Which is the largest island in the world?

The correct answer is C, Pacific Ocean. The Pacific covers a greater area than all the land on earth put together and is also the deepest ocean, holding the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point on the planet. Its rim is ringed by volcanoes and earthquake zones, which is why it is called the Ring of Fire.

Option A, the Atlantic, is the second largest ocean and is famous for the mid-Atlantic ridge along which the sea floor is spreading. Option B, the Indian Ocean, is the third largest, the only major ocean named after a country, and the one whose monsoon winds shaped the trade of the region. Option D, the Arctic, is the smallest and shallowest of the oceans and is largely covered by ice. A candidate should remember the order by size, Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic, because the paper asks for the smallest as often as for the largest.

The correct answer is A, Mariana Trench. The Mariana Trench lies in the western Pacific, east of the Mariana Islands, and its deepest part, the Challenger Deep, is close to eleven kilometres below sea level. Trenches of this kind form where one oceanic plate is pushed under another, a process called subduction, which is why they lie along the edges of the Pacific.

Option B, the Puerto Rico Trench, is the deepest point of the Atlantic Ocean, but it is far shallower than the Mariana. Option C, the Java or Sunda Trench, is the deepest part of the Indian Ocean and lies along the Indonesian arc. Option D, the Peru-Chile or Atacama Trench, runs along the western coast of South America, where the Nazca plate slides beneath the South American plate and raises the Andes. Each option is a real trench, so the answer rests on knowing which one holds the record.

The correct answer is B, Nile. The Nile flows north through north-eastern Africa for about 6,650 kilometres to the Mediterranean and is the river taken as the longest in the world in almost every textbook and examination. Its two great branches, the White Nile and the Blue Nile, meet at Khartoum in Sudan.

Option A, the Amazon, is the largest river in the world by the volume of water it discharges and by the area of its basin, which holds the largest rainforest; some surveys that measure it from a different headstream in the Andes also claim it as the longest, but that reading is not the one papers expect. Option C, the Yangtze, is the longest river of Asia and flows entirely within China. Option D, the Mississippi with the Missouri, is the longest river system of North America. Read the wording carefully, since longest and largest give different answers here.

The correct answer is C, Sahara. The Sahara stretches across northern Africa from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and is the largest hot desert in the world. Note the qualifier in the question: the largest desert of any kind is Antarctica, because a desert is defined by how little precipitation it receives rather than by heat, and Antarctica is therefore a cold desert.

Option A, the Gobi, lies in Mongolia and northern China and is a cold desert of the mid latitudes, not a hot one. Option B, the Kalahari, in southern Africa, is much smaller than the Sahara. Option D, the Atacama in Chile, holds a different record: it is the driest desert on earth, with places that have gone for years without measurable rain. Papers set this question in both forms, so learn the pair together: Antarctica is the largest desert and the Sahara the largest hot desert.

The correct answer is B, Venezuela. Angel Falls drops 979 metres from the edge of a flat-topped table mountain called Auyan Tepui in the Guiana highlands of Venezuela, and is the highest uninterrupted waterfall in the world. The water falls so far that much of it turns to mist before reaching the bottom.

Option A, Brazil, shares the Iguazu Falls with Argentina, which are famous for their width and their many separate cascades rather than their height. Option C, Zambia, shares the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi with Zimbabwe, a fall known for the sheet of water it carries over a single wide ledge. Option D, Canada, shares Niagara Falls with the United States, the most visited of all waterfalls but far lower than any of the others named. The question is testing height, not fame or volume.