I recently have been participating in the Geography Olympics and regularly scoring 100% unless one or more of the ten countries have been one of those pesky Pacific Islands. Tuvala, Fiji, Vanuatu--where are you again?
Ages ago I sought out blank maps of the contitents to see what I could name where. I found some, where I forget, and printed them. The entire existence of Slovenia had heretofore eluded me, and of the string Zambia, Zamibia, Namibia, and Nambia, I wouldn't've been able to say which two were countries (although, like Pooh with left and right, if properly started I could proceed; and Gambia I remember because a Senegalese friend described it as a dagger through the heart of his country). More recently, a Suspect mentioned a game challenging one to place the 50 states on a map, which is, even in the iteration with only one state visible at a time so you can't use Kansas to place the other rectangles, boringly easy, even for me who rereads some books solely to feel superior to them.
Happily, that site also has similar games for the rest of the world, though happily not countries' provinces because I might know where Cornwall, New South Wales, and Provence are but little more. So I used those maps, which do leave guessed countries in place because without Democratic Republic of Congro situated, I would never know where the Central African Republic goes.
Anyway. I worked my way up through the levels, starting at the thumb-sucking level for Africa but not needing any practice in South America. I have a lock on the former Soviet republics for the first time since 1988, though not their capitals as I had then. I skipped the mean level ("Drag each country name onto the map--no outlines given") after a few tries because if the apex of the arrow isn't exactly where it's expected, you're wrong, and became fluent in the next level, "Drag and rotate each country onto the map--you must rotate the country to the proper orientation." I ceased playing when my scores were consistently high.
Last night, preparing for his trip, RDC asked me if there were other countries in South Africa. Even before I got to the point I could place Lesotho at its proper longitude and latitude, I knew it was within South Africa, but I might have thought Swaziland was also an island instead of nestling between it and Mozambique. But I was surprised that the notion of South Africa surrounding another country came as a surprise to him. I always remembered it just because it is a globally unique configuration. No it's not: Italy contains Vatican City and San Marino.
Another reason I stopped playing is that I'm still no better at knowing capitals. Those countries with two capitals, like Bolivia, or three, like South Africa--I mock them. But I can't find any games to teach me those, and previously I learned by pairing in incessant writing the country and capital. That's also how I learned French and Latin and Russian and Old English vocabulary, and I wonder to this day how much sank it by staring at the pairs as I wrote and how much by the muscle memory of writing. It did work then (well, not for Russian), but now a game would be funner.
Aha! A hangman game of countries and capitals, but you have to click on the letters instead of type them: primitive.
Um. Today I called a company about the shipping time on an order I'd placed: I wanted to know if it considered Colorado to be in the midwest or the west. I grant that my knowledge of physical geography is pointlessly not backed up with knoweldge about countries' histories and interrelationships, but the woman I spoke to asked, "Is Colorado near Ohio?" I don't think she was from India because her voice was distinctly natively Usan, not blandly non-British. If I have too pointlessly little, she has too pointlessly none.
I usually say I'm not competitive (except about Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit). However. Today I went back to the map game site because I guessed Liberia for Sierra Leone at the Geography Olympics. I know as much about what countries are bounded by which others as I currently need. But the map games have a new level now, with countries needing not only to be rotated to be correctly placed on a map but resized too, no names given. I do not need to identify countries by their shape, absent name or relative size, I tell myself firmly.