Americans are famously “geography challenged.”

Actually, I think most of the world is geographically challenged. I’d say about nine cabbies out of 10 here in Abu Dhabi are unclear on the concept of “California.” These are guys from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India … When they ask me where I’m from, I really should just leave it at “America” because California is not something they get (as most Euros would), and even “Los Angeles” seems hazy. “Hollywood,” they’ve heard of, but they aren’t at all sure where it is.

American geographic shortcomings are noticed and talked about because the U.S. is the only superpower, and the rest of the world — all of it — thinks Americans ought to know where their country is. (As well as what their issues are and what their history is.) Nobody likes to think the average citizen in the Only Superpower has never heard of their country or can’t find it on a map.

To that end … we have here a geography test for the region I’m in now. The Middle East, west Asia, north Africa. (A tip: When dragging and placing the names, note where the red arrow is pointing, because that’s where the game wants to put the name. Not actually where the name is — where the arrow is.)

Go ahead and take it. See how many you get wrong. Or right. Then I’ll tell you how I did.

How did you do? You got some of the big ones, right? Some of those that have been in the news the past few months? And you knew the UAE because you’ve been reading this blog?

I got all but two. I had Turkmenistan and Tajikistan switched. The Stans!

Being in the region helps, for sure. Eighteen months ago I wouldn’t have gotten Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan right. I remember looking for Kyrgyzstan a year or so ago when they had some unrest there, and then Uzbekistan made a deep run in the Asian Cup, which I covered, and I looked up Uzbekistan on the map and remembered its weird shape.

(Actually, I’d like to go to Tashkent, the capital, or the famed trading town Samarkand, also in Uzbekistan, but airfares there are ruinous.)

And don’t all Americans owe it to the military to know where Iraq and Afghanistan are? You probably all know someone who has been there, in uniform.

I admit I was less than sure about the belt of countries along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, in Africa. I know the countries on the Mediterranean. But Mali, Chad, Mauretani, Niger … well, I got them right, but I wasn’t sure. And it took me a moment to think through Armenia and Azerbaijan.

It was a matter of putting down the ones I was most comfortable with, and working from there. I knew Sudan was right below Egypt. I remembered thinking, more than once, “wow, Chad is much bigger than I thought” so I got Chad, the big one next to the even-bigger Sudan.

And then a former colleague, Suzie Ahn, is working in Benin with the Peace Corps, and she blogged about concerns that unrest in Niger, north of her, might spill into Benin, and so I plopped Niger down at the spot above where I thought Benin would be. Which left Mali to the right of Niger and Mauretania (a name with similar roots to Morocco, just above it) to the left, and Western Sahara … well, west on the Saraha.

Anyway, can’t hurt to work on it. Impress your friends. So when things get rough in Oman, you can say, “sure, right there on the Gulf of Hormuz, next to the UAE and across from Iran!”

Good luck.