Recognizing country outlines: from the boot to the elephant's head

Outlines are the most honest quiz discipline: no text, no colours, just shape. Everyone recognizes a few countries. For the rest you need pictures in your head and some elimination tricks.

The classics

• Italy: the boot, in Italian literally "lo Stivale". The toe, Calabria, kicks triangular Sicily.
• France: "l'Hexagone", the hexagon. The term is so established that French people casually call their country that.
• Finland: the "Finnish Maiden" (Suomi-neito), a female figure with a raised arm. The north-western strip is literally called "Käsivarsi", the arm.
• Thailand: an elephant's head, with the trunk running down the Malay Peninsula.
• Slovenia: looks like a chicken, and Slovenians happily run with the joke themselves.
• Croatia: a croissant or boomerang hugging Bosnia.

When no mnemonic fits

Then go systematic. First, proportions: Chile is about 4,300 kilometres long and on average only 180 kilometres wide. If an outline looks like a piece of string, there are not many options. Second, islands: a shattered archipelago is almost always Indonesia (more than 17,000 islands) or the Philippines (officially 7,641 since the 2016 resurvey). Third, holes and neighbours: only three countries sit entirely inside another one, Lesotho, San Marino and Vatican City. An outline with a hole in the middle is almost certainly South Africa. Fourth, coastlines: Norway's coast is so fjord-riddled you can spot it at any zoom level.

Practice without calling it practice

You learn outlines fastest when they keep showing up unannounced. In CountryRush they rotate with flag and city questions in the same run, which is exactly why they stick.