Adjacent Capital Pair Superlatives

Updated April 2015: expanded from 24 to 28 questions. Decided to remove the caveat about not counting French Guiana as part of France and just add an additional category instead. Also added the one about distance from the equator.

Can you think of something? I like this quiz a lot but I think it could be expanded 24 or 28 answers.

That's one of the trickier ones IMO. The border is pretty tiny and easily overlooked.

Not sure what you mean by Thimphu and Kathmandu being smaller. In terms of population difference, using figures for "city proper" and at least according to Wikipedia, I don't think anything even comes close to Beijing vs. New Delhi. Wikipedia gives Beijing's municipal population as over 21 million. New Delhi, on the other hand, is really just a small neighborhood in the greater city of Delhi, even though it is officially the capital. New Delhi's population is a meager 250,000. That means there is a difference in population north of 20 million, and since there are no capital cities in the world with a population that large in the municipal boundaries (except for Beijing, Tokyo's municipal population is only 13 million), it's impossible that there is another pair with a larger difference. If you measure by urban area and not city proper of course there's a very different result.

re: Lima, there is part of the city that touches the sea, but then there are other parts that are 1500 meters high. It's a very mountainous city.

re: your suggestions for other categories... 2nd closest could be good I might add that. 2nd farthest apart I'm pretty sure would just be Moscow and Beijing so that wouldn't really add anything while at the same time unnecessarily dropping a hint for the farthest answer.

Closest by country size? That sounds like it would take a *lot* of work to figure out, and I would have no idea who would win in that equation either. I don't think most people would even bother guessing, that's just too confusing.

The equator/meridian thing is a good idea but, yes, there are quite a few that would fit that description. That might be better as a subject for a different quiz.

Difference in average temperature is a very good idea. I may look into adding that one as well as 2nd closest capitals.

Triborder... I'll think about that, too, though again I think if we go too complicated people will just be confused and not bother with it.

I do not have any such Excel format... but I've got most of the world in my head and when that fails there's googlemaps, Wikipedia, etc. to help out.

This is what I've come up with for potentially the biggest difference in average temperature: Addis Ababa (up in the mountains, quite pleasant year round) has an annual daily mean temperature of 16.3 degrees Celsius, while Khartoum's average is about 29.83 C if my math is right, for a difference of 13.5 degrees. Runners-up include Sana'a/Muscat, New Delhi/Thimphu, Ankara/Baghdad, La Paz/Brasilia, and Paris/Brasilia if you count French Guiana as part of France. But I can't find any difference bigger than 13.5 degrees. La Paz is so high up I thought it would win but Brasilia isn't quite as hot as Khartoum so the difference is only 12.25 degrees they I was figuring (it's a bit complicated as La Paz has different averages depending on how high up you are and where in the city you are measuring, but I tried to be fair and average all the data together). I also considered Moscow/Beijing, Rabat/Nouakchott, and Washington/Mexico but they weren't as close.

Thanks. :) But, I don't think I really need it. If I have a use for it I'll let you know.

You can turn off the timer at the top of the page if you've registered for the site. I don't want to hamper anyone's ability to enjoy my quizzes as they see fit so the time limit is just there for those that like to have a finite time limit.

I'll add a minute.

Those are pretty good ideas but I think you're right.. some would take a considerable amount of time to research. I'll think about it if I have time to expand this.

oh, man.. friggin' French Guiana... I hadn't even considered it when I first made the quiz. I added it in as "greatest temperature difference" only after I originally published the quiz. But that's a mistake you've caught. Maybe I should just add a caveat "doesn't include overseas departments"

Or I could do farthest and 2nd farthest... I'll look into it. Thanks for picking my nits.

If I added the category highest total rainfall I believe Conakry and Monrovia would run away with it. Monrovia gets more rainfall than any other country capital I could find by a hefty margin.

Actually I think it was because of my repeated insistence that QuizMaster finally started accepted Guatemala for Guatemala City (and Kuwait, Panama, etc.), but "Guatamala" is spelled wrong. It's difficult anticipating everyone's incorrect spellings.

However, since authoring this quiz QM has updated the quiz editor with a feature that suggests type-ins. Given that capital cities are common answers on quizzes here, I assume those are all among the suggestions. I'll check it out and see if I can add the suggested type-ins so it's consistent with the rest of the site.

done

The original research took several hours. Making the quiz took 15 minutes.

IMO "Andorra" should be an acceptable type-in for "Andorra-la-Vella"... (Andorra the City)

New Delhi is a small district of the larger city of Delhi. The population center is anchored to Delhi.