Brain Teasers
US State, not Straight
Trivia
Trivia brain teasers have some element of trivia in them, but they are not just pure trivia questions.Trivia
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.
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.Answer
Hawaii. Since its borders are naturally formed by the ocean they have no straight lines as do all the other US States.Hide Hint Show Hint Hide Answer Show Answer
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Comments
I loved this and it was hard but I like them that way
I like it! I never really thought about that, but I bevlieve it.
Pretty Easy if ya ask me
what about south carolina
what about south carolina
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.
I am stupid because I don't get it.
lol very intresting
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
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.
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!
Good teaser.
Good One.
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!
I totally forogt about Hawaii.
At first I thought it was Ohio but I got Hawaii after I thought about the hint.
West Virginia?
The border between WV and PA is a straight line. Nice try though.
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