Bigger — states, counties and cities, which one is larger?
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About this game
The pile. All fifty states, the 350 most populous counties and the 350 most populous cities, shuffled together. Los Angeles County has more people in it than forty-one states, so a county against a state is a real question.
The numbers. Population is the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate. Land area is from the 2024 cartographic boundary files, water inside the border excluded.
The outlines behind each card come from the same boundary files, each drawn on a projection centred on itself and scaled to fill its panel, so nothing in the picture tells you the answer.
Nothing is asked against its own container. A state is never put against a county inside it, and a city never against its own county or state: a thing that contains another is not smaller than it, so there would be no question.
It gets harder. Early pairs are far apart. The longer the streak runs, the closer the two numbers are drawn, down to a few per cent.
Washington appears once, as a city, being a state-equivalent, a county and a place all at the same time. Virginia's independent cities are cities here, not counties. Connecticut's planning regions are left out.