Geotrivia - September 2023: name length chains

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Hi everyone,

welcome to the September 2023 edition of #fridaygeotrivia, our a social media geotrivia contest. which took place on Friday, 29th of September 2023 at 18:00 Berlin time, 5pm London time, 12 noon New York time.

See how to play below.

The September 2023 geotrivia question:

This month’s question again involves forming country chains.

What is the longest list of countries, such that each successive country in the chain shares a land border with and has a shorter name than the previous country?

Here’s an example chain of four: Luxembourg 🇱🇺 (10 characters) - Belgium 🇧🇪 (7) - France 🇫🇷 (6) - Spain 🇪🇸 (5). What’s the longest such chain?

Notes:

• Only one answer per toot

• As always you must include the hashtag #fridaygeotrivia and the emoji flag of the countries

• Spaces in the middle of the name count as a character. Example: “South Africa” (12)

• “The “ at the start of the country name does not count. So it is “Netherlands” (11) not “The Netherlands” (15).

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 #fridaygeotrivia Mastodon thread:

The winner

This month the prize was shared by SK53 and Ciarán Ferrie.

This month’s geotrivia answer:

Show / hide answer

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