Blog > Monthly Geo Trivia questions

Hi everyone,

welcome to the December 2022 edition of #fridaygeotrivia!

As is our tradition, on the final Friday of month we run a social media geotrivia contest. We played on Friday, 30th of December at 16:00 Berlin time, 3pm London time, 10am New York time. This was the first edition of the game played on Mastodon rather than Twitter. See below for how to play.

As always, after the game is over we post the answers and winners here on the blog.

Prizes

#fridaygeotrivia is a game with two prizes:

  1. the sheer joy of geographic knowledge and pedantry.

  2. the bragging rights of getting the answer first.

The December 2022 geotrivia question:

Lots of countries have long official names, but in day to day usage we use shorter names. For example people rarely talk about “The Federal Republic of Germany”, instead they just say “Germany”. Which leads to our question - name countries that, in common English usage - have a “short name” with at least two words. For example “Saudi Arabia”. Countries that are commonly abbreviated, for example “USA” do NOT count.

Remember: to get the points you need the #fridaygeotrivia hashtag AND the emoji flag of the country. And only one answer per response. And no cheating by looking at country lists.

The #fridaygeotrivia Mastodon thread:

The winner

To be honest, the answers came in very fast and furious and Mastodon doesn’t make it super simple to get an overview of all responses. Having a typo in the hashtag when I posted the question also didn’t help.

Nevertheless, as per the strict rules above, we will embrace the chaos and declare first place a tie between: Dave McLaughlin and rubpec. Well done! Just behind those two, third place is shared between Colin Angus and Ryan.

Many thanks to everyone who played. See you next month (on the 27th of Jan, 2023).

This month’s geotrivia answer:

  • AG: # Antigua and Barbuda
  • AS: # American Samoa
  • AX: # Åland Islands
  • BA: # Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • BF: # Burkina Faso
  • BL: # Saint Barthélemy
  • BQ: # Caribbean Netherlands
  • BS: # The Bahamas
  • BV: # Bouvet Island
  • CC: # Cocos Islands
  • CF: # Central African Republic
  • CG: # Congo-Brazzaville
  • CI: # Côte d'Ivoire
  • CK: # Cook Islands
  • CR: # Costa Rica
  • CV: # Cabo Verde
  • CX: # Christmas Island
  • CZ: # Czech Republic
  • DO: # Dominican Republic
  • EH: # Western Sahara
  • FK: # Falkland Islands
  • FO: # Faroe Islands
  • GB: # United Kingdom
  • GF: # French Guiana
  • GM: # The Gambia
  • GQ: # Equatorial Guinea
  • GS: # South Georgia
  • GW: # Guinea-Bissau
  • HK: # Hong Kong
  • HM: # Heard Island
  • IO: # Diego Garcia
  • KN: # Saint Kitts
  • KP: # North Korea
  • KR: # South Korea
  • KY: # Cayman Islands
  • LC: # Saint Lucia
  • LK: # Sri Lanka
  • MF: # Saint Martin
  • MH: # Marshall Islands
  • MK: # North Macedonia
  • MP: # Northern Mariana Islands
  • MV: # The Maldives
  • NC: # New Caledonia
  • NF: # Norfolk Island
  • NL: # The Netherlands
  • NZ: # New Zealand
  • PF: # French Polynesia
  • PG: # New Guinea
  • PG: # The Philippines
  • PM: # Saint Pierre and Miquelon
  • PN: # Pitcairn Island
  • PR: # Puerto Rico
  • SA: # Saudi Arabia
  • SB: # Solomon Islands
  • SC: # The Seychelles
  • SH: # Saint Helena
  • SJ: # Svalbard and Jan Mayen
  • SL: # Sierra Leone
  • SM: # San Marino
  • SS: # South Sudan
  • ST: # São Tomé
  • SV: # El Salvador
  • SX: # Sint Maarten
  • TC: # Turks and Caicos
  • TL: # East Timor
  • TT: # Trinidad and Tobago
  • VA: # Vatican City
  • VC: # Saint Vincent
  • VG: # British Virgin Islands
  • VI: # US Virgin Islands
  • WF: # Wallis and Futuna
  • ZA: # South Africa

How to play

Anyone can join in, you just need a Mastodon account.

  • Follow us on Mastodon, our account is @opencage@en.osm.town

  • When the game starts we will post the question here on the blog and on Mastodon, and will embed the Mastodon question here. We highly recommend using a mastodon client you feel comfortable with. We’ve made the switch to the Elk client and are loving it, but use whatever works for you.

  • Reply to the question thread on Mastodon (it will be embedded above) using the hashtag #fridaygeotrivia in your answer.

  • Only one answer per response (don’t stuff multiple answers into a single reply).

  • Our definition of “country” is usually (it depends on the question) any place with an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code. Read more background about ISO and country codes in our guide.

  • To get full points for an answer it is good form not just to name the relevant country but (if possible) to include the emoji flags of the country.

  • While you can use a map, please do NOT use the internet to just search for an answer. That is cheating and will lead to seriously bad geokarma.

Some people have complained that the format is a bit chaotic and hard to follow. Yes. The mad chaos is part of the fun. Embrace it. The goal is just to have fun and learn. We win by playing

Thanks for playing,

Ed