Braingle: 'US State, not Straight' Brain Teaser

US State, not Straight

Trivia brain teasers have some element of trivia in them, but they are not just pure trivia questions.

Puzzle ID:	#13739
Fun:	(2.78)
Difficulty:	(1.1)
Category:	Trivia
Submitted By:	electronjohn
Corrected By:	cnmne

There is only one U.S. state that has no straight-line borders. Can you determine which one it is?

A border which is formed by a line of longitude or latitude qualifies as "straight", even though it is slightly curved.

Hint

You need to know very little about U.S. geography to get the answer.
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Comments

Paige42986 Jul 28, 2003	I loved this and it was hard but I like them that way
luvupurple Jul 28, 2003	I like it! I never really thought about that, but I bevlieve it.
beanie89 Aug 12, 2003	Pretty Easy if ya ask me
eggbert Oct 03, 2003	what about south carolina
eggbert Oct 03, 2003	what about south carolina
electronjohn Oct 03, 2003	South Carolina, the Palmetto State, is a great state. It has a little over 4 million people in it, about 25% of them under 18 years old, and it was the birth place of Andrew Jackson (the USA's 7th president), .Vanna White (Wheel of Fortune letter turner) and the legendary baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson. But, alas, it has three straight lines along it's North Carolina border disqualifying it from this teaser.
kgirlca Jan 29, 2004	I am stupid because I don't get it.
melybug Jul 29, 2004	lol very intresting
(user deleted) Jul 29, 2004	I have no knowledge of the geography of US, but didn't think "out of the box" enough to get the answer. Nice puzzle
airhead3 Jul 29, 2004	Nice teaser! One minor quibble - if a line of latitude or longitude isn't technically straight, what is? There's really no such thing as a straight line that would exist flush on a spherical object (the Earth), as any line is forced to curve with the curvature of the Earth. Hence, the closest a line could get to being straight would be a great circle line (longitude) or a small circle/rhumb line (latitude), and even then it would entirely depend upon the projection method used to display a three dimensional map on a two dimensional surface. I say all of this not to fault the teaser itself - obviously the teaser had no need of going into such depth - but more to point out a three dimensional way of thinking about what constitutes a 'straight' line.
vbfreak55 Jul 31, 2004	yay!! i got this one, too! i'm on a role today! wow, airhead3, you're comment was very logical. too logical, that i didn't even read the whole thing, because it drove me nuts! i hate geography!
aznboi1324 Jun 01, 2005
smarty_blondy Oct 01, 2005	Good teaser.
Kalliann Jan 05, 2006	Good One.
horse_luver Jun 15, 2006	I'm not American, but I should have gotten that. Instead, I resigned myself to thinking that, as a Canadian, I couldn't. Then I saw the answer and slapped my forehead. Makes you think!
zigthepig Oct 19, 2006	I totally forogt about Hawaii.
MikeMan1216 May 04, 2007	At first I thought it was Ohio but I got Hawaii after I thought about the hint.
cheesepie Feb 09, 2008	West Virginia?
ElectronJohn Feb 11, 2008	The border between WV and PA is a straight line. Nice try though.