Continent Trivia
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This continent trivia quiz has 99 free questions with answers and covers all seven continents and the lines between them: which is largest, smallest, coldest, flattest and youngest by population, where Europe stops and Asia starts, which strait and which canals divide the landmasses, and the highest mountain on each one, from Everest to Vinson. It also digs into the deep past (Pangaea, Gondwana, Laurasia) and the geological oddities, including Zealandia, the continent that is 94 percent underwater, and Greenland's place on the North American plate. The easy questions suit school geography units and family quiz night: which continent has no permanent residents, which desert is the largest hot one, which city sits on two continents. The medium ones cover the Antarctic Treaty, the Bering Strait, Aconcagua and Kilimanjaro. The hard ones want the height of Europe's tallest peak, the length of the Urals and the year Denali got its name back. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which strait separates Europe from Africa between Spain and Morocco?
The Strait of Gibraltar
The Strait of Gibraltar is only about 13 to 14 km wide at its narrowest, and the ancients called the mountains flanking it the Pillars of Hercules.
Q 02Which is the most populous country outside Asia as of 2025?
USA
The USA has over 341 million people, making it the only country outside Asia among the world's four most populous nations.
Q 03Since South Sudan's independence in 2011, which country has been Africa's largest by area?
Algeria
Algeria took the title when the split left Sudan third, behind Algeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Q 04Africa is the only continent to straddle both the equator and which other line of reference?
Prime meridian
The prime meridian meets the equator in the Gulf of Guinea, at a spot mapping software nicknames Null Island because faulty coordinates default to 0,0.
Q 05Besides the Caucasus, the Black Sea and the Turkish straits, which sea helps divide Europe from Asia?
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is often called the world's largest lake, since it is landlocked and its water is only about a third as salty as seawater.
Q 06Which country spans about 39 percent of Europe, making it the continent's largest and most populous?
Russia
Russia: most Russians live in its European part, where the Russian state began before expanding east all the way to the Pacific.
Q 07Which explorer's ship Endurance was trapped and crushed by pack ice in the Weddell Sea in 1915?
Ernest Shackleton
Ernest Shackleton brought all 28 men home alive, and the wreck of Endurance was found in 2022, 3,008 metres down and remarkably well preserved.
Q 08The lowest reliably measured air temperature on Earth, -89.2 °C, was logged in 1983 at which Antarctic station?
Vostok
Vostok, high on the East Antarctic plateau, logged -89.2 °C on 21 July 1983, and about 4,000 metres beneath it lies the buried Lake Vostok.
Q 09If the entire Antarctic ice sheet melted, roughly how much would global sea level rise?
About 58 metres
About 58 metres: the ice sheet holds roughly 60% of Earth's fresh water, and its eastern part alone would add about 53 metres.
Q 10Which South American desert is the driest non-polar desert on Earth?
The Atacama Desert
The Atacama Desert has weather stations that have never recorded rain, and its soil is so lifeless that scientists use it to test Mars life-detection experiments.
Q 11Which of these does the 1959 Antarctic Treaty ban?
Military activity
Military activity is banned, as are nuclear explosions and dumping radioactive waste, so Antarctica is reserved for peaceful purposes only.
Q 12Which country holds almost half of South America's population?
Brazil
Brazil is South America's only Portuguese-speaking country, a legacy of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which gave Portugal the lands east of its dividing line.
Q 13Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas and the highest outside Asia, stands in which country?
Argentina
Argentina: Aconcagua, nearly 7,000 metres high in Mendoza Province, stands only about 15 km from the Chilean border and is the highest peak outside Asia.
Q 21The southern supercontinent Gondwana was named by Eduard Suess after a region of which modern country?
India
The name means 'forest of the Gonds', after a region of India, and Gondwana's remnants make up about two-thirds of today's continental area.
Q 22Which northern half of Pangaea, paired with Gondwana in the south, later broke up into today's northern continents?
