When you name a county (or equivalent) of a U.S. State, all counties within 100km of its center will also be filled in.
Caution: the map is large in size, and with 3k+ answers, the page WILL BE SLOW
Distance here is the centre-centre distance using the latitude/longitude geographical centres provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. (This means for a big county, its borders may not get activated)
Another amazing quiz using this amazing template! I was puzzled that none of the Nevada or Arizona answers illuminated any neighbors, but then I read your instructions about your using centre-to-centre distances.
Yes, there was no reasonable way (without a lot more complex coding and modelling) to create a better proximity system. Since the Bureau releases these geographical centres, it’s all I really have to go on.
GIS could do this pretty quickly. I updated my national parks by proximity quiz to count all parks with any point within x distance of any point in another park and it led to much more satisfying results, especially for huge Alaska parks.
I think AZ & AK especially would benefit from that treatment here.
Really? Also when you type in George, Washington, John, Adams(when typing ad, it also gets you some so make sure to type that too), Thomas, Jefferson, you’ll get 999, then just type any singular counties, like copper river, you’ll get 1000
Tippecanoe hahahah! im sure there are more funny names but didnt read them all. As someone that is proud/happy to get even more than 5 STATES, getting 2013 is not bad. I mainly typed a few states, colors, 3 presidents, some english towns and names.
2nd time 2227 :) somebody should do "least amount of counties needed" like they do on other map quizes haha (and with the least amount of letters needed hahaha ) GOOD LUCK!
Amazing, great, simply great. I must admit I was cheating by using an open revealed all the time since I am not from USA and I still managed 2999 on the 1st try. I hope that one day I can manage 2000 by myself. Thanks for the great quiz!
2000 was really low. I've now managed to break the 3000 point threshold, by seeing what counties are green. Time to set a 3100 threshold! Amazing Quiz!
Great idea to use proximity to make the quiz more accessible. Presidents and Native American tribes will get you pretty far. Fun to see the Percent of People with Each Score on the stats.
Being a Finn the only ones I knew for sure were King (Seattle area, too much 50 shades), Orange (OC and whatnot) and Madison (Bridges of Madison County). Got 3 points too without always even being sure what was accepted as an answer.
The US county naming system seems to follow a very predictable, non-creative pattern, with the exception of the completely-obscure-namesakes bottom 10%.
I'm really surprised that 92% got Schuylkill County in Pennsylvania. Counties named after presidents, cities, etc are common guesses....but Schuylkill !!!! Schuylkill means a slow moving river. It come from the Lenape Indians who lived in my area of PA
Probably more the fact it's within the proximity of Columbia, Monroe, Wyoming as well as many english counties (Northampton and Berks for example). Remember this is by proximity not name every county!
Although I imagine there are quite a few people who know Schuylkill from the fact that announcers commentating Philadelphia sports games are constantly mentioning it—what with it and the Liberty Bell being Philadelphia's biggest landmarks.
Really enjoyable quiz. My strategy was to name the presidents, Native American tribes, saints, generals, main cities, and states in addition to the ones I actually knew. It got me 86% on my first try.
Finally finished it, with only a few seconds to spare. I had to slow down occasionally since when I typed in certain answers, it accepted them without the last letter, so when I automatically typed that last letter, it was taken to start the next answer, which wasn't right.
This was funny. I'm not american but I got over 2600 by just typing states, main cities, geographical features, presidents, colours, native tribes and common last names. Got most of the east coast that way!
I came here by clicking random, saw the map and thought, man you must be crazy to take this quiz on (as a non american) then I saw I allready took it.. ow haha! Then I saw how much I had scored and was extremely confused 2772! Huh I dont know nearly 3000 counties, maybe 3, there must be an error. But apparently creative guessing goes a long way!
Tempted to take it today now and better my score. But on tablet and every other word gets mistyped, so longer quizzes are not the best idea, everything takes twice aslong.
I love this quiz, but the way quizmaster describes it is inaccurate. All the county's neighbors are not filled in. It is not a counties by borders quiz, but a "counties' centers that are within a certain distance of other counties' centers." this has some advantages and disadvantages to it.
Interesting quiz. I got over 2,600 mostly just guessing before time ran out. I ran through counties that I know, big cities, cliche county names, English city names, US presidents, historical figures, geographical features, common and famous first/last names, Catholic saints, native tribes, state names, names of royalty, and a few other things.
