025
what country borders australia