Q 01/05

The Sahara is the largest hot desert, but which continent holds the biggest desert of all?

A) Asia

B) Australia

C) Antarctica

D) North America

Answer · why

C) Antarctica

Antarctica: a desert is defined by how little precipitation falls, not by heat, so the frozen continent's 14 million square kilometres count, about ha...

Q 02/05

The name Sahara is a broken plural of a word from which language?

A) Arabic

B) Berber

C) Latin

D) Greek

Answer · why

A) Arabic

Arabic: sahra means 'desert' and sahara is its plural, so 'Sahara Desert' literally says 'deserts desert'.

Q 03/05

The Sahara stretches from the Atlantic in the west to which sea in the east?

A) Black Sea

B) Caspian Sea

C) Red Sea

D) Arabian Sea

Answer · why

C) Red Sea

Red Sea: in the desert mountains behind its Egyptian shore, Roman crews quarried giant granite columns that still hold up the porch of the Pantheon in...

Q 04/05

What is the name of the belt of semi-arid savanna that bounds the Sahara to the south?

A) The Maghreb

B) The Sahel

C) The Karoo

D) The Veld

Answer · why

B) The Sahel

The Sahel: in the 2000s African nations launched a 'Great Green Wall' of trees across it to hold back the desert.

Q 05/05

The Sahara covers about as much land as which country?

A) Argentina

B) Kazakhstan

C) South Africa

D) United States

Answer · why

D) United States

United States: the Sahara matches it for size, yet it holds fewer than one person per square mile and huge areas are wholly empty.