US Map Quiz

Reading your results

Each state is colored by how it went. Blue means you found it on the first try, yellow means it took a second or third, and red means the quiz had to show you. A finished map is a picture of what you know: if the red bunches up in New England or across the Plains, that is the region to drill next.

Zoom with the + and - buttons, the mouse wheel or a pinch, and drag to move the map. Zooming in on the Northeast before you click saves a lot of tries lost between Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Shapes worth knowing

• Mirror pairs: Vermont and New Hampshire are wedges pointing opposite ways. Vermont is wider at the top, New Hampshire wider at the bottom.
• Stacked pairs: North Dakota sits on top of South Dakota, and North Carolina on top of South Carolina. North really is north.
• Panhandles: Oklahoma's runs west toward New Mexico, Idaho's runs north to Canada, and Florida's runs west along the coast.
• Michigan comes in two pieces: the mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula, which touches Wisconsin.
• The Four Corners: Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet at one point, the only place in the country where four states do.
• Kentucky sits directly on top of Tennessee. Tennessee is the long, narrow one below, stretching from the Appalachians to the Mississippi River.

Where the misclicks happen

Most wrong clicks are neighbors swapped. Mississippi and Alabama are the classic pair: the Mississippi River runs down the west side of Mississippi, so the state on the river is Mississippi and the one to its east is Alabama. Kansas and Nebraska are another. Nebraska is the northern one, and its western end is narrower where Colorado cuts a corner out of it.

In the East, Maryland and Delaware share a peninsula. Delaware is the small state on its east side, and Maryland wraps around Chesapeake Bay. Further north, Massachusetts runs east to west across the top of both Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Learn it in this order

Start with the outline states you already know: Florida, Texas, California, Michigan, Maine. Then fill in the coasts, then the Great Lakes states, and leave the middle for last. The center of the map is easier once everything around it is fixed, because each square state is defined by what surrounds it.

Other modes and related quizzes

Click is the default, but the same map also does Type (a state is highlighted and you name it), Choice (four options from the same part of the country), Type them all and Learn. Washington, D.C. is a federal district, not a state, and is optional.

To list every state from memory with no map prompting you, use the 50 states quiz. For capitals, go to the states and capitals quiz. Teachers can print the blank US map, or the US map worksheet, a numbered map with answer lines and an answer key, for the same practice on paper.

All the states and capitals in this quiz

The 50 states. Washington, D.C. is a federal district and is optional. Borders and names policy.

Names and capitals: CIA World Factbook (final edition), checked against Wikidata and Natural Earth. State capitals: Wikidata and Natural Earth, which must agree. Flags: flag-icons, each checked against Wikimedia Commons. See sources. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.