Mark your maps: The finals of the National Geographic Bee take place on May 20 at NG headquarters in Washington, D.C. They’re also broadcast live on the National Geographic Channel, and subsequently on PBS (check your local station for details). As the contestants do their late-minute cramming, we asked the geographers and educators who come up with the questions for their insights. Here’s what we learned from Jo Erikson, Geoffrey Hatchard, and the rest of the Bee content team.

Where do you get ideas for the geography-bee questions?

We sit down to have a brainstorming session to come up with ideas. We get ideas from National Geographic products, our colleagues and peers at the Society, current events, and outside geographic sources.

One example is the May 2008 earthquake in China, which led to a question we used in the championship round of the 2008 National Geographic Bee:

“In May 2008, the largest Chinese earthquake in over 50 years occurred in Sichuan province. Name the capital of this province, which is located about 50 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake.”

[Note: In case you want to test your geographic mettle, the answer to this and other questions in this post appear at the end.]

How do you know if a question is too easy?

From our experience as geographers and educators, we think we have a feel for what is an easy or a difficult geography question. If a question is easier, we put it into a round with other easier questions. The same applies to harder questions.

This is all subjective, of course: In a contest if someone knows the answer, a question can seem easy, and if one doesn’t know the answer, it can seem like a hard question. We remind folks to keep that in mind.

What’s an example of an easy question?

This question is from Round 1 of the 2009 State Preliminary competition:

“Which state contains more Revolutionary War battlefields—Massachusetts or Texas?”

What about an example of a hard question?

“Austronesian languages are spoken on islands in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Which large island is the westernmost home to this language family?”

Do you ever reject a question because it’s too hard?

Sometimes. One example was, “How many counties are there in Ireland?” You might as well ask, “How many jelly beans are there in a jar?”

The reason we wouldn’t ask such a question is not because no one knows how many counties there are in Ireland, but because the question relies on knowing one random fact without relating it to any other geographic concept or knowledge.

We look for questions that provide clues leading to a country, city, or some other feature we could expect students to know.

What's the best strategy for a student who wants to prepare for the bee?

Read geography textbooks, atlases, and maps. Pay attention to the news and current events. Just try to view the world with a geographic perspective, and think about the interconnectedness of people, places, and events. Also, you can learn a lot about the format of the competition by reading the National Geographic Bee Official Study Guide.

Any advice for adults who'd like to improve their geography knowledge? Is there a book or website you'd recommend?

We would start by recommending the same things to adults that we would to students—and perhaps reading some books such as The Power of Place by H. J. de Blij and Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

For readers of Pop Omnivore, can you give us a pop-culture geography question?

“Season 18 of the CBS show Survivor was filmed in the tropical rain-forest state of Tocantins, located in what country (pictured above)?”

Do bee contestants tend to have any typical weak spots?

We have noticed that our participants have the most difficulty with physical geography questions.

Besides reading books and following events, should a potential contestant memorize capital cities, lengths of rivers, heights of mountains?

Knowing [such] information is helpful in answering questions, as those facts are used as clues. Knowing them will guide you to the correct answer. It is important, though, to not merely memorize these facts but to understand their cultural and physical geographic relationship with their environment.

If you were going to write a question for President Obama to see how good his knowledge of geography is, what would you ask him?

We would ask him something from a political geography category such as this:

“In October 2008, with more than 80 percent of the vote, Ilham Aliyev was re-elected president of a former Soviet republic. Name this oil-rich country, which is located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea.”

And now, the big reveal:

China earthquake province: Chengdu

Revolutionary battlefield winner: Texas. No, wait, that’s wrong … Massachusetts!

Westernmost home to Austronesian languages: Madagascar

Survivor locale: Brazil

Oil-rich former Soviet republic: Azerbaijan

-Marc Silver

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