Capitals Study Guide: Learn Them by Region and by Distance

Capitals are the part of geography most likely to come up in a quiz, a pub night or a classroom. They are also the part most often learned badly, as a list of pairs with no location attached.

The [capital quiz](/play/capital-quiz/) fixes that: it names a capital and asks you to drop a pin. The score decays with distance, so you learn not just the pair but where inside the country the capital sits.

Group by continent, then by neighbourhood

Learn five capitals at a time from one region. For each one, say the country, the capital and one neighbouring country:

• Algeria → Algiers, next to Morocco and Tunisia.
• Morocco → Rabat, on the Atlantic coast, not Casablanca.
• Tunisia → Tunis, on the northern coast.

The neighbouring country is the hook. A capital floating alone is a fact; a capital with neighbours is a map.

Watch the common traps

• Morocco: Rabat, not Casablanca (the largest city).
• Turkey: Ankara, not Istanbul.
• Australia: Canberra, not Sydney.
• Canada: Ottawa, not Toronto.
• Brazil: Brasília, not Rio de Janeiro.
• United States: Washington, D.C., not New York.
• Nigeria: Abuja, not Lagos.
• Myanmar: Naypyidaw, not Yangon.
• Kazakhstan: Astana (renamed back from Nur-Sultan in 2022).
• South Africa: Pretoria (executive), Cape Town (legislative) and Bloemfontein (judicial) — a deliberate three-capital answer.

Learn the coastal capitals as a chain

Many capitals sit on a coast or a river. Learn them as a chain along the map:

• North Africa: Rabat → Algiers → Tunis → Tripoli → Cairo.
• West Africa: Dakar → Banjul → Bissau → Conakry → Freetown → Monrovia → Abidjan → Accra → Lomé → Cotonou → Lagos.
• South America: Bogotá → Quito → Lima → Santiago → Buenos Aires → Montevideo → Asunción.

Chains are much easier to recall than isolated pairs, and they teach the shape of the coast at the same time.

Use the distance score as a teacher

In the capital quiz, a pin that is 300 km off still scores well. That is not a bug; it is information. The distance line tells you which direction your mental map is stretched. If you consistently place West African capitals too far east, that is the correction to make.

A six-week plan

• Weeks 1–2: Europe and North Africa.
• Weeks 3–4: the Americas.
• Weeks 5–6: Asia and Oceania.

Five capitals a day, one daily challenge, and one review of the capitals you missed. Do that and the 199 capitals in the game become a map, not a list.