Pasta in description (The Mystery of the Squarest Country)

Someone's emailed us asking us which country's shape is most like a square. What a stupid question Totally pointless... Slovakia? No Georgia? No... Bangladesh? No, Bangladesh looks like a wizard You think everything looks like a wizard Hm... Ghana? Too long North Macedonia? Too round Liberia? No Malaysia? Jay, Malaysia is not a square But there must be one somewhere Not in Oman or the UAE And Yemen's more a rectangle Yes, I can see Russia's nothing like a square Too long as far as I'm aware Mali starts off strongly, but right here it goes to pot Burkina Faso is irregular, four-sided it is not Hmm... Italy's a boot And so is Papua New Guinea What about Benin and Togo? No, they're both far too skinny What about these little countries, Costa Rica, Lebanon? There's no square in Singapore, Brunei, Mauritius, or Gabon Kuwait looks like a little thumb, Madagascar looks quite lean Burundi looks quite like a heart, Qatar looks like a bean India's a diamond and Slovenia's a splot Cuba's very long and thin and both Koreas are short and squat Mozambique has got too many sides, Uzbekistan as well Little Paraguay's no paradigm, Mauritania's an L And Malawi's like a seahorse, Guinea-Bissau's a weathered rock And Nauru's nearly a circle and Somalia's a sock France is famously a hexagon, that fact is quite well known But it's not the only one, it's joined by Sierra Leone What about these landlocked countries like Nepal or South Sudan? They're not square and nor are Denmark, Finland, China, or Iran Luxembourgers are all squares which their borders don't reflect And Australia's a cat-dog, and Japan we must reject Guatemala has two squarish sides in this bit in the north But it won't meet our criteria 'cause it needs a third and fourth Timor Leste? Doesn't pass the test Moldova? Guinea? Don't be silly Little Rwanda? Doesn't stand a hope in hell Nor does Israel Are we seriously going to go through every country? Yes, I think it's important Both the USA and Canada have squares in large amounts But we're only counting countries and states don't count Poland would look like a square if it invaded to the south Kazakhstan looks like a turtle with a leaf stuck in its mouth Despite a square's efficiency, the Germans don't come close And Peru is like a resting dog, Guyana's like a ghost Ethiopia and Switzerland look like potato wedges Norway, Sweden, and New Zealand all have far too crinkly edges If you have a lot of coastline then your sides will not be straight So the squareness of the Philippines, Greece, and Ireland won't be great Tajikistan's quite funky, as is elephant head-shaped Thailand There's no square in Indonesia's 18,000 tiny islands If your country's made of islands, then a square you'll never be There are loads of island nations that are mostly empty sea: Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, the Seychelles The Maldives, Micronesia, Fiji, the Marshall Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis São Tomé and Príncipe, the Bahamas, Cape Verde, Tonga, Vanuatu! The Netherlands is flat although its edges do not fit And the following are countries with a sticky-outy bit: There's Afghanistan, Namibia, the DRC's got two There's Ukraine, Venezuela, Eritrea, Cyprus and Kosovo! Is Morocco square? No, it's more a stair Kiribati? Not square, alas Senegal? Not square at all San Marino? San Mari-no The CAR so near, so far, Botswana's like a flounder Chad looks like Jay Leno, Eswatini couldn't be rounder Mongolia looks like a bat, the Congo's kind of foxy Myanmar's like a genie and not even slightly boxy Belize has one edge here that's straight but this bit's rather lumpy Algeria and Kenya are pentagons, Honduras is too bumpy Sri Lanka's like a raindrop, Kyrgyzstan's a bird in flight While Iraq and Jordan's lines are straight, the angles just aren't right Colombia's kind of squarish though its borders are quite rough And Iberia would pass but Spain alone's not square enough If Bolivia expanded, then a square it just might be Nicaragua would look square if you viewed it in 3D Little Liechtenstein and the Argentines are not square in the least The Dominican Republic, that just tapers to the east Lesotho's sort of squarish but the angle's on the wonk Cameroon is like a chicken with a huge badonkadonk Mexico? No, no, no, no Portugal? Too thin, too tall The Saudis? Too much on a slant The Vatican? The Vati-can't Listing every country by its shape is not an easy job When inevitably loads of them look only like a blob So to make things more efficient, as I'm sure you've got the gist Here are all the blobby countries in a quick compiled list: Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Belarus, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina Cambodia, Czechia, Djibouti, Dominica, Estonia Grenada, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania Serbia, St. Lucia, Tanzania, Uruguay, Zimbabwe Samoa's like a butterfly whose wings have been removed But add Ecuador and Bahrain, and it's massively improved Little Monaco's so tiny you can see the piers within Chile's very, very, very, very, very, long and thin Uganda cannot be a square because of all the lakes The Gambia, Vietnam, and Panama all look like snakes Haiti, Croatia, and Zambia all have shapes that wrap around Syria's just a bit too slopey, and El Salvador's too long That doesn't rhyme! Palau looks like a jellyfish, Pakistan looks like a duck Azerbaijan looks like a bird that's been run over by a truck This monkey is Armenian, this shooting star's Laotian Jamaica, Malta, and Niger are creatures from the ocean Greenland's not a real country even though it's really big The UK looks like an old witch sitting sideways on a pig Comoros would if it were glued Some parts of Tuvalu look rude Turkmenistan looks like something or another Tunisia and Albania look like each other South Africa's too wobbly, Bulgaria's too knobbly Brazil is too triangular, Turkey is too rectangular Now the only countries left are ones whose squareness are the best If you know which ones are coming, we're incredibly impressed Little Montenegro's square if you rotate it some degrees South Sudan has left behind a very square North Sudanese The angles in Angola mean it's nearly good to go And Nigeria comes close, although it bulges down below Libya is nearly square, it's more a parallelogram And Cote d'Ivoire and Suriname do well in our exam Equatorial Guinea's very square but unfortunately Since its capital's on an island, then the squarest it can't be So the winner of our contest Fitting all our tight prescriptions It's the squarest of the squarest The nation of the Pharaohs The land of Cleopatra The country where the Sphinx is It's the land of the Egyptians! Any more interesting emails come in? There's one asking for every capital city in the world D'oh, that would have made a much better song