Bodies of Water
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Bodies of Water trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Water covers most of the planet, and the names people have given it tell a long story of exploration, trade and argument. Some seas are really lakes, some lakes are saltier than any ocean, and a handful of narrow straits carry a huge share of the world's shipping. That mix of records and surprises is what makes the world's waters such a good quiz subject. This quiz ranges across the whole map: oceans and seas, great lakes and salt lakes, famous rivers, bays and gulfs, and the straits and canals that link them. It also asks about the terms themselves, such as what separates a sea from a lake and what to call an inlet carved by ice. The opening questions cover the record holders most people have heard of; later ones reward keen map readers. It works for a geography class, a family quiz night or a pub round. 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 salt lake bordered by Jordan and Israel has shores that are the lowest land on Earth?
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea lies more than 400 metres below sea level and is over nine times as salty as the ocean, which makes swimming there feel like floating.
Q 02Which sea bordered by Russia, Iran and three other countries is often ranked the world's largest lake?
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea covers an area larger than Germany and holds over 40% of the world's lake water, though that water is slightly salty rather than fresh.
Q 03Which Siberian lake, the world's deepest, holds more water than all five North American Great Lakes?
Baikal
Baikal is also the world's oldest lake, at 25 to 30 million years, and it contains more than a fifth of the planet's fresh surface water.
Q 04Which busy seaway, crossed by a rail tunnel since 1994, do the French call La Manche, 'the sleeve'?
English Channel
The English Channel is the busiest shipping area in the world, and its French name is usually said to describe its long, sleeve-like shape.
Q 05Which sea in the North Atlantic is the only one on Earth bounded by currents instead of land?
Sargasso Sea
The Sargasso Sea takes its name from the floating Sargassum seaweed that covers it, and both European and American eels migrate there to spawn.
Q 06Which South American river carries more water to the sea than the next seven largest combined?
Amazon
The Amazon delivers about a fifth of all the river water entering the world's oceans, and it already out-flows every other river by the time it reaches Brazil.
Q 07Which bay between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia has the highest tides in the world?
Bay of Fundy
The Bay of Fundy has a tidal range of about 16 metres, against a worldwide average of one metre, because the tide resonates in its funnel-shaped basin.
Q 08Which waterway, opened in 1914, raises ships 26 metres through locks to cross an artificial lake?
Panama Canal
The Panama Canal spares ships the long, hazardous voyage around the southern tip of South America by carrying them across the isthmus instead.
Q 09Which of the world's five oceans is both the smallest and the shallowest?
Arctic
The Arctic Ocean is partly covered by sea ice all year and almost completely in winter, and heavy river inflow with little evaporation makes its water the least salty of the five.
Q 10Which Scottish lake holds more water than all the lakes of England and Wales put together?
Loch Ness
Loch Ness, home of the legendary monster, is only the second-largest Scottish loch by surface area, but its great depth gives it the biggest volume in the British Isles.
Q 11Which river is formed at Khartoum, in Sudan, where its White and Blue branches join?
Nile
The Nile then flows north through Egypt to the Mediterranean, and at roughly 7,000 km it is the longest river in the world by the traditional reckoning.
Q 12Which lake, the largest freshwater lake by area, claimed the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975?
Superior
Superior sank the Edmund Fitzgerald in a November storm with the loss of all 29 crew, and Gordon Lightfoot immortalised the wreck in a ballad.
Q 13Which narrow waterway, only about 14 km across at its tightest point, separates Europe from Africa?
Strait of Gibraltar
The Strait of Gibraltar links the Atlantic with the Mediterranean, and the heights that flank it were known in antiquity as the Pillars of Hercules.
Q 21Which river flows south for about 2,340 miles from Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota?
Mississippi
The Mississippi takes its name from an Ojibwe phrase meaning 'great river', yet it is only the second-longest river in the United States, behind the Missouri.
Q 22Which river rises in the Rocky Mountains and flows through the Grand Canyon on its way southwest?
Colorado
The Colorado is tapped so heavily by seven US states and Mexico that its final 100 miles have dried up, and it has rarely reached the sea since the 1960s.
Q 23Which strait runs through the middle of Istanbul, dividing the city between Europe and Asia?
Bosporus
The Bosporus is the world's narrowest strait used for international shipping, and it links the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara.
Q 14Which lake on the border of Peru and Bolivia is often called the world's highest navigable lake?
Titicaca
Titicaca sits about 3,800 metres up in the Andes, where the Uros people live on floating islands that they build from layers of a buoyant sedge.
Q 15Which river flows through four capital cities, including Vienna and Budapest, to reach the Black Sea?
Danube
The Danube rises in Germany's Black Forest and also passes through Bratislava and Belgrade, and no other river in the world runs through as many capitals.
Q 16Which narrow waterway, about 82 km across at its tightest point, separates Russia from Alaska?
Bering Strait
The Bering Strait is named after Vitus Bering, a Danish-born Russian explorer, and a land bridge there is thought to have let people walk from Asia into North America.
Q 17Which sea lies between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, with the Suez Canal at its northern end?
Red Sea
The Red Sea may take its name from seasonal blooms of red-coloured cyanobacteria near the surface, though some scholars think 'red' once simply meant 'south'.
Q 18What Norwegian word names a long, narrow sea inlet with steep sides, carved out by a glacier?
Fjord
A fjord is usually deeper than the sea beyond it, and Norway's nearly 1,200 of them stretch its coastline from 2,500 km to an estimated 29,000 km.
Q 19Which lake, shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, is the largest in Africa by surface area?
Victoria
Victoria is also the world's largest tropical lake, and the explorer John Hanning Speke renamed it in 1858 after the British queen of the day.
Q 20Which river, called the Isis as it passes Oxford, flows on through Reading and Windsor to London?
Thames
The Thames is the longest river entirely in England at 215 miles, but the Severn beats it to the title of the United Kingdom's longest.
Q 24Which river, the longest in Asia, is held back by China's giant Three Gorges Dam?
Yangtze
The Yangtze is the third-longest river in the world, and farmers along its lower reaches were among the earliest people anywhere to cultivate rice.
Q 25What kind of lake, called a billabong in Australia, forms when a river cuts off one of its meanders?
Oxbow
An oxbow forms when a river erodes through the narrow neck of a meander and takes the shorter course, after which silt seals off the abandoned loop.
Q 26Which Canadian bay touches Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec yet belongs politically to Nunavut alone?
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay takes its name from the navigator Henry Hudson, who also gave his name to the river in New York that he explored in 1609.
Q 27Which sea, nicknamed 'The Ditch' by people on both shores, lies between Australia and New Zealand?
Tasman Sea
The Tasman Sea is about 2,250 km wide and is named after the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who in 1642 became the first known European to cross it.
Q 28Which is the only one of the five Great Lakes that lies entirely within the United States?
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is shared by Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and it is the largest lake in the world by area to lie wholly inside one country.
Q 29Which inlet on Cuba's southern coast gave its name to a failed 1961 invasion by CIA-backed exiles?
Bay of Pigs
The Bay of Pigs may not be named for pigs at all: in Cuban Spanish the word cochinos can also mean the queen triggerfish that live on its coral reefs.
Q 30Which river, the most sacred to Hindus and worshipped as a goddess, rises in the western Himalayas?
Ganges
The Ganges is revered across India, yet much of its water comes from tributaries that flow in from neighbouring Nepal.