@toledorockets: thanks, glad you liked it!
@Edelweiss: your comments about the abbreviations really made my day, thanks! In fact, I'm thinking of using your tagline Abbreviate with Confidence™ as the Sporcle equivalent to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval ;-)
I'm not sure how many players truly appreciate the degree to which having standards contributes to the playability of the quizzes on Sporcle, especially in the Geography category. If you think Taiwan is an answer for a quiz you have only to enter Taiwan. If it's accepted, that's great, good for you. But perhaps even more importantly if it's not accepted, you know Taiwan isn't an answer and you can move on to other guesses without having to think about what name someone might possibly have used instead: Republic of China? ROC? Chinese Taipei? Taipei, China? Taiwan, Province of China? Nationalist China? Free China? or maybe even Formosa? That simplifies things tremendously not only for the player, but also for the quizmaker. Thinking about whether Taiwan is an answer on a quiz is a useful exercise of precious brain cells, thinking about whether the quizmaster calls Taiwan Taiwan or any one of the other possibilities is a terrible waste of perfectly good brain cells. The same argument in favor of standardization and consistency in country names applies to abbreviations as well. We're almost to the point where you can try DRC and if it's not accepted move on to another country without typing in Democratic Republic of the Congo. One day we may reach that point with the other abbreviations as well. |
The U.S. States (and District of Columbia) are listed in order by decreasing nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2009. Can you name the country that has roughly the same GDP as the given U.S. State? A country will be an answer no more than once. Use the UN Geoscheme Region as a hint to narrow down the possibilities.
US States
Countries of Europe
Countries of the World
