Sometimes the map doesn't just exaggerate a size gap — it reverses it. A country that looks like the obvious smaller one is, in reality, the larger, because Mercator has inflated its rival and shrunk it. The further a country sits from the equator, the more the projection puffs it up, so a high-latitude land routinely out-sizes an equatorial one on screen while losing to it on the ground.
These are the upsets. Argentina is about 30% bigger than Greenland; Algeria, Kazakhstan and Sudan all quietly out-measure rivals the map makes look larger. Drag the inflated country toward the equator and watch the true winner emerge — the underdog the projection had been hiding.