Start from the US state that is furthest from any other (as measured from geographical centre to geographical centre). Then for each successive answer, name the most distant state that hasn't already been named.
It's not impossible that I made a mistake in my calculations, of course, but I wouldn't have posted the quiz if I didn't have confidence in them! Distances between geometric centres of irregular shapes, when projected from a sphere onto a flat surface, can be counterintuitive.
I rechecked my script, and I am very confident that the order is indeed correct. Rhode Island is 3862km from the previous answer; the next-furthest state is 3815km.
Great quiz. Question: Towards the end, it seems like the order in which you name the states matters, but it doesn't seem to at the beginning. Is that right?
I'm not understanding how Maine can be higher on this list than Alaska. Some quick eyeballing, it looks like the center of Maine is about 200 miles from the center of New Hampshire, while the center of Alaska is an order of magnitude more, at like 2000 miles from the center of Washington. What am I missing?
Please update the instructions to make it clear that the next answer is the state whose center is most distant from the center of the previous answer. The way the instructions currently read, it seems like you are looking for the state that hasnt' been named whose center is farthest from any other state. (Hence the confusion over the Maine and Rhode Island answers above.)
I was baffled too. I didn't understand the order of the answers. Finally, I read the comments and then I understood. Please consider updating and specifying the instructions.