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Southern States Map Quiz

Sixteen states, from Delaware to Texas — the largest of the four Census regions, and the one with the most border states.

The Census South is bigger than the colloquial South

This deck uses the Census definition, which is why Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma are in it. That surprise accounts for a fair share of missed clicks: people hunt the Deep South and forget the northern edge. The 16 are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia.

Where the points actually go

Texas and Florida are free. The Atlantic column — Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia — is learned top to bottom, with the Chesapeake splitting Maryland and the Outer Banks marking North Carolina. The confusions are in the middle: Tennessee and Kentucky are the two long horizontal states stacked on each other, Tennessee below Kentucky — Tennessee touches eight neighbors and Kentucky seven, so between them they border a quarter of the country; Alabama and Mississippi are the vertical pair west of Georgia, with Alabama the eastern one that reaches Mobile Bay; Arkansas and Louisiana sit west of the Mississippi River with Louisiana taking the delta. West Virginia is the shape with two panhandles wedged into the Appalachians, and Oklahoma is the one with a panhandle pointing west into the Plains. The South region page lists all 16, and the Mississippi River page explains the line that half of these borders follow.

The South has the most internal borders

Tennessee and Missouri each touch eight states, more than anywhere else in the country, and both of them are in or next to this deck. That is a hint about strategy: in the Southeast you are rarely more than one state away from a landmark, so work outward from Florida, Texas and the Atlantic coast instead of trying to identify an inland state on its own outline. The South Atlantic, East South Central and West South Central pages group the 16 into the three sets the Census uses.

Related decks

Every deck on the site scores as you answer and reshuffles on reload. There is the full 50-state map quiz for all 50 in one round; the capitals quiz for multiple choice on every state capital; the abbreviations quiz for the two-letter postal codes; the easiest-states deck for fifteen outlines you can spot on sight; the hardest-states deck for the twenty that decide your score; and one region at a time — Northeast, Midwest, West.