This should probably be subtitled – the importance of checking the answers…
When writing a quiz recently I stumbled across a question which really piqued my interest and that I thought was pretty cool. The question was – as is the title of this post – “How many countries have an area less than 10 square miles?”.
The reason I’m writing this is really as a little note of caution to people who follow a process similar to me when creating quizzes. When writing and I’m a bit stuck I will often rely on a collection of questions I’ve sourced. I use these to either come up with the inspiration for a whole topic, or just fill in those missing questions on one I’ve already started. Rarely do I find I question I am happy to lift wholesale.
To the point of the post – this is almost what happened with the question “How many countries have an area less than 10 square miles?” – I needed a couple more questions to finish off a geography round and I honestly thought that this was a great question. What a fantastic piece of trivia to add to the large amount I’ve already forgotten. Well, so you would think.
The problem is, I’ve been bitten so many times by these absolute questions, and in particular questions that I’ve found elsewhere, that I now find myself checking the answers, even when they appear to make sense.
The answer my question had was four, four countries with an area less than 10 square miles, the list was; Vatican City, Monaco, Nauru and Tuvalu. Makes sense right? They’re all tiny.
I was tempted to believe this, if someone told me this I really wouldn’t have a lot of reason not to. I’m not the greatest at geography.
However, as I say, I had been bitten by this before. So it was time to check. First port of call is Wikipedia with a lovely table that we can order by total area in km2. Looking for valid results we end up with the following in order of smallest:
- Vatican City – European microstate. Smallest country in the world. An astonishing 0.49 km2 (0.19 sq mi).
- Monaco – European microstate. Smallest country with a coastline. Smallest United Nations member state. Considerably larger than Vatican City at 2.02 km2 (0.78 sq mi).
- Nauru (in the Central Pacific) – Smallest island country, smallest republic and smallest country that is not a city-state. Weighing in at 21 km2 (8.1 sq mi).
- Tuvalu – Smallest Commonwealth realm. 26 km2 (10 sq mi)…
Tuvalu is listed as being exactly 10 square miles. Well, that’s already made the question invalid as it specifies less than 10 square miles. However, let’s check, as there’s a measurement in square kilometres too – 26. A quick check shows that 26 square kilometres is 10.0387 square miles. So we’re over 10. Tuvalu sadly is out of the running… Or is it?
Time to have a look at the Wikipedia article for Tuvalu itself, which contains the following – “a total land area of only about 26 km², less than 10 sq mi (30 km2)”. So, we’re sort of back where we started now. It’s less again.
A delve further down the rabbit hole reveals that some sources, including a Commonwealth website agree with the size of less than 26 square kilometres. With the Commonwealth website including a measurement of 25.6 square kilometres – or 9.884215 square miles.
So, Tuvalu is once again back in the running and in my opinion, the answer to this question is correct. There are four countries with an area less than 10 square miles and these are indeed Vatican City, Monaco, Nauru and Tuvalu. For a minute though, I nearly changed the answer to three.
There we go. It feels a little like making a mountain over a molehill, but hopefully this both helps potential quiz writers, and helps those who quiz to see we’re far from infallible!
I hope you enjoyed reading, I’m hoping to write more of these in future!
Will