Time again to test our geographic mettle with those fiends from National Geographic (Zombies? Zombies??? Gimme a break!)

Zombies, eh?

by Ken

We haven't done this in a while, and when I saw the new issue of National Geographic in the mailbox this evening when I got home from today's urban gadding (first a visit to NYC Transit's Bergen Sign Shop out in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, then a Historic Districts Council walk up in Harlem and even farther up in Mott Haven, the Bronx, focusing on three still-in-use Carnegie-paid-for public libraries, with a drive-by of a third on the bus en route to the Bronx), I thought, you know, we haven't done this in a while!

So here it is, direct from the address insert in this month's subscription mailing:

1  Izmir, Adana, and Bursa are major cities in what country?

2  The Strait of Malacca links the South China Sea with which ocean?

3  Name the largest city in Scotland, which is located on the Clyde River.

4  The Corfu Channel separates the Greek island of Corfu from which neighboring country?

5  What country north of Ghana, formerly known as Upper Volta, won independence from France in 1960?

THE ANSWERS

I DID JUST . . . WELL, NEVER YOU MIND HOW I DID

Okay, okay, I got three right, and two others maybe not quite as right. I'm frankly a little dubious about (4), the answer to which seems hardly worth concerning ourselves with. So maybe I don't know exactly where Corfu is. Am I expected to keep track of every last Greek island? Hey, there are, uh, millions of them. And then --


HOLD ON! RECOUNT! I WANT A RECOUNT!

Now just a doggone minute! When did [name withheld] become Scotland's largest city? Everybody knows that [name withheld] is the capital and Edinburgh the largest city. Okay, Edinburgh isn't on the Clyde (it's on the Firth of Forth, as I was reminded when I looked it up), and I should have remembered that (besides, shouldn't that be "the River Clyde," not "the Clyde River"?), but it hardly mattered since I knew perfectly well what the largest city in Scotland is -- I've got this! And in any case I can hardly be expected to keep track of every confounded river in the world.



Oh.

Never mind.

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