In this quiz you have 194 as "independent" - Kosovo has not been assigned an ISO code and is therefore missing from this quiz, and you list Taiwan as "not independent".
Yep, thanks for spotting that. Fixed the description. I counted them before finding and correcting two mistakes in Wikipedia article. (For some reason Cayman and Bermuda were listed as independent there.)
That's what I had initially, but I strive for correct country names in this quiz. And while (according to Wikipedia) Saint Vincent and the Grenadines "is also known simply as Saint Vincent", I haven't found any evidence in favour of 'Saint Kitts' being used to reference the whole country as opposed to the island that is but a part of it.
Same goes for Antigua and Barbuda, Sao Tome and Principe, and others.
Allowing 'St' instead of 'Saint' is already a stretch. :)
"St. Vincent" is generally accepted as shorthand for the country on the island of St. Vincent. Try that in the Grenadines though! I don't mind your general position at all. It did lead me to miss the UK territory in the south Atlantic Ocean, since I guessed South Georgia Islands and South Sandwich Islands. But that's fine - I learned as a result that they're grouped together as an administrative territory. I was also stuck forever on Oceania - the space remaining fit Wake Island. Again, I wasn't aware of the correct administrative territory.
The correct title is 'French Southern and Antarctic lands' - that should be a type-in at least. There seems to be no consistency concerning the treatment of non-populated territories - some are included (South Georgia, Heard and McDonald, French Southern....) while others (Coral Sea Islands, Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Clipperton Island) are not. Likewise if Kosovo is excluded then Taiwan and Palestine should be too - although I would include all three of them. And the countries that are unrecognised but exercise sovereignty... South Ossetia, North Cyprus, Somaliland etc)
You really should be more accepting with type-ins, it's pretty unreasonable to expect someone to type "South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands" instead of just "South Georgia" or "South Sandwich Islands". You should also accept stuff in its normal English spelling, like "Saint Martin" for both the French and Dutch parts, or "Saint Bartholomew" or "Saint Bart" for Saint Barthelemy.
I get your drift (and other commenters' too), but I like this quiz the way it is – that is, to test knowing the proper names of the countries, as opposed to just knowing vaguely what they sound like. For really long names, correct abbreviations are accepted, in this case "SGSSI".
"Sint Maarten" is the proper English spelling of the Dutch part of the island of Saint Martin. The French part is named the same as the whole island, true, but for me it makes no sense to accept the name of the French part for both of the countries.
"St Bart(h)s" is accepted, because the Wikipedia lists it in bold, unlike other variants.
They are all called countries, but are not a sovereign state or dependent territory; country is just a title for a subdivision. Therefore, these are all encoded in ISO 3166-2, for subdivisions, as GB-ENG, GB-WLS, GB-SCO and GB-NIR respectively.
I doubt it'll ever get featured, judging by the dynamics... Maybe in some distant future I'll relax it, but for now, I've made the disclaimer about correct spellings more prominent. :)
I really like this quiz. As most geo-fans on here can do the countries of the world quizzes in their various formats but this also has the other territories, islands and regions. I got 227 and knew of around ten more of the ones I got wrong. Thanks a lot.,
While most would heartily agree, it is unfortunately not (officially) a sovereign nation by the required standard. And won’t be while the PRC has a veto on the UNSC.
Just a point : The orthograph of "French guiana" is pretty puzzling to me, and made me lose a bitof time.
In french, we say "Guyane Française" with a y, in english and many other languages, the nearby independent country is called "Guyana" with a y.
So the "Guiana" with an i, is very disturbing. I understand that it is the orthograph of the ISO norm. But maybe you could accept the orthograph with a y.
I don't quite agree with your rules on type-ins, but I respect them. However, if you accept Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, and East Timor, you should accept Saint Martin for Sint Maarten. Despite what Wikipedia has, none of these English names are accepted by their governments to my knowledge, but they're all fairly common.
I understand you are trying to use Wikipedia as a standard, but it doesn't seem right to allow Congo for R. Congo but not D. R. Congo and Virgin Islands for BVT but not for USVT.
(If you're open to loosening your restrictions, I don't think it would be overkill to include acronyms like NZ, DR, and ROK.)
The official name for French Southern Territories is French Southern and Antarctic Lands, which doesn't work. Also by the standard of Tristan da Cunha etc., I would take an answer like Kerguelen as well.
Same goes for Antigua and Barbuda, Sao Tome and Principe, and others.
Allowing 'St' instead of 'Saint' is already a stretch. :)
"Sint Maarten" is the proper English spelling of the Dutch part of the island of Saint Martin. The French part is named the same as the whole island, true, but for me it makes no sense to accept the name of the French part for both of the countries.
"St Bart(h)s" is accepted, because the Wikipedia lists it in bold, unlike other variants.
Just a point : The orthograph of "French guiana" is pretty puzzling to me, and made me lose a bitof time.
In french, we say "Guyane Française" with a y, in english and many other languages, the nearby independent country is called "Guyana" with a y.
So the "Guiana" with an i, is very disturbing. I understand that it is the orthograph of the ISO norm. But maybe you could accept the orthograph with a y.
I think 'Guiana' is not only the ISO norm, but general English as well, at least from the look of the Wikipedia entry...
I'd like to keep it separate from 'Guyana'. How about adding 'Guyane' as a type-in?
Congratulations on sticking to your guns on type-ins and English language spellings.
Unfortunately, quizmaster has made a lot of people soft by allowing these type-ins on other quizzes, but your quiz is a truer test of their knowledge.
I understand you are trying to use Wikipedia as a standard, but it doesn't seem right to allow Congo for R. Congo but not D. R. Congo and Virgin Islands for BVT but not for USVT.
(If you're open to loosening your restrictions, I don't think it would be overkill to include acronyms like NZ, DR, and ROK.)