Which of these three cities is located closest to New York? Moscow, Buenos Aires, or Honolulu?

It might feel counterintuitive, but a flight from New York City to Russia's capital is shorter than a trip to either the capital of Argentina or the state of Hawaii. The journey to Moscow is a shorter distance than flying to Honolulu by over 300 miles, and it's more than 600 miles shorter than the long haul down to Buenos Aires. This common geographical puzzle plays on the way flat maps distort our perception of a spherical world.

The key to understanding this is the concept of a great-circle route, which is the shortest path between two points on the globe. Since both New York and Moscow are in the Northern Hemisphere, the most direct flight path arcs northward over the Atlantic Ocean and Scandinavia. It’s a much more direct trip than our minds, trained by flat Mercator projection maps, might imagine.

Reaching the other two cities involves crossing immense distances. A trip to Honolulu requires flying across the entire North American continent and then a vast stretch of the Pacific Ocean. To get to Buenos Aires, a traveler must cross the equator and journey deep into the Southern Hemisphere, covering a huge amount of north-to-south latitude. This makes the transatlantic flight to Moscow the surprising winner for the shortest distance.