Higher or Lower: Area

Pick the country with the larger land area.

Two countries, one question: which covers more land? People misjudge area even more badly than population, and in a different direction.

The distortion behind the errors

Most people's mental world map comes from the Mercator projection, which is fine for navigation and badly wrong for size. It stretches everything as you move away from the Equator, which means high-latitude countries look far larger than they are and equatorial ones look far smaller.

That single fact explains most wrong answers in this quiz.

The specific corrections

Africa is far larger than it looks. On a Mercator map Greenland appears comparable to Africa. In reality Africa is many times larger. Algeria alone — the largest country in Africa — is bigger than most people's estimate by a wide margin.

Greenland is much smaller than it appears, for the same reason and to the same degree.

Russia is genuinely enormous and this is the one case where the intuition is right, though people still underestimate the gap between it and everyone else.

Kazakhstan is much larger than it feels. It is the largest landlocked country in the world and outranks every country in Western Europe combined in area terms.

Scandinavian countries look bigger than they are. High latitude, Mercator stretch.

Countries that trade places by measure

Some pairs flip depending on whether you are comparing area or population, which is what makes this quiz a useful complement to the population version:

Algeria is the largest African country by area; Nigeria is the largest by population.
Canada is second in the world by area and far down the list by population.
Bangladesh is small in area and very large in population.

The anchors to hold

Roughly: Russia is in a tier of its own; Canada, China, the United States and Brazil form the next tier; Australia and India follow; Argentina, Kazakhstan, Algeria and the DR Congo make up the tier after that. Below those, you are into countries where relative size genuinely needs to be learned.

Having those four tiers turns a coin flip into an estimate.

Frequently asked questions

What is the largest country in Africa?

Algeria. It became the largest after South Sudan's independence split Sudan in 2011. Most people guess Sudan, Egypt or the DR Congo, which is one of the most reliable traps in area quizzes.

Why does Greenland look so big on maps?

The Mercator projection stretches land area increasingly as you move away from the Equator. Greenland sits at very high latitude and appears comparable to Africa, when Africa is in fact many times larger.

What is the largest landlocked country?

Kazakhstan, by a wide margin, followed by Mongolia. Kazakhstan borders the Caspian Sea, but the Caspian is an enclosed body of water with no ocean outlet, so the country still counts as landlocked.

How is this different from the population quiz?

Area and population rankings are almost unrelated. Canada is second in the world by area and far down by population; Bangladesh is the reverse. Playing both back to back is the quickest way to see how little the two have to do with each other.

Play Higher or Lower: Area offline in the app

Higher or Lower: Area and the rest of the arcade are in the free Geography Quiz Arcade app: Get it on Google Play · Download on the App Store.