Geography quiz
Pinpoint the US state capitals on the map
No dots, only state lines. A capital is named and you click where the city is. The closer the pin, the more of its 100 points you keep.
- Format
- Pinpoint on the map
- Items
- 10 pins
- Limit
- 3:00
- Level
- Hard
- Checked
- 2026.10.03
- Spots
- 10 of 48
- Time limit
- 3:00
- Full marks
- Within 25 km: 100 points
- No points
- 500 km out or more
- A capital is named. Click the map where you think it is.
- The real spot is then shown with a line to your pin and the distance in kilometres.
- Zoom in first for a finer pin. From the keyboard: arrow keys move a crosshair and Enter drops the pin.
- Pause whenever you like (Esc). The board hides while the clock is stopped.
Click the map where each state capital is.
Drawing the map
About this quiz
Each round draws 10 of the 48 capitals of the lower 48 states. Finding the state is the easy part: the points are in knowing where in the state the capital sits. Distances are real kilometres along the Earth's surface, worked out from where you clicked, so the score is the same on a phone and on a big screen.
- A pin within 25 km keeps all 100 points. From there the points fall in a straight line to nothing at 500 km.
- Juneau and Honolulu are left out, because Alaska and Hawaii are drawn as insets.
- After each pin the real spot is shown with a line to your click.
- The first round of each day is the same for everyone. Play again for a fresh draw.
Sources
- [1]National Archives (George W. Bush White House archive). State capitals quiz.
- [2]US Census Bureau. ANSI codes for states.
- [3]US Census Bureau. Cartographic Boundary Files.
- [4]US Census Bureau. Gazetteer files: 2024 places.
Note on the data. The 50 capitals were checked against the National Archives list of state capitals. The 50 states are those on the Census Bureau's state code list, leaving out the District of Columbia and the territories. The map is drawn from the Census Bureau's public domain cartographic boundary files, with Alaska and Hawaii moved and rescaled into the lower left corner. Each capital's position is the internal point of its place record in the Census Bureau's 2024 Gazetteer place file. Distances are great circle distances on a sphere of radius 6371 km, from the click turned back into latitude and longitude through the map's Albers projection.
Last checked October 3, 2026
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