Drill the map, not flashcards. Free, no account.
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Can you locate all 23 provinces of Argentina, and its capital city?
Can you locate all 10 provinces and 3 territories of Canada?
Can you locate all 50 provinces of Spain?
Brazil is a federation of 26 states and one federal district, and it fills almost half of South America: from the Amazon mouth to the gaúcho pampas is about four thousand kilometres, and the biggest state, Amazonas, is bigger than Peru. The shapes are mostly big and blunt, which makes the map easier than the count suggests once you know where the five regions sit. This page is the whole set, and the game asks you to put each name where it belongs.
An estado is a member of the Brazilian federation, and each one elects its own governor and legislature, runs its own police and courts, and collects its own main sales tax. Twenty-six of them cover the country between them.
The twenty-seventh is not a state. Brasília was built in the interior in the late 1950s and the Federal District was cut out of Goiás to hold it. It has the status of a state in everything this quiz asks about (its own governor, its own legislature, its own ISO code), but it cannot be divided into municipalities, so Brazilians count 27 federative units and this game asks about all 27. It is also the target everybody looks for first and the hardest one to hit: a small patch of the plateau, wrapped almost entirely by Goiás, with a sliver of Minas Gerais to the southeast.
Most of the northern map is recent by Brazilian standards. Acre was bought from Bolivia in 1903 and became a state in 1962. Rondônia, Roraima and Amapá were federal territories until 1988, and Tocantins was carved out of northern Goiás in the same constitution, which makes it the youngest state on the map. Mato Grosso do Sul split from Mato Grosso in 1977, and Rio de Janeiro absorbed the old state of Guanabara, the city itself, in 1975.
Names to watch, because they sit close together: three states begin with Rio Grande or Rio de, two with Mato Grosso, and two with Pará and Paraná, which differ by a single letter and sit three thousand kilometres apart. Pará is the huge one on the equator at the Amazon mouth. Paraná is the southern one that borders Paraguay and São Paulo.
The mistakes are nearly all in the Northeast coastal strip, where five states are each a few hundred kilometres across and look alike, and in Espírito Santo against Rio de Janeiro. Alagoas and Sergipe are the two smallest on the mainland coast after the Federal District, with Sergipe the smaller and the more southern.
These are the five macro-regions that the national statistics office defines and every Brazilian schoolchild learns. They are a statistical grouping rather than a level of government, but the names are in everyday use: a weather forecast, a census and a football league all speak in them. Each group can be played on its own from the start dialog, and the South is a three question drill while the Northeast is a real one.
A small patch of the central plateau, and the smallest target here by a wide margin. It was cut out of Goiás to hold the capital, Brasília, which was planned from an empty field and inaugurated in 1960, and it is the only federative unit that is a single city and its satellite towns. It has the same standing as a state in everything this game asks.
The long thin state down the middle of the country between the Amazon and the plateau, created in 1988 from the northern half of Goiás. Its capital, Palmas, was built from nothing in 1989, and it is the state people place too far east or too far west, since it has no coast and no foreign border.
The southern one, between São Paulo and Santa Catarina, with the Paraguayan border at its western end and Iguaçu Falls where it meets Argentina. Pará is the giant at the mouth of the Amazon, and the two names differ by one letter and a good three thousand kilometres.
The southernmost state, wedged between Uruguay, Argentina and the Atlantic, and the home of the gaúcho cattle culture. It is the only one with a long frontier on both Uruguay and Argentina, and Porto Alegre sits on the lagoon system that fills its eastern edge.
26, plus the Federal District, which holds the capital Brasília. The Federal District is not a state but has the same standing: its own governor, its own legislature and its own ISO code. Brazilians therefore count 27 federative units, and this game asks about all 27.
The North, the Northeast, the Center-West, the Southeast and the South. They are defined by the national statistics office and are a statistical grouping rather than a level of government, but they are the words a weather forecast and a census use.
Amazonas, in the northwest, which is larger than most countries. Pará is second by area. São Paulo has by far the most people, roughly a fifth of the country, and the Federal District is the smallest unit by area.
Tocantins, created in 1988 out of the northern half of Goiás. Rondônia, Roraima and Amapá were federal territories until the same constitution made them states, and Acre became a state in 1962.
Landscape first: rainforest and wide rivers mean the North, dry scrub and sugar cane the Northeast, flat soy and cattle country the Center-West, hills and coffee the Southeast, and araucaria pines and pampas the South. After that, the area code on a shopfront is the best tell, since every code covers one state or part of one, and the number plate carries no state name any more now that Brazil has adopted a Mercosur style plate.
Brazil has a second map on the site, Brazil Dialing Codes, which asks the same country at the area code level. The neighbours are Argentina Provinces and Mexico Dialing Codes, and maps in exactly this shape elsewhere: Germany States, Nigeria States and India States.
