Biggest City Quiz

Biggest City Quiz tests one fact per state, which city holds the most people, and it is deliberately not the same fact as the state capital. A full round is 15 states with four buttons each and takes about two minutes.

How to play

Press Start. A city name appears in the navy card, four state names appear underneath, and you click the state that city belongs to. A correct pick turns green and adds one point. A wrong pick turns red, the right state turns green so you see the answer, and you lose one of three lives. The deck is drawn at random from all 50 states, so no two runs are identical and there is no clock. Score converts to stars at the end: three stars from 90 percent, two from 60 percent, one from 30 percent. Losing all three lives ends the run early. Your best score and your day to day streak are stored in your own browser.

The cities that cost people lives

Two city names sit in the deck twice. Portland is the largest city of Maine and of Oregon, and Charleston is the largest city of South Carolina and of West Virginia. Read all four buttons before clicking, because only one member of each pair is ever offered. Kansas City is the third classic trap: it is the largest city in Missouri, and Kansas answers to Wichita.

The other half of the game is knowing when the capital is also the answer. In 17 states it is: Phoenix, Little Rock, Denver, Atlanta, Honolulu, Boise, Indianapolis, Des Moines, Boston, Jackson, Columbus, Oklahoma City, Providence, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Charleston in West Virginia and Cheyenne. Everywhere else the capital is a decoy. Virginia answers Virginia Beach rather than Richmond, Florida answers Jacksonville rather than Tallahassee, Alabama answers Huntsville rather than Montgomery, and Nevada answers Las Vegas rather than Carson City.

The 33 states where capital and biggest city split

Keep going

The reference article behind this quiz lists every state with its largest city and how the ranking has shifted.