Country land area is the most viscerally surprising statistic in geography. Russia's seventeen million square kilometers covers more of the globe than the entire surface of Pluto. Vatican City fits inside an average American mall. This quiz pairs random countries and asks which is geographically bigger.

Map projections lie

Greenland appears enormous on a Mercator world map but is roughly the same size as Algeria. Africa is bigger than China, India, the United States, and most of Europe combined. Saudi Arabia is larger than the entire EU. Australia is almost the size of the contiguous United States. Mongolia, often perceived as a buffer state between two giants, is itself the size of Western Europe.