Geographical literacy (was crosswords)

[bbennett at joymail.com]

This has been an interesting thread. I'm a geographer in real life, 
and in grad school, I taught geology and earth science labs. I told 
my students that  memorization of the states and their geographic 
locations/relationships wasn't required for the course, but they 
should expect a bonus question. On my first test, I asked this:

Which four states are adjacent to Montana?

*One* student got the question completely correct, and she was a 
native of Germany. Some the real zingers I got were:

New Mexico
Arizona
Illinois
Missouri
California
Kansas
Canada (geographically right, but not a state!)
Columbia(?)
Texas
Louisiana

What gets me is this was *after* I warned them they'd have a bonus 
question.

B

p.s. It's Idaho, Wyoming, & the Dakotas