Observation from employing this strategy: those in charge of naming counties around the mountain time zone states (New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Colorado) and Alaska seem to have been much more original than those naming counties elsewhere. From the midwest to the East coast and all up and down the west coast I've got almost the entire map filled in green. Though, part of this is also, undoubtedly, that this area that remained red has much larger counties, more spaced out, so fewer fill in when you guess one.
a good chunk of North Dakota, about 2/3 of Maine, the northern half of Minnesota, and the southwest of Texas are also not filled in. Got almost everything else.
Well, count me among the idiots (77% of us) who didn't get Hale County, Alabama! Honestly, 2646 is beaten by 27.8% of everyone who took this? That's amazing.
This is because as you type "White Pine", the "White" gets accepted, meaning it disappears from the input box, then you type just "Pine", which also gets accepted. You need to then retype to get "White Pine". Disadvantage to having so many counties with so many names!
I like geography, but i never studied the counties (for context: i'm European and have never been to the U.S. (yet), so i just made an attempt based on town names i know from films and such, and based on some historically famous Americans.
I got to 2173. Still flabbergasted that i got that much.
This is a fun one! I know very few counties, but guessing is ridiculously satisfying and enjoyable!!! 71% on my first attempt, with big gaps of thinking of backspacing out wrong names.
Fun to do. After the ones I knew, I just ran lists. Generals, Presidents, Colors, common last names, native American tribes, etc. And the red-nosed reindeer!
My ninth grade civics teacher had a large, pulldown map of Missouri with all the counties outlined. When we finished a lesson early, he would call two of us up to the map, name a county, and the first to find it stayed to face the next challenger. By the end of the year most of us knew all 115 counties in our state (including St. Louis City.) Decades later I still remember them and it comes in handy occasionally - like today.
Guessing only presidents by first and last name guarantees you 2435 correct including all of Vermont, Iowa, Virginia, West Virginia and Rhode Island as well as Pennsylvania and Tennessee save 1 county each
84% on first attempt. Got all in my home state and I got one of the least guessed answers from Alaska. Missed some obvious ones like where Chicago is and Miami.
Excellent quiz. If you start with the presidents and then go to colors and geographical terms it gets you a long way. But really folks you are gonna need to know or learn some Spanish and Native American names to score highly.
This was so fun and great for my memory! After many days, I can now get them all. 9:13 is my fastest, aiming for 9:00. Thanks for helping me pass the time while we're all stuck at home!
Great quiz. Any chance of making one with neighboring counties instead of proximity. Some of those counties out west are so big you have to type every one in the state.
I remember I did this with Excel using geographical centers of each county. Although I can't remember how I did it and frankly it almost broke my computer in the process (I remember it froze for a solid 3 hours while doing 9m+ calculations, and I've got a pretty decent computer!)
What an amazing and challenging quiz. It took me 96 attempts, but I finally finished it! By the way, I've visited 1620 of the 3142 counties so far, with a lifetime goal of visiting them all. Thanks for all of your hard work in putting this one together!
You literally just need to know the name of one county, then you can guess counties that are bordering it. That would get you at least 95% of the answers if you were fast enough.
Managed to get 86% without really bothering to guess specific counties and instead just typing in things that sounded likely (directions, common surnames, nineteenth century presidents, founding fathers, geographic features).
Great quiz. I’m a Brit and took this knowing maybe three or four US Counties, but found it actually great fun as so many Counties are fairly easy to guess (I won’t give any clues/hints).
Quite amazing that as of today, 8 of the 10 least guessed are in Alaska - I suppose many are too big to fill in their neighbours so you have to know them all.
Some of the listed answers for Alaska are not actually boroughs, which makes it harder to guess. They are areas that are a part of the Unorganized borough, but typing in "unorganized" doesn't capture them.
Wow, I don't know a single county in Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, or West Virginia and yet I got every single county in each of those states. I guess it's because the counties are small and many must have common names.
I'm not from the US and the only county i knew by name was Orange. Just started guessing presidents names, popular anglican men's names (eg William, George, Edward, Henry etc), colours, and major cities/states and got over 2600 thanks to the proximity feature!
There's a bit of an oversight that you can see the answers you got right before you finish the quiz so you can type the entire East Coast just by looking at the counties near the one you kenw and typing them in and then typing the new ones and then the next and so on.
The fifth point on this quiz must be the hardest single point I've ever earned! But great fun. Fell just short so many times, including once when I was only a few short and from my results realised I'd forgotten to type "Washington". smh.
