Countries of the World Quiz and Study Guide

How many countries are there to learn?

There is no single official number. The United Nations has 193 member states and two observer states (Vatican City and Palestine). Some lists add Kosovo and Taiwan, which are recognized by many but not all countries. Geography Quiz Arcade uses 197: the 193 UN members, both observers, Kosovo and Taiwan. If your class or quiz uses a different count, the difference will be in those four.

The challenge above asks you to type as many countries as you can before the timer runs out. It is hard the first time — few people get anywhere near 197 on a first attempt — and that is the point: it shows you exactly which parts of the world you do not know yet.

What counts as a country

Sources quote 193, 195, 196 or 197, and the difference is always the same handful of places:

• Vatican City is sovereign and a permanent UN observer; it simply chooses not to be a full member.
• Palestine is also a permanent UN observer state and is recognized by most UN members, but it is not a full member.
• Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Roughly half of UN members recognize it, but Serbia and its allies, including Russia, block UN membership.
• Taiwan governs itself but has formal diplomatic ties with only about a dozen countries. China claims it, and China's veto on the Security Council blocks any application to join the UN.

The newest UN member is South Sudan, admitted in 2011. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are often called countries, but they are parts of the United Kingdom, which holds a single UN seat — no world countries quiz expects them separately. Antarctica has no countries at all; it is governed by the Antarctic Treaty.

The world, described region by region

This section describes the world map in words, so you can build a mental picture without seeing it. On our list the countries divide by continent like this:

Continent counts differ between sources because a few countries straddle boundaries — Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Cyprus are the usual ones.

Africa

Asia

Europe

North America, Central America and the Caribbean

South America

Oceania

Country names that are easy to confuse

When you type countries from memory, near-duplicates are the ones you forget to include. Learn them together:

• Niger and Nigeria — neighbors in West Africa; Niger is the large desert country to the north, Nigeria the most populous country in Africa to the south.
• Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea and Papua New Guinea — three in Africa and one in Oceania. It is easy to type one Guinea and move on.
• Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — two separate countries on either side of the Congo River.
• Sudan and South Sudan — South Sudan became independent in 2011.
• Dominica and the Dominican Republic — a small island nation in the eastern Caribbean, and the country that shares Hispaniola with Haiti.
• Austria and Australia, Slovakia and Slovenia, Iran and Iraq — different continents or different sides of a border, but similar enough to slip past when you are typing fast.

What a normal score looks like

Most adults type somewhere between 60 and 90 countries on a first attempt before the list dries up. Europe and South America come out fast; Africa, Central Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific are where people stall. After a week of practice, 130 to 160 is common. Anything over 150 is a genuinely strong score, and a full 197 typically takes four to six weeks of short daily sessions.

Can you name all 197 countries in 15 minutes?

The challenge at the top of this page gives you 15 minutes, which is 900 seconds for 197 countries: about 4.6 seconds per country if you are going to finish. Typing a name takes two or three of those seconds, so the real limit is how fast the next name comes to mind, not how fast you type.

Split by continent at that pace, the time budget looks like this:

Two habits make that budget realistic. First, go continent by continent in a fixed order rather than typing whatever comes to mind, so you never waste time wondering whether you have already entered a country. Second, sweep each region along a route — the West African coast, the Balkans from Slovenia down to Greece, the Caribbean island chain from Cuba to Trinidad and Tobago — because the next name is always the neighbour of the last one. Leave the alphabet sweep for the final two minutes to catch the stragglers.

Four ways to test the same knowledge

Naming countries is only one skill. Each of these catches different gaps, so rotate between them:

• By name — pure recall with nothing to prompt you, the hardest version: the challenge at the top of this page.
• By flag — recognition is easier than recall, which makes Flag → Country a good warm-up.
• By capital — knowing that Lusaka belongs to Zambia is a different memory from knowing where Zambia is: Capital → Country.
• By location — Click the Country is the one most people fail first.

Learn names and locations first and add capitals as a second pass. Trying to learn both at once slows down each of them.

A study plan that gets you to 197

1. Take a baseline. Play the challenge above once, cold. Note your score and which continents your misses came from.
2. One continent at a time. Start with South America (12) for a quick win, then Europe, then Asia and Africa. Use the continent speed lists: Europe, Africa, Asia.
3. Add the map. Once you can list a continent, place it with the Click the Country map quiz. Recall and location reinforce each other.
4. Chunk the hard regions. Learn the Balkans, the Caribbean, West Africa and the Pacific islands as named groups, reciting them in geographic order along a coast or chain.
5. Retest weekly. Replay the full challenge once a week and compare with your baseline.

Tips from people who have done it

• Recite along a route. Tracing the West African coast or the Caribbean chain in order is easier than recalling scattered names.
• Learn each country next to its neighbors. A country learned from a list is a floating word; one learned from its borders is anchored in three or four places at once. Burkina Faso sits directly north of Ghana; Slovenia sits directly south of Austria; Uruguay is squeezed between Brazil and Argentina.
• Use the letters. Many learners do a final sweep through the alphabet — "any countries starting with K?" — to catch stragglers such as Kiribati, Kosovo and Kyrgyzstan.
• Do not skip the microstates. Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Nauru, Tuvalu and Palau are the usual last few.
• Learn shapes last. The country silhouette quiz is a good test once names and locations are solid.

For flags and capitals of the same countries, continue with the world capitals study guide and the flags of the world study guide.