🧩 Country Shapes of the Americas Quiz
Name the country from its outline, with no labels and no borders to help you.
36 country outlines from the Americas, with no labels and no borders drawn in. 12 of them are islands with no land border at all, and 2 are landlocked.
Country Shapes of the Americas Quiz at a glance
- Outlines to identify
- 36
- Islands with no land border
- 12
- Landlocked
- 2
- Largest outline
- Canada
- Smallest outline
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
Country Shapes against real people, on the same questions — no account needed. New country shapes rooms start every 5 minutes, rotating through regions.
Reading the Americas by outline
The Americas split the difficulty in two. The mainland countries have some of the most recognisable outlines on Earth, and then there are the twelve island nations of the Caribbean, which are small, similar, and where most of the points in this round actually go. Only two countries here are landlocked.
The famous silhouettes
- Chile. The longest, thinnest country in the world — over 4,000 km down the Pacific coast and rarely more than 200 km wide.
- Panama. A flattened S lying on its side, joining two continents.
- Mexico. Tapers from a broad north to a narrow waist, with the long thin Baja California peninsula on the west and the blunt Yucatán on the east.
- Brazil. Simply enormous — it takes up nearly half of South America and borders every country on the continent except Chile and Ecuador.
- Cuba. A long thin island curving across the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, much longer than any of its Caribbean neighbours.
The two landlocked countries
Bolivia and Paraguay are the only countries in the Americas with no coastline, which makes them easy to narrow down the moment you see an outline with no sea. Bolivia is the larger and more angular of the two, with a notch in its western border where the Andes run; Paraguay is smaller, rounder and sits between Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. Bolivia lost its coast to Chile in the nineteenth century and still maintains a navy on Lake Titicaca.
The Caribbean, where the points are
- Hispaniola is two countries. Haiti takes the western third, with two arms reaching out like a claw. The Dominican Republic takes the larger eastern two-thirds. An outline of either is a partial island, never a whole one.
- The small islands. Barbados, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis — at this scale they are little more than blobs, and telling them apart by outline alone is the hardest thing in this round. Their relative positions in the arc are a better guide than their shapes.
- Trinidad and Tobago. The southern end of the arc, sitting just off the Venezuelan coast — a square-ish main island with a smaller one to the north-east.
The northern coast of South America
Guyana and Suriname are two small rectangles side by side on the northern coast, and they are routinely confused with each other. Guyana is the larger and sits to the west, next to Venezuela; Suriname is the smaller, to its east. Both look like blocks cut from the top of the continent, which is roughly what they are.
Borders and coastlines of Americas
| Country | Borders |
|---|---|
| Antigua and Barbuda | Island — no land borders |
| Argentina | Coastal — 5 land borders |
| Bahamas | Island — no land borders |
| Barbados | Island — no land borders |
| Belize | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Bolivia | Landlocked — 5 land borders |
| Brazil | Coastal — 10 land borders |
| Canada | Coastal — 1 land border |
| Chile | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Colombia | Coastal — 5 land borders |
| Costa Rica | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Cuba | Island — no land borders |
| Curaçao | Island — no land borders |
| Dominica | Island — no land borders |
| Dominican Republic | Coastal — 1 land border |
| Ecuador | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| El Salvador | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Grenada | Island — no land borders |
| Guatemala | Coastal — 4 land borders |
| Guyana | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Haiti | Coastal — 1 land border |
| Honduras | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Jamaica | Island — no land borders |
| Mexico | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Nicaragua | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Panama | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Paraguay | Landlocked — 3 land borders |
| Peru | Coastal — 5 land borders |
| Saint Kitts and Nevis | Island — no land borders |
| Saint Lucia | Island — no land borders |
| Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | Island — no land borders |
| Suriname | Coastal — 3 land borders |
| Trinidad and Tobago | Island — no land borders |
| United States | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Uruguay | Coastal — 2 land borders |
| Venezuela | Coastal — 3 land borders |
About the Country Shapes of the Americas quiz
- How many countries are in the the Americas quiz?
- 36 — every country in the Americas with the data this quiz needs. Questions are drawn fresh from that pool each round, so no two rounds repeat.
- Which outlines in the Americas are the easiest?
- Islands, generally — their whole shape is coastline, with nothing borrowed from a neighbour. 12 of these 36 countries qualify.
- Does size help?
- A little. Canada is the largest here and hard to mistake; Saint Kitts and Nevis is the smallest and usually guessed last.
- How many countries in the Americas are islands?
- 12 countries have no land border with any other. A further 2 are landlocked, with no coastline at all.
- What makes a country hard to recognise from its outline?
- Usually the number of neighbours — Brazil borders 10 countries, so its outline is shaped as much by other borders as by coastline.