As a rule, Maine sportsmen enjoy challenging one another with trivia questions about the Great Outdoors.

How high is Mt. Katahdin? Who invented the popular gray ghost streamer fly? What are two other names for a larch tree? The potential questions go on and on. On my Sunday night radio program, “Maine Outdoors” ( 7 p.m. Sunday on the Voice of Maine News-Talk Network, 103.9 FM and 101.3 FM), our weekly outdoor trivia question invariably draws a lot of phone calls as listeners compete for a prize. For me, after more than a decade of hosting the program, the challenge is to find fresh trivia questions. They do get shopworn after a time.

You think you know Maine? Try this question: What are Maine’s three largest lakes in order of size?

This is one of those repeater questions that never fails to trigger some head scratching. Give up?

Moosehead Lake is the largest at 76,293 acres. Second largest in Maine is Sebago Lake in Windham with 29,526 acres. ( Note that as a water body Moosehead is more than twice the acreage of the second largest lake). Maine’s third largest lake — and this is the one that always stumps the most accomplished trivia mavens — is Chesuncook Lake in Piscataquis County (T3-R112) with 20,972 acres.

One question rarely asked is what are some of the other largest lakes in Maine? According to Matt Scott, Maine’s former deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, some of the other larger Maine lakes in descending order are: Flagstaff, Pemadumcook Chain, Spednic Lake, Mooselookmeguntic, East Grand, West Grand, Chamberlain and Big Lake in Washington County. Maine’s boundary waters include East Grand and Spednic, which are part of the Chiputneticook Chain.

Minnesota may be promoted as the Land of Lakes but Maine should not go unnoticed when it comes to expansive lake systems and significant drainages. Our fresh water heritage is a precious natural resource and truly impressive to see from the air. Meandering, springfed waterways surrounded by a sea of spruce and fir tops that stretch as far as the eye can see!

Matt Scott writes, “One should keep in mind that these large lakes were used for log driving, water power and navigation for many, many years and are still part of Maine’s complicated lake system of low head dams and flowages. Maine has nearly 3,000 naturally occurring lakes and ponds, 10 acres or more, and is public domain. The figure of 6,000 often is used in the popular press includes farm ponds, beaver flowages and private waters, not in the public domain.”

Most of us never stop learning names and locations of Maine lakes and ponds. Many of us never master the pronunciation of Native American names like Chiputneticook or Chemquasabamticook Lake (No wonder it’s also called Ross Lake). How about these tongue twisters? Umbazookus and Umsaskis. I thought for many years that these were the same bodies of water, only mispronounced. Not so. Umbazookus is just west of Chamberlain Lake and Umsaskis is north of Churchill Lake in the Allagash Waterway.

To confuse matters further, there are dozens of smaller bodies of water in Maine that have the same names. For example, there are 65 Mud Ponds and 14 Mud Lakes and 46 Long Ponds. Wouldn’t you have thought that our forefathers could have been a tad more creative in their name selections? They may have been preoccupied with other more pressing concerns, like surviving.

What about another common, all-purpose Maine pond name, Round Pond? How many are there?

You can look that up in a fascinating book of Maine data titled “The Length and Breadth of Maine,” by Stanley Bearce Attwood.

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WQVM-FM 101.3) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected] and his new book is “A Maine Deer Hunter’s Logbook.”