It’s been quite a while since I rummaged through a Reader’s Digest so I don’t know if they still run a feature where there were thumbnails of maybe a dozen maps from around the USA with enough detail that if you had ever been in that state you ought to be able to pick out which one it was.
This is a variation on that theme and goes like this:
Using a well-known road atlas, and picking a page at random, I’m going to list ten place names from within a 3-inch circle (approximately). You have to figure out which state I picked. Then you post ten of your own from another page.
Try to avoid obvious places that everybody ought to know. Try to pick the 3-inch circle from a section of the map that has names that might be peculiar to the state or region.
Here’s #1:
-Badin
-Misenheimer
-Uwharie
-Richfield
-Liberty
-Granite Quarry
-Faith
-Healing Springs
-High Rock
-New London
Actually, the “Where Do You Think You Are?” quiz was a feature of The Saturday Evening Post – and may still be, although the magazine is now a monthly instead of a weekly. I’ll have to check the local county library’s current copy next time I pay a visit.
Yes, it is too bad. Unfortunately, when I was posting the OP I didn’t consider how easy it would be to Google or Yahoo! search on the list and get a hit with no effort at all. The game/puzzle was great back in the pre-web days when you could get free maps at every major filling station and have dozens of them lying around for every state you travelled in. Not to mention atlases.
The biggest giveaways on those maps in the puzzle/game, as often as not, were main roads (many of them pre-interstate!), lakes, rivers, national parks, and all sorts of features where just listing their names would make their state too obvious.
Maybe somebody can think of a variant way to do something similar that would avoid the temptation to cheat with web searches.
