The fireworks are over and the grill has cooled, but if you’re still feeling patriotic after July 4th, here’s a challenge: See how well you can draw the outlines of all 50 states from memory.
The following interactive quiz will prompt you to draw one randomly selected state at a time. Once you’re finished sketching the outline with your mouse or finger, we’ll compare your version to the actual boundaries and give you a letter grade as feedback. The algorithm that we wrote to compare your shape to the actual one is forgiving of differences in minor undulations of the borders, so you only need to focus on drawing the overall contours of the state. Grades are slightly curved to be more lenient on highly complex borders.
Don’t despair if some of your grades aren’t quite what you were used to in geography class — some states are much more difficult than others. To help you out, this feature will scale your drawing to match the actual state, so there is no need to use the entire canvas. As you draw each state (plus Washington, D.C.), it will be added to the map below the canvas in that state’s correct location and dimensions —regardless of how well it resembles the real thing. And when you’re done, check out how other people fared.
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