Is Los Angeles further north than Algiers?
No. Los Angeles, at 34.1° N, lies about 300 km further south than Algiers, at 36.8° N.
The duel opens first in a practice round of ten; practice never changes your daily streak.
Why it surprises
Algiers is in Africa and Los Angeles in the United States, so the answer seems obvious: Africa is south. But Algiers sits on the Mediterranean coast at the far north of the continent, at 36.8° N, and Los Angeles lies at 34.1° N, about 300 km further south. In our deck Los Angeles is level with Rabat in Morocco and Beirut, and Algiers with Tunis. This is one of the pairs psychologists have used to study how we remember maps. People seem to treat continents as blocks that sit side by side, with Africa below Europe and North America opposite Europe, and they judge a city by the block it belongs to. That tidy picture works for some pairs but fails badly for cities near the edges, like a North African capital and a Southern Californian one.
Sources for this explanation
- Cognitive Psychology (Academic Press): tc.columbia.edu, checked 25 October 2026
- Psychonomic Society: link.springer.com, checked 25 October 2026
Where the numbers come from
Each city is placed by Wikidata’s coordinate for its centre, cross-checked with Natural Earth’s populated places. Details: Los Angeles and Algiers.
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