Jay Foreman, Mark Cooper-Jones - The Mystery of The Squarest Country lyrics

Someone's emailed usasking 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 it's 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 it's
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 it's
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 it's 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 it's 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