We're Number 88!

Geography Olympics

America may dominate the world in sports and culture but in one arena where size doesn't matter, the "Geography Olympics," the United States was 88th behind minnows such as Madagascar and the Marshall Islands.

More than 46,000 Americans have taken part in this online geography competition started by a man with a mission: Roger Andresen, who quit his job as a fiber optic engineer two years ago when he realized most Americans have never heard of Nauru and don't know Cameroon is in Africa.

Working from his home in Georgia -- the U.S. state, not the country -- he created a jigsaw puzzle with pieces shaped like the countries of the world and launched what he calls the "world's biggest ongoing geography puzzle" on the Web.

Players have 200 seconds to locate 10 randomly selected countries on a map of the world with the names blanked out.

The site www.geographyolympics.com has attracted more than 300,000 players from 179 countries so far. National rankings fluctuate throughout the day depending on the latest scores.

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"Geography is just a building block for understanding what's going on in the world," said Andresen, whose family includes Christian missionaries and who has traveled to 44 countries.

"Being the world's superpower we should be informed voters," he said. "Sitting back and not worrying about these things is terrible, and it might be why the rest of the world doesn't care for us."

The best players tend to find seven of 10 locations, he said. Americans' average score is around 5.7 out of 10.