You're objectively right, I was being hyperbolic. It's a lot of states that are rectangle-shaped with quite small populations though. I mean if I had given the cutoff of "4.3 million inhabitants", then that would cover half of all states.
And easily more than half at least one 90 degree angle.
Europe also has a lot of small states to be fair, and I don't think we can expect people in general to keep track of all these.
