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Welcome to GuessTheUS.com, an informative quiz game about The United States

Test your knowledge of The United States and become a more knowledgeable citizen!

GuessTheUS is an informative quiz game about the United States, primarily covering important political and economic topics.

I intend to regularly add more questions and expand into other areas — especially history, law, and international relations — and allow users to select questions in areas of interest.

Questions look like this:

Answers show you how others answered:

Answers also provide sourcing:

Many answers suggest resources where you can "Learn More":

Your dashboard lets you see all the questions (and select any to answer or review):

Your dashboard also lets you search by text or by answer status:

FAQ

What can I win?

GuessTheUS isn't about scoring high.

GuessTheUS is about learning important facts about America and thinking about how we can all work together to make America even better based on reality, not the distorted, funhouse mirror "reality" many media outlets present us with.

The lower your score, the greater your learning opportunity!

How hard are the questions?

GuessTheUS questions are multiple-choice but hard. You will score low.

Many questions are based on things I've learned over the decades as a news junkie, yet I still would have scored very low on GuessTheUS because the details can be shocking.

Even if you're very well informed, I suspect many of the details you'll soon see will surprise — perhaps even shock — you.

Drew Carey famously called "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" "the game where everything's made up and the points don't matter." On GuessTheUS, nothing's made up... and the points don't matter.

What can I learn?

GuessTheUS is about learning important facts about America and thinking about how we can all work together to make America better, especially for non-billionaires.

I chose these questions to educate my fellow Americans and refute lie-based right-wing talking points — often loudly & widely amplified by the media.

For example:

Answer pages include links to sources where you can find both the answer and richer information on the topic.

Many answer pages also include a list of resources where you can "Learn More." I hope you will dive deeper into these important topics, either after answering each question or when you later return to the answer pages.

Why should I bother?

Democracy works well only when citizens are well informed. When we're ignorant, we're easily swayed by political ads and subtle social media algorithms and propaganda tactics.

So I hope everyone will engage with these questions not to prove how knowledgeable they are but with a spirit of open-minded humility and curiosity.

Aim to be inspired by the often surprising answers and take time to learn more and better inform yourself.

Share your most shocking discoveries with your friends and neighbors. The better informed we are, the better equipped we are to work together to make America truly great.

If any answers leave you upset and sad America isn't doing better, remember that every nation is flawed.

Confronting our shortcomings isn't unpatriotic. Patriotism is about acknowledging our shortcomings and then using our bodies, our minds, our voices, and our democratic power to improve our country.

Is this quiz biased?

Maybe. That depends on your definition of "bias."

The questions are curated/opinionated, but the answers are objectively true.

I've used my editorial judgment to choose topics and facts I consider important for Americans to know.

I've tried hard to be factual, sticking to questions with objectively correct answers.

I have also tried to ensure answers marked "correct" are indeed factually correct and to present documentation and sources supporting why these are factually correct answers.

On the other hand, I have made zero effort to try to present an ideologically balanced set of questions.

I've used my sense of justice/fairness/empathy in choosing which questions to ask and how to structure the possible answers and the answer explanations.

If you're a psychopath or radical libertarian who agrees with Grover Norquist that "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub", then you'll likely react quite differently to these facts than I do.

For example, you'll find few questions about sensationalist "culture war"-type subjects — like trans athletes or green M&Ms — because these topics are of minor significance and intentionally spotlighted by right-wing media to inflame, divide, and distract us from what really matters.

Harry Truman in 1948 gave an anti-Republican speech during which someone shouted "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" Truman replied, "I don't give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them, and they think it's Hell." That's what I'm going for with this quiz.

Why should I trust you?

Trust but verify. Every "correct answer" should be supported with credible facts from trustworthy sources.

Americans are deluged by a relentless stream of unsourced claims and opinions. The Washington Post counted 30,573 Donald Trump lies during his first term.

Answers to questions on this website are documented with well-sourced facts.

I'm no expert, but I know enough to identify actual experts on various political and economic matters.

I grew up reading three newspapers and have payed close attention for fifty years.

Along the way, I've earned a government degree from Harvard (where I won the Government Department's award for best undergraduate thesis on American government) and economics degrees — including a PhD — from Stanford and The London School of Economics.

Why did you spend time creating GuessTheUS.com?

I see millions of Americans voting every election against their economic interests, and that saddens me.

