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Small Is Beautiful
Question by Ethan Gelber

The Question:

As history continues to fracture Europe into smaller and smaller countries, some countries are already smaller than Rhode Island, the smallest U.S. State. Yes, we are talking about sovereign, independent, European countries. Hint: There are seven of them that you will probably get and one that you probably won't.

Can you name all eight?

The Answer:

The eight independent European countries with a smaller land area than that of Rhode Island (1,545 square miles) are (in alphabetical order):
Andorra
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Malta
Monaco
San Marino
Vatican City

and, the hard one...

the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (located, like Vatican City, entirely within Rome's city limits).

The Winners:

We had only two winners this week, Jeff Lonard and Gaetano Auricchio, but six others — Trina Burke, Robert Anderson, Molly Brunner, Gayle Watkins, Tim Vander Haar and Steve Yates — named seven of the eight.

Some of the excellent alternative guesses included: the Faroe Islands (Danish); Gibraltar (British); Guernsey and Jersey (the U.K.'s Channel Islands); Bermuda (British); the Principality of Seborga (a tiny territory in Ligurian Italy with all the trappings of autonomy but without the official status); Tuvalu, Nauru, and the Marshall Islands (equatorial Pacific islands with no direct attachment to Europe); and Switzerland, Slovenia, and Macedonia (all larger than Rhode Island).

THANKS for your contributions!