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Ask a Briton where they are from and the answer is a county, a council area or a district, depending on which of the four countries they are standing in. This quiz is the map as they would draw it: England's ceremonial counties, Scotland's council areas, Wales' principal areas and Northern Ireland's districts, all on one canvas. This page is what that mix is, the groups worth learning it in, and what puts you inside one from a photograph.
The United Kingdom has no single second tier, so this map uses the one each country uses for itself.
England is its ceremonial counties. These are the counties of the Lieutenancies Act: the lines the King's lord-lieutenants cover, which are also the ones on a postcard, a cricket scorecard and a road atlas. They are not the lines councils are run along. A ceremonial county like Berkshire has no county council, and Bristol, Hull and Plymouth are cities that run themselves inside the counties around them, so this map draws each unitary authority in the county it belongs to. Greater London is one target, with the City of London folded into it, and the Isles of Scilly are part of Cornwall.
Scotland is its 32 council areas, which are the unit everything from bin collection to election counts is run by. Wales is its 22 principal areas, a mix of counties, county boroughs and cities, and the unit its councils are elected in. Northern Ireland is its 11 districts. It still has six traditional counties, Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone, but its districts cut across them, so the districts are what a map can honestly draw.
Shetland has been moved. The islands lie a degree and a half north of Orkney, and drawing them in place would shrink every other county on the map by a sixth. They are shown in the North Sea east of Aberdeenshire, inside a line that marks them as an inset.
The groups are this game's own cut. England is split into the three bands it is usually described in, and the other three countries have a group each, since 32, 22 and 11 areas are each a quiz of their own. Each one can be switched on and off in the game's start dialog.
Greater London is the 32 boroughs and the City, drawn in 1965. Watford, Dartford, Epsom and Slough are not in it, and neither is anything beyond the M25 on the outer side. Inside, the giveaway is the transport system: red buses with route numbers, the roundel on a station, red routes on main roads and black cabs. Anything more than about 20 miles from the centre is Hertfordshire, Surrey, Kent or Essex.
Highland is the largest area on the map, bigger than Wales, and most of it has nobody in it. It runs from the Great Glen to the north coast and takes in the Isle of Skye. Place it by what it is not: the central belt around Glasgow and Edinburgh is south and east of it, and the Western Isles, which also carry Gaelic signs, sit across the Minch.
Yorkshire is not on this map as one target, because it is four ceremonial counties: North, South and West Yorkshire and the East Riding. West Yorkshire is the industrial one, Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield, and it sits between the Pennines and the Vale of York. Everyone still says Yorkshire, so the four are drawn side by side and the answer you click is the county.
It depends on the country. England has 48 ceremonial counties, which this quiz draws as 47 with the City of London folded into Greater London. Scotland has 32 council areas, Wales 22 principal areas and Northern Ireland 11 districts, and together they give the 112 areas in this game.
A ceremonial county is the area a lord-lieutenant covers, and it is the county on a postcard or in an atlas. It is separate from the administrative county that runs services: Bristol, Hull and Plymouth run themselves but sit inside ceremonial counties. The boundaries are the ones most people mean when they name an English county.
Northern Ireland has six traditional counties, but they have had no government since 1973 and its 11 districts cut across them. The districts are the tier with boundaries to draw, so they are what the quiz uses.
Shetland is a council area of its own and has to be answerable, but drawing it in place, a degree and a half above Orkney, would shrink every other area on the map by about a sixth. So it is moved into the North Sea east of Aberdeenshire and boxed off with a line.
The historic county is, but today it is four ceremonial counties: North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. They are four separate targets here.
For the tier above this one, try UK Nations and Regions. For other European administrative maps, try Ireland Counties, France Departments and Germany States.
