This US states quiz takes you from Maine to Hawaii with questions on nicknames, borders, size and famous firsts. Find out which state has the only non-rectangular flag, which two states have the most neighbors, and where four states meet at a single point. It's a fun road trip across the map for anyone who thinks they know America inside and out.
Every state has its own story of how it joined the Union, and those stories explain a lot about today's map. Some borders follow rivers and mountain ridges, while others were drawn with a ruler along lines of latitude and longitude, which is why so many Western states look like neat boxes. Nicknames, state symbols and official mottos often point back to a state's history, its landscape or what it produced in its early days.
Even the way we write state names has a history. The familiar two-letter postal codes only arrived in October 1963, when the Post Office introduced them alongside ZIP codes so a city, state and ZIP could fit on one line of an address label. They still trip people up, especially the cluster of codes beginning with M.
A good way to master the states is to study them region by region instead of alphabetically. Picture the map, then work your way along each coast and through the heartland, noticing which states share long borders. Questions about size, nicknames and neighbors become much easier once the shapes feel familiar. It also makes road trips more fun, since you'll start recognizing state lines as you cross them.