Connecticut has nor coastline - really?

I was just watching a TV game show “Pointless” here in the UK. This show is usually pretty much on-the-money accuracy wise but I was taken aback a bit by one round. Contestants were asked to each name one of the 22 US states with a coast. They then went on to say that “for geographical reasons we won’t accept either Pennsylvania or Connecticut - they have tidal shorelines but not technically a coast”.

What!!??? As far as I can see Pennsylvania has a shoreline on Lake Erie but is quite a ways from the ocean. I can see how that makes in ineligible but not why they single it out when several states are in the same situation. Connecticut on the other hand has several hundred miles of what look very much like coast to me. It also has the US Coast Guard Academy and a Navy Submarine base. Is there any legitimacy to the show not accepting CT?

The rationale must be that Connecticut’s shoreline lies entirely on Long Island Sound rather than the Atlantic Ocean per se. Seems like hair-splitting to me, though.

Pennsylvania’s “tidal shoreline” is presumably the lower part of the Delaware River where it turns into Delaware Bay.

Long Island Sound is an estuary, which typically don’t get counted as part of the sea even though they are saltwater.

Was Illinois one of them? Some years ago they managed to get a court to rule that Lake Michigan is “an arm of the sea”, so they could compete for the America’s Cup. That would suggest they have a coastline too.

Since it’s a UK show, I doubt they care about where an American court thinks the sea ends.

Did they count Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama? If those count, being on the Gulf of Mexico and not the Atlantic, I would have counted Connecticut.

Yep, and our local NPR outlet in Chicago (on the shores of Lake Michigan), WBEZ, started a wonderful series of radio programs that they named the Third Coast Festival, proving for once and for all that there is a coast here. QED

The Cleveland, Ohio area is sometimes called in local media “the North Coast.”

Seems lame, and pedantic to a fault, to say that Conn. and Penna. don’t have a “coast.”

“Lame, and pedantic to a fault” describes most UK knowledge-based game shows.

The Gulf of Mexico is part of the Atlantic. Long Island Sound isn’t.

The Gulf of Mexico has been claimed as the “Third Coast” too.

Where do they draw the line (literally)? Does Italy have a coast, or is the Mediterranean just a “tidal estuary”? Does the Isle of Man have a coast? How big do you have to be to not be counted as an estuary?

My guess is slightly different: Gulf of Mexico is international waters; Long Island Sound isn’t.

Big enough that there’s no measurable reduction in your salt level from the fresh water sources flowing into you. I don’t think there’s really a hard and fast rule beyond that.

Eh? The coastline along the Gulf of Mexico is definitely not international waters.

There is a differing salt concentration between the Pacific and Atlantic, what would be the standard? Perhaps the Atlantic is a tidal estuary then,

At least according to the definition in Merriam-Webster, Long Island Sound would not count as one (although I see that Wiki does call it an estuary). I don’t recall ever having heard it referred to as one.

As far as I know, around Long Island Sound the tide meets river currents within the mouths of the rivers flowing into it (such as Bronx portion of the East River), and those would be the actual estuaries. The tidal flow in the Sound itself is not affected significantly by river currents, so it is not an estuary.

There would seem to be good pedantic reasons to consider Connecticut to have a coastline.

I don’t know anything about Long Island Sound. I looked it up and went with Wiki’s description without reading further.

Agree on Connecticut, but I don’t know why anyone would think PA has an oceanic coast - the Delaware is very much still a river by the time it leaves the state. It may be a tidal estuary of sorts, but if you can stand right on the riverbank and see the other side, it’s still a river for my money.

Based on inspection, here are the 22 states I’d guess are correct:

Atlantic:
Maine
New Hampshire
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
New York
New Jersey
Delaware
Maryland
Virginia
North Carolina
South Carolina
Georgia
Florida
Alabama
Mississippi
Louisiana
Texas

Pacific:
California
Oregon
Washington
Alaska
Hawaii

For geographers, there is a technical difference between coastline and shoreline. Connecticut has no coastline, but it does have shoreline. See this table.

But nearly every rule will have weird outliers. By the salinity rule, Sweden doesn’t have an eastern coast.