Everyone Needs To Take More Map Quizzes

Welcome back to Saturday Night Social. 

It was recently brought to my attention that, among many millennials and Gen-Z’ers, there are a concerning number of individuals that don’t know—and have never known!—that Montenegro is a country. 

The cartographic slight in question first came up after a friend of mine had been visiting Croatia and decided to take the two-hour ferry across the Balkans, and found, to their delight, Montenegro was an unreal land of sceneries exceeding the views of the Grand Canyon. “I had no idea it existed,” he told me. Upon further investigation, I found he was not alone. 

Now, part of this can be attributed to the fact that Montenegro is a relatively young country—gaining independence only in 2006. But! I’d argue that in the formative years of our (millennials and Gen-Z’ers) map-building knowledge, we probably should have learned about it at some point or another.

All this should also come as no surprise, given the age-old stereotype that Americans are born to have bad geography skills, only about half actually possess a passport (up fourfold from just two decades ago), and “History” is frequently ranked as one of the weakest subjects in schools. Alas, I myself have confronted this unfortunate truth several times. During college, while majoring (at one point) in both international relations and criminology, it was genuinely shocking how many aspiring police officers did not know Tajikistan was also a country—or that the European Union is a ’90s baby. 

So, inspired by this seeming geographical-literacy crisis, here’s some fun weekend plans, suggested from me to you: Take a map quiz! We could all do with a little brain refresh, after all. And I’m getting tired of the New York Times’ Wordle’s pshaw’ing bullshit.

And, as we all know, I adore quirky puzzling as much as the next person—so honestly, I’d suggest Sporcle’s Countries of the World quiz most. And—pause—because I’m about to take it, and so should you, and we’ll share with each other our results. (Context: I haven’t played this in about 14 months.) 

this is how it feels to nail a geography sporcle quiz pic.twitter.com/ZtC0rMWv64

— legs (@ESCLegs) February 9, 2026

Returning here to say I got about 147 countries, though I wasted about 54 seconds trying to spell “Kyrgyzstan” correctly. And that I somehow literally forgot about Russia. Also, I’ll always forget that it’s the “Vatican City” and not “Rome.” Damn. I’m recommending map quizzes to myself as well as everyone.

Now, there are various levels of map freak—ranging from the kinds who have flight-trackers on their phone; the ones that are clinically addicted to Google Street view (Geoguessr was just a phase!); and the kinds who put it on their plane screen for long-haul trips—and they all exist in a Venn Diagram. And as long as you’re somewhere on there, you’re doing something right. So, go ahead, get yourself affiliated with your closest map. It’s as good a weekend plan as any.