--Typing in "Northwest Ar" activates 5 counties in southern Texas (Brooks, Hidalgo, Jim Hogg, Starr, and Zapata)
--A few counties in Georgia don't work correctly: Macon and McIntosh; Madison and McDuffie. For example, entering McDuffie activates McDuffie, none of the counties around McDuffie, and all of the counties around Madison, while entering Madison activates Madison, none of the counties around Madison, and all of the counties around McDuffie. There's a similar issue with Macon/McIntosh.
I know literally nothing about counties in the US but still got 2210 by just guessing names of states, cities and former presidents and common names for people and a couple native tribes. I'm pretty happy with that.
The last names of the Presidents get you 70%. 20 most common (non-hispanic) US surnames get you 51%. Combining the two gets you 73%.
I discovered of the 20 most common surnames (Wikipedia list) in the US, five do not have counties named after them: Garcia (#8), Rodriguez (9), Martinez (11), Hernandez (15) and Thompson (19).
This was the best. It took me a couple months to get them all. One question: If I enter "Lake of the Wood" it accepts it before I can finish "Woods," and then I still have to enter "Lake of the Woods," but I don't see a "Lake of the Wood" on the list.
And like many others, I really, really hate "Prince of Wales Hyder." So much typing, so little reward...lol
I love it but this quest to get the fifth point is driving me nuts! I wanted to get there on my own, but have now resorted to cheat sheets and I still cant get there. Got 3,015 this morning and it still wasn't enough!
I love this one. I've taken it 6 times already just for fun. So far, the highest score I've gotten was just over 2800.
As already stated, if you just guess all of the presidents, you will get nearly 2300. If you include the foremost President of the Continental Congress (pre actual USA president), who was John Hancock, and then far and away our most famous non-presidential founding father, Benjamin Franklin, then you are definitely over 2300.
Guess other obvious ones like basic colors (black, white, green, etc), common names like Smith, Miller, Jones, all of the Great Lakes, think of cities on the map where you haven't yet filled in green, and you should be well over 2500.
Also, some of the more prominent First Nations - Choctaw, Cherokee, Apache, Navajo, Sioux, Dakota, Lakota, etc. Really, that should take you over 2600.
All of the Presidents + common sense should get you 4 stars, easy.
Getting 5 stars on this, however, takes real knowledge. Haven't done that yet.
I think AZ & AK especially would benefit from that treatment here.
I like proximity quizes, but these are a bit too much to revise!!
Tempted to take it today now and better my score. But on tablet and every other word gets mistyped, so longer quizzes are not the best idea, everything takes twice aslong.
I got to 2173. Still flabbergasted that i got that much.
Love it!
I got all of them :)
It took a few (a lot) of tries
One of my favourite Jetpunk quizzes so far
Kudos @Stewart
Aw thats gonna hurt seeing how much i beat u by
Merci Monsieur Stewart!
i don't think its possible to get all of them
Getting closer
--Typing in "Northwest Ar" activates 5 counties in southern Texas (Brooks, Hidalgo, Jim Hogg, Starr, and Zapata)
--A few counties in Georgia don't work correctly: Macon and McIntosh; Madison and McDuffie. For example, entering McDuffie activates McDuffie, none of the counties around McDuffie, and all of the counties around Madison, while entering Madison activates Madison, none of the counties around Madison, and all of the counties around McDuffie. There's a similar issue with Macon/McIntosh.
The second seems to just be a complete confusion of M's in Georgia by me :P, they're all fixed too now.
I discovered of the 20 most common surnames (Wikipedia list) in the US, five do not have counties named after them: Garcia (#8), Rodriguez (9), Martinez (11), Hernandez (15) and Thompson (19).
And like many others, I really, really hate "Prince of Wales Hyder." So much typing, so little reward...lol
Thanks for creating this one.
Good enough
But no American County?
As already stated, if you just guess all of the presidents, you will get nearly 2300. If you include the foremost President of the Continental Congress (pre actual USA president), who was John Hancock, and then far and away our most famous non-presidential founding father, Benjamin Franklin, then you are definitely over 2300.
Guess other obvious ones like basic colors (black, white, green, etc), common names like Smith, Miller, Jones, all of the Great Lakes, think of cities on the map where you haven't yet filled in green, and you should be well over 2500.
Also, some of the more prominent First Nations - Choctaw, Cherokee, Apache, Navajo, Sioux, Dakota, Lakota, etc. Really, that should take you over 2600.
All of the Presidents + common sense should get you 4 stars, easy.
Getting 5 stars on this, however, takes real knowledge. Haven't done that yet.