The 25 Hardest Countries to Find on a Map

Across thousands of Whole World quiz rounds, the same countries come up again and again in the Mistake Bank. They fall into three groups: tiny island nations that are barely a pixel on a world map, landlocked countries surrounded by look-alike neighbours, and countries whose name doesn't match where people expect them to be. Here are the 25 most-missed, with where they actually are and how to remember it.

Pacific islands – the smallest targets on the map

These are the hardest for one simple reason: at world-map zoom they are dots in a huge blue ocean.

1. Nauru – A single 21 km² island, the third-smallest country in the world. It's north-east of the Solomon Islands and east of Papua New Guinea. Hook: Nauru is "nearly nothing".

2. Tuvalu – Nine atolls between Hawaii and Australia, north of Fiji. Hook: Tuvalu is "two" islands up from Fiji.

3. Kiribati – Pronounced "KIR-i-bas". Its islands are spread over an area the size of the United States, straddling the equator and the international date line. On most maps the main group is east of Nauru.

4. Marshall Islands – North of Kiribati and Nauru, east of Micronesia. Two parallel chains of atolls.

5. Micronesia – Officially the Federated States of Micronesia. A line of islands north of Papua New Guinea, west of the Marshall Islands. Hook: west to east across the north Pacific: Palau, Micronesia, Marshall Islands.

6. Palau – West of Micronesia, east of the Philippines. The closest of the Pacific micro-states to Asia.

7. Tonga – South of Samoa, east of Fiji. Hook: Samoa on top, Tonga below – S above T, like the alphabet.

8. Samoa – North of Tonga, east of Fiji. Not to be confused with American Samoa, which is just to the east and isn't a country.

9. Vanuatu – A Y-shaped chain east of Australia, between the Solomon Islands (north) and New Caledonia (south), west of Fiji.

10. Solomon Islands – East of Papua New Guinea, running south-east. The biggest of this group, which is why it's lower on this list.

How to learn them: play the Oceania quiz on its own. With only 14 countries, the map zooms in and the islands become real shapes. Do it five times and the Whole World map stops being scary.

Caribbean islands

Same problem, smaller sea.

11. St Kitts and Nevis – Two small islands in the northern Lesser Antilles, west of Antigua. The smallest country in the Americas.

12. Antigua and Barbuda – Two islands east of St Kitts. Hook: A-ntigua is further east than St K-itts: the alphabet runs west to east here too.

13. Dominica – NOT the Dominican Republic. Dominica is a small island between Guadeloupe and Martinique. The Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, much further west.

14. St Vincent and the Grenadines – South of St Lucia, north of Grenada. Hook: St Vincent sits above the Grenadines, which lead down to Grenada.

15. Grenada – The southernmost of the chain before you reach Trinidad.

16. St Lucia – Between Martinique and St Vincent.

17. Barbados – The one that's out on its own, east of St Vincent, outside the main arc.

Learn them with the Caribbean quiz (13 countries). The arc of the Lesser Antilles runs north to south: Antigua → St Kitts → (Guadeloupe, French) → Dominica → (Martinique, French) → St Lucia → St Vincent → Grenada. Barbados is the outlier to the east.

African landlocked and look-alike neighbours

18. Eswatini – Formerly Swaziland. A small country almost entirely inside South Africa, in the north-east, touching Mozambique. Don't confuse it with Lesotho, which is completely surrounded by South Africa and sits further south-west.

19. Burundi – The small one directly south of Rwanda, on the north-east shore of Lake Tanganyika. Hook: Rwanda on top, Burundi below – both tiny, both landlocked, both next to the lake.

20. Togo – A thin vertical strip between Ghana (west) and Benin (east). Benin is the slightly wider strip east of Togo, before Nigeria. Hook: going east along the coast: Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria – G-T-B-N.

21. Guinea-Bissau – The small coastal country north of Guinea, south of Senegal. Then Guinea is bigger and to the south, and Equatorial Guinea is a completely different place on the central African coast, below Cameroon.

22. Djibouti – A small country at the mouth of the Red Sea, between Eritrea and Somalia, opposite Yemen.

Asia and the Middle East

23. Bhutan – The tiny Himalayan kingdom between India and China, east of Nepal. Hook: Nepal is the bigger one to the west; Bhutan is the small one to the east.

24. Timor-Leste – The eastern half of the island of Timor, south-east of Indonesia, north of Australia. The western half belongs to Indonesia.

25. Bahrain – An island just off the coast of Saudi Arabia, west of Qatar. Both are tiny; Qatar is the peninsula, Bahrain is the island.

Honourable mentions

• Brunei – two small enclaves on the north coast of Borneo, inside Malaysian territory.
• Gambia – a thin strip along the Gambia River, entirely surrounded by Senegal.
• Comoros – an island group between Mozambique and Madagascar.
• Seychelles – islands north-east of Madagascar, far out in the Indian Ocean.
• Maldives – a chain of atolls south-west of India.
• Liechtenstein – between Switzerland and Austria. Smaller than most cities.

The method that works

1. Zoom in. Play the regional quiz (Oceania, Caribbean, Southern Africa, East Africa, Southeast Asia) before the world quiz. Small countries become proper shapes.
2. Learn neighbours in order. Almost every country on this list is best remembered relative to its neighbours – "east of X, south of Y". The country pages on this site list neighbours for exactly that reason.
3. Use the Mistake Bank. It sorts your misses hardest-first, so you spend your time on the ones that actually cost you points.
4. Flashcards for a week. Spaced repetition brings each country back just before you'd forget it. A week of five minutes a day is enough to get all 25 of these to stick.

When you've got them, try the Whole World quiz and watch your time drop.