Countries with a small number of sides?

Question

Please accept my appologies if this question is off-topic here; this is the closest match to the topic of my question. I am looking for countries and states whose map is a polygon with a small number of sides. There are several such states in the USA, such as: Colorado (4 sides), Wyoming (4 sides), New Mexico (apparently 8 sides). But, looking at a map of the world, I could not find other countries or states that have small number of sides. My question is: what country or state, ouside the USA, has the smallest number of sides?

Answer 1

This heavily depends on how you define a "side." If you mean straight lines, the answer is "almost none outside of the New World," and if you mean a generally straight line or even just something that gives the vibe of being a single, long side, the answer is "a lot more than the previous answer, but still not many."

This is because, historically, nations and their territories (including their internal ones) have rarely ever defined boundaries so easily. Borders shift through battles, wars, disasters, migration, trade, etcetera. In the USA, however, there was a whole bunch of quote-un-quote "undiscovered" territory ripe for the colonizing, so they were much more capable of simply drawing squares and calling it a day (not that the process was *that* simple, but it was still much less convoluted than the history or 99% of the world's borders). That, and it's virtually impossible to get smooth edges in non-landlocked states and nations.

The closest you'll get to something like Utah is basically Saskatchewan or Alberta, both in Canada, as they are landlocked New World states that were easily drawn on an "empty" map with "no" countries already present.

If you're thinking about countries, though, the closest you'll come are either the somewhat circular ones like Cambodia and Uruguay, or a roughly quadrilateral shape that technically has a BUNCH of tiny "sides" and a lack of smooth edges (for example, Türkiye, Ghana, Portugal, Nepal, or Yemen).