How to play
- Press Start. You have 2 minutes for all 7 countries.
- Type a name. It counts as soon as it matches and turns green on the map; a country that doesn’t end in “stan” clears the box, with a note.
- Pause whenever you like. When the time is up, the lists below the map show what you named and what you missed.
About the “stan” countries
The ending -stan comes from a Persian word meaning “place of”, so each name says whose land it is. Seven sovereign countries have it, all in a band of Asia from the Caspian Sea to the Indus. Five of them became independent in 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up.
More about the countries (names some answers)
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Afghanistan means “land of the Afghans”. Pakistan’s name was coined in 1933 as an acronym of regions of British India, and also means “land of the pure” in Urdu. Kazakhstan is the largest by area and Pakistan the most populous, with about 255 million people.
Which countries count
Only sovereign countries count. Regions, provinces and republics within other countries whose names end in -stan aren’t answers; typing one says what it is.
Spelling: capitals, accents, spaces and punctuation don’t matter, and well-known alternative names count.
The accepted alternative names appear here when your quiz ends, so they don’t give any answers away.
| Country | Also accepted |
|---|---|
| Kyrgyzstan | Kyrgyz Republic |
Questions
What about Kurdistan or Tatarstan?
They are regions or republics within other countries, not sovereign states, so they aren’t answers.
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