The Americas
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50 free The Americas trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Americas run almost from pole to pole, taking in two continents, the land bridge of Central America and the islands of the Caribbean. Along the way come record-setting rivers, deserts, lakes and waterfalls, and dozens of countries, each with its own capital, flag and story. This quiz covers the whole hemisphere: the countries of North and South America and how to tell them apart, their capitals, the stories behind several national flags, and the physical geography that shapes the map, from Arctic waters to the stormy southern tip. The opening questions are the famous landmarks most people have heard of. Later ones reach for the wetlands, volcanoes and small island states that keen map readers know. It suits a geography class revising the Western Hemisphere, a family quiz night, or a traveller who wants to know the region better. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something, and the questions can be printed for use on paper.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which South American river carries more water to the sea than the next seven largest rivers combined?
Amazon
The Amazon has no bridges across it at all, even though engineers could easily span most of its length. It flows through rainforest with very few roads to connect.
Q 02Which island, the world's largest, is part of North America and lies about four-fifths under an ice sheet?
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, which makes the biggest island in North America part of a European realm.
Q 03Which desert in the Americas, the driest outside the poles, is a test site for Mars mission instruments?
Atacama
The Atacama gets about 15 mm of rain a year, and some of its weather stations have never recorded any at all.
Q 04Which lake on Peru's border, 3,812 metres up in the Andes, is often called the world's highest navigable lake?
Titicaca
Titicaca is home to the Uru people, who live on floating islands that they build from layers of cut totora reeds.
Q 05Which country's canal takes ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific by sailing southeast rather than west?
Panama
Panama curves so sharply at that point that the canal's Pacific end lies east of its Atlantic end. Locks at each end lift ships 26 metres up to Gatun Lake on the way across.
Q 06Which country's flag shows an eagle on a cactus devouring a snake, the sign from an Aztec founding legend?
Mexico
Mexico's emblem recalls the omen that told the Aztecs where to found their city, Tenochtitlan, whose ruins lie beneath the modern capital.
Q 07Which country's main island, some 1,250 km long, lies only about 150 km south of Key West, Florida?
Cuba
Cuba's main island is the largest in the Caribbean, big enough to rank as the 17th-largest island in the world.
Q 08Which explorer gave his name to the Americas after a German mapmaker printed it on a 1507 world map?
Vespucci
Vespucci's first name, Amerigo, was Latinized as 'America' by mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller, who by 1513 had changed his mind and relabelled the land 'Terra Incognita'.
Q 09Which country stretches over 4,300 km from north to south yet averages only about 175 km in width?
Chile
Chile is squeezed into a narrow strip between the Andes and the Pacific, and its far south makes it the closest country to Antarctica.
Q 10Which South American waterfall, the tallest uninterrupted one on Earth, spills off the Auyán-tepui mountain?
Angel Falls
Angel Falls is named after US pilot Jimmie Angel, who flew over it in 1933. He came back in 1937 and tried to land on the summit, where his plane sank into marshy ground.
Q 11Which European country still governs a small group of islands lying just off Canada's Atlantic coast?
France
France regained Saint Pierre and Miquelon under the 1763 Treaty of Paris even as it gave up the rest of New France, and smuggling there boomed during US Prohibition.
Q 12Which river flows about 3,770 km from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to a delta downstream from New Orleans?
Mississippi
The Mississippi drains all or parts of more than 30 US states and two Canadian provinces, yet it is only the second-longest river in the United States, behind the Missouri.
Q 13Which Great Lake, the northernmost and highest, is the world's largest freshwater lake by surface area?
Superior
Q 21Which city, founded in 1826 as Bytown, did Queen Victoria choose as capital of the Province of Canada?
Ottawa
Ottawa's isolated site, on a cliff surrounded by dense forest and far from the US border, was seen as easier to defend from attack.
Q 22Which planned capital, laid out in the shape of an airplane, took over from Rio de Janeiro in 1960?
Brasília
Brasília was built in the 1950s to move Brazil's capital to a more central location. The airplane's 'fuselage' is the Monumental Axis, two wide avenues flanking a large park.
Q 23Which Argentine capital lies on the southwest side of the Río de la Plata, often called Earth's widest river?
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires shares the river with Montevideo on the opposite shore, and tango was born in the 1880s in the working-class districts of both cities.
Superior holds enough water to cover the entire land mass of North and South America to a depth of 30 centimetres.
Q 14Which mountain range runs some 4,800 km from western Canada to the US Southwest, peaking at Mount Elbert?
Rockies
The Rockies carry the Continental Divide, the line that decides whether rain and snowmelt drain to the Atlantic or to the Pacific.
Q 15Which table-top mountain, highest of the Pacaraima chain, is shared by Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana?
Mount Roraima
Mount Roraima lies 85% in Venezuela, and heavy rainfall has etched its flat top into a maze of rifts and caves that runs for more than 15 km.
Q 16Which South American salt flat, the largest in the world, turns into a giant natural mirror after rain?
Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni covers about 10,582 square km, and the brine beneath its salt crust is exceptionally rich in lithium.
Q 17Which river marks the southern edge of Texas and forms up to 2,000 km of the US international border?
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande is known on its southern bank as the Río Bravo, 'bravo' meaning furious or wild.
Q 18Which vast bay in northeastern Canada is named after an English explorer set adrift by mutineers in 1611?
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay is the second-largest bay in the world after the Bay of Bengal. Its namesake was left in a small boat by his crew, and what became of him is still unknown.
Q 19Which narrow waterway, about 82 km across at its tightest, separates mainland North America from Asia?
Bering Strait
The Bering Strait holds two islands only 3.8 km apart: Big Diomede belongs to Russia and Little Diomede to the United States.
Q 20Which Canadian province, the largest by area, is the only one where French is the sole official language?
Quebec
Quebec made French its official language in 1974, and English has no official status in the province's own law.
Q 24Which capital of Peru did Francisco Pizarro found in 1535 as the City of Kings, on a strip of coastal desert?
Lima
Lima is one of the world's largest desert cities, yet the cold Pacific keeps its temperatures mild all year.
Q 25Which Colombian capital sits 2,640 metres up on a high Andean plateau and was known for centuries as Santafé?
Bogotá
Bogotá is one of the highest capital cities in the world. Its Spanish founder first called the settlement Our Lady of Hope, until the crown renamed it in 1540.
Q 26Which capital, the closest to the equator of any in the world, sits on the slopes of Pichincha volcano?
Quito
Quito stands 2,850 metres above sea level, so despite its position in the middle of the globe it keeps a cool, steady climate all year round.
Q 27Which city, the world's highest seat of government at about 3,650 metres, shares capital status with Sucre?
La Paz
La Paz has been the seat of the national government since 1898, while Sucre, the constitutional capital, keeps only the judiciary.
Q 28Which Caribbean capital was, by the mid-1700s, a far bigger city than Boston or New York?
Havana
Havana had more than seventy thousand inhabitants by then, and its old quarter was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.
Q 29Which Caribbean capital, founded in 1496 by a brother of Columbus, has the first cathedral of the Americas?
Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas, and it also had the New World's first university, castle, monastery and fortress.
Q 30Which 15th-century Inca citadel on a ridge in Peru did Hiram Bingham bring to world attention in 1911?
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu was probably built around 1450 as an estate for the emperor Pachacuti, then abandoned roughly a century later during the Spanish conquest.