Geography geeks, map your route here once a month: The quiz lives

One of America’s least architecturally distinguished state capitol buildings, above, is in one of the state capitals featured in the first Reefer’s Mini Quiz for Hopeless Geography Geeks. See Question 5, below. Artwork courtesy of Digital Horizons.

I REALLY DON’T MISS getting out of bed before dawn to go to work every morning.

But I do miss the good people I worked with at The Seattle Times, and I look back fondly at some of the projects and tasks I enjoyed. One feature I loved was the annual Seattle Times Geography Quiz, which we ran in the Travel section every New Year’s as a fun reader activity to wind up the holidays.

For much of the final decade I worked at the Times, it became my task to compose the quiz, and I loved it. I’m a total geography geek, and I believe readers appreciated a challenging yet fun quiz. I felt like the Will Shortz of geography.

So I’m bringing it here: the monthly Reefer’s Mini Quiz for Hopeless Geography Geeks. It will be just five questions each month on whatever topic I choose.

First topic: U.S. STATE CAPITALS. No Googling (this means you). Answers are upside down below.

1. What state’s capital, when spelled out, includes three pairs of doubled letters?

2. What state’s capital, when spelled out, ends with the name of a popular roll candy?

3. What are the most populous and least populous state capital cities in the U.S.?

4. What state’s capital is also the name of the prickly aunt in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”?

5. What state has the only capital city named for the leader of another nation?

ANSWERS (Turn your laptop upside down, but don’t drop it, OK?)

Thanks for playing! The quiz will be back in February.