Get app
Eight welcoming questions about the essentials of the United Arab Emirates. Young or old, everyone can play along and learn something new.
Desert first-timer 0–3 · Oasis explorer 4–6 · Emirates expert 7–8
Pick one
Abu Dhabi means 'father of the gazelle' in Arabic, and the heart of the city lies on a T-shaped island less than 250 metres from the mainland. Dubai has more people and is better known to many travellers, but the capital is Abu Dhabi.
Photo: Wadiia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Pick one
The Burj Khalifa opened in 2010 and is about 830 metres tall, roughly two and a half times the height of the Eiffel Tower, and its very top can sway about 1.5 metres in the wind. The Burj Al Arab, the other answer, is a Dubai hotel built to look like the sail of a traditional boat.
Photo: imran shahabuddin, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Pick one
The Palm Jumeirah was made from 2001 onwards by piling up sand and rock in the sea to form a 'trunk', 'fronds' and a curved outer 'crescent'. A Dutch dredging company built it, and a monorail more than 5 km long now runs along its trunk.
Photo: Member of the Expedition 22 crew., Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Pick one
The flag has a red band next to the flagpole and green, white and black stripes, colours shared by many Arab countries. It was designed by Abdullah Mohammed Al Maainah, who was just 19 when his drawing won a nationwide flag competition.
Pick one
The oasis grows about 100 different kinds of dates, and its trees have been watered for thousands of years by a falaj: a system of channels, partly underground, that carries water to the palm groves. All over the UAE, guests are traditionally welcomed with dates and a small cup of Arabic coffee.
Photo: Hashem Al Hashemi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Pick one
Divers went down on a single breath, often with a clip on their nose and a heavy stone to help them sink fast, and filled baskets with oysters. Pearls from these warm, shallow waters were traded as far away as India, and by the 1930s some traders even travelled all the way to Paris to sell them.
Photo: Fg2, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Pick one
Hope was launched from Japan in July 2020 and went into orbit around Mars in February 2021, making the UAE the first Arab country to reach the Red Planet. It arrived ahead of China's and NASA's missions launched that same summer, and it studies Martian weather such as dust storms.
Pick one
The Louvre Abu Dhabi opened in 2017 under an agreement with France that lets it use the Louvre's name. Its dome is made of 7,850 metal stars in eight layers, so sunlight falls through it like light through the leaves of a palm tree, an effect called the 'rain of light'.
Paste the code into your page. The player fits itself in, and every vote counts in Votur.
On WordPress, Ghost or Squarespace? Just paste the link of this page into your post.
This is how it looks
Also fun