I see millions more Americans staying home and not voting, many because they feel it doesn't matter who we elect. Though no politicians are perfect, one party in America today cares about ordinary people while the other only pretends to while actually serving billionaires.

The more informed Americans are, the more we will participate and elect representatives who make government work for the people.

The more knowledgeable you are about US government and economics, the harder it is for the powerful to deceive and lie to you and trick you into focusing on trivialities while they neuter government's regulatory power that protects you and me from societally destructive predatory and monopolistic corporate abuse and siphon off government's vast resources for their benefit, not ours.

Ronald Reagan's declaration that "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help'" encapsulates the libertarian mentality that has poisoned American political discourse and driven so many to vote against their economic interests.

Americans have been propagandized that markets and the private sector are good while government is bad. This is a lie.

Capitalism is a powerful mechanism, but companies and markets are FAR from perfect. And government can and does many great things that free market capitalism cannot, like ensure that profit-driven companies don't poison our food, water, air, and medicines.

Private enterprise is not incentivized to provide public goods like national defense, an educated population, functional roads and bridges, efficient public transit, safe air travel, public health, or scientific research lacking immediate profitability.

Government must pool society's financial resources to buy these things for our collective benefit. Is there some waste? Of course, but many private corporations also waste resources. Some even harm society terribly.

Unfettered, unchecked monopolistic capitalism without regulation or social safety nets destroys lives. Everyone benefits from a wise balance between profit-seeking private enterprises and a government that provides public goods and regulates markets to ensure they operate fairly (by preventing monopolies, worker exploitation, environmental poisoning, fake/dangerous products, etc.).

My main hope is that everyone who engages with GuessTheUS will become better informed about important issues.

Given that I'm a liberal "economic elite" trusting my editorial judgment in choosing questions, some may well feel this quiz is biased.

If you feel these questions are biased, remember that all answers are grounded in objective, sourced FACTS.

This quiz may well be biased, but as Stephen Colbert declared at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner, "reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Is this just a quiz?

I hope you will find this a fun way to learn important facts about America.

Many of the answer pages include not only answers and charts but also links to additional related websites and videos where you can learn more about the topic.

I hope GuessTheUS.com inspires you to explore and learn more from the many resources we link to.

I strive to make sure sources I cite and websites & videos I link to are trustworthy and grounded in facts. Some of these additional resources inject their subjective opinions alongside the facts they share, but the sources must be trustworthy and grounded in facts.

Do you track me?

No. I've intentionally built this so you don't even need a username, and we don't record any information about you (like your browser or IP address).

We generate a random string you can use to revisit GuessTheUS.com as yourself. (So please save it somewhere safe because even we can't help you if you lose it. You would have to start over as a new user.)

We automatically log all requests/responses but don't plan to save that data for long. That's collected automatically purely for debugging & security purposes. We otherwise record no information about you unless you explicitly choose to share something with us.

Where can I learn more?

Here's a list of — in my opinion — informative, honest, fact-driven people/websites/podcasts you might want to follow:

This is cool. Can I help?

The most important thing you can do is stay informed and help elect people whose hearts and minds are prepared to put our common needs ahead of their selfish desires and those of billionaires!

Also, if you're upset or angry or worried or sad, do something. Join a local protest. Call or write your elected officials.

If you like GuessTheUS and find it useful or have ideas about how to improve it, we plan to add a "Comment" section where you could share your ideas.

I hope to enable the public to submit ideas, propose questions/answers, and suggest additional learning resources for various topics. Watch this space.

Finally, free political speech in America is under attack in 2025. The ruling administration is pressuring federal workers, law firms, universities, media organizations, and private firms to behave according to its wishes. If this website ever gets shut down, I want others to be able to revive it wherever they can and will take steps to facilitate that.

We don't want to track anyone, so we don't ask you to give your name or a username.

We generate a random unique ID so we can link your current session to everything you've done previously. Here's your ID:

zCYpyOGRHGCKDiyT

Please save this ID for future reference if you'd like to be able to resume your progress later or on a different browser.

Your ID: zCYpyOGRHGCKDiyT

Please save this ID for future reference if you'd like to be able to resume your progress later or on a different browser.

We plan to add new questions over time, so save your ID so you can pick up later where you left off. If you start as a different user, you'll be shown the same questions again.

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