Laurasia
Laurasia broke apart as the North Atlantic opened, giving rise to North America, Europe and most of Asia.
Q 23Roughly what fraction of Zealandia, argued in 2017 to be a continent, is underwater?
About 94%
About 94%: only New Zealand, New Caledonia and a few small islands break the surface of Zealandia's roughly 4.9 million square kilometres.
Q 14North America's highest peak, in Alaska, was officially known by what name from 1917 until 2015?
Mount McKinley
Mount McKinley, named for President William McKinley, was the federal name from 1917 until 2015, when it became Denali; a January 2025 executive order restored McKinley. The summit is 6,190 metres.
Q 15The generally accepted highest summit in Europe, a dormant volcano in the Caucasus, is which mountain?
Mount Elbrus
Mount Elbrus, a twin-summited dormant volcano, tops Mont Blanc by more than 800 metres, but only if the Caucasus is counted as part of Europe.
Q 16Which Andean peak's summit is the point on Earth's surface farthest from the planet's centre?
Chimborazo
Chimborazo, a 6,263-metre volcano in Ecuador, sits almost on the equator, where Earth's bulge pushes its summit about 2 km farther from the centre than Everest's.
Q 17Mount Everest's summit marks part of the border between Nepal and which other country?
China
China: its 2005 survey measured 8,844.43 metres of bare rock, but in 2020 China and Nepal jointly announced 8,848.86 metres.
Q 18Which peak replaces Kosciuszko on Reinhold Messner's list of continental high points?
Puncak Jaya
Puncak Jaya, also called Carstensz Pyramid, is a 4,884-metre peak in Indonesia's Papua highlands; Messner counted it as Australasia's top, since Kosciuszko is only 2,228 metres.
Q 19Who became the first person to climb the highest mountain on every continent, finishing on 30 April 1985?
Richard Bass
Richard Bass, a Texas oilman who owned Utah's Snowbird ski resort, was 55 when he topped Everest to finish, then the oldest person to reach its summit.
Q 20Who proposed continental drift in 1912, arguing that all the continents were once a single landmass?
Alfred Wegener
Alfred Wegener later named that supercontinent Pangaea, but geologists largely rejected his idea until seafloor-spreading discoveries in the 1960s.
Q 24Which Italian explorer's first name did German mapmakers give to a newly charted continent?
Amerigo Vespucci
Amerigo Vespucci: Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 map labelled the southern landmass 'America' in his honour, while Columbus kept insisting he had reached Asia.
Q 25What is the world's largest island, which sits on the North American plate?
Greenland
Greenland was granted home rule by Denmark in 1979 and self-rule in 2009, which gave it control of its own natural resources.
Q 26The Australian continent, or Sahul, includes mainland Australia, Tasmania and which large island?
New Guinea
New Guinea was joined to mainland Australia and Tasmania by dry land during the last ice age, until rising seas split them apart.
Q 27Which of these is one of Oceania's four sub-regions, along with Australasia, Melanesia and Micronesia?
Polynesia
Polynesia, Greek for 'many islands', first named the whole Pacific, until Dumont d'Urville's 1831 split carved out Melanesia and Micronesia.
Q 28Which cape, farther south than the Cape of Good Hope, is the southernmost point of Africa?
Cape Agulhas
Cape Agulhas, Portuguese for 'Cape of Needles', lies about 150 km east-southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, which many people wrongly believe is Africa's tip.
Q 29Which artificial waterway, opened in 1869, links the Mediterranean and the Red Sea?
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal, opened in November 1869 after ten years of digging, is a lockless sea-level channel; it technically puts Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in Asia.
Q 30Which islands in the Bering Strait lie under 4 km apart, on either side of the International Date Line?
The Diomede Islands
The Diomede Islands are nicknamed Tomorrow Island and Yesterday Isle, because the larger one keeps a clock 21 hours ahead of its neighbour.