12,309

I'm browsing questions on Quora and I come across one asking for the square root of 12,309.  Questions like this always irritate me. I mean, what is wrong with people? Don't they know how to use a calculator? Or Google? They have to post their idiotic question on Quora  and waste people's time? Okay, let's cut them a little slack, maybe they've been cooped up in their compartment for so long that the lack of contact with actual people has turned their brains to mush and they are desperately reaching out hoping someone will talk to them about anything. 

Still, I'd hope for something better than this, so I want to dump a smart-ass answer on them, so I go looking. Google turns up a bunch of addresses which isn't unexpected, but Wikipedia turns up four places with a population of 12,309. Now I know there a zillion places in the world, but what are the odds of getting four places with this same number of people? I suspect it's a census taker's secret code.

Places with a population of 12,309

I plotted them on a map and they are widely separated.

Places with a population of 12,309

This one I generated using the Save function. I drew the lines using the 'measure distance' function which shows up with a right click of the mouse.