Michael Connors' letter began with a declaration that "even under the threat of waterboarding'' I could not name the town in which he lived.

Generally I don't get letters that begin with a dare so audacious, unless the return address is "Rumpelstiltskin, Remote Mountain Cottage.''

Yet in Allegheny County, this man was making a pretty safe bet.

We have 130 municipalities, and there aren't 10 with even 25,000 residents. More than half have fewer than 5,000 residents. A sweet 16 have fewer than 1,000. We've divided ourselves so thoroughly, you'd find fewer splits at a cheerleading competition.

"I live in a community that would just about fit in the borders of Point State Park,'' Mr. Connors continued. "It's four years away from celebrating its centennial."

That didn't help.

"Fifty-two people signed a petition [to form a municipality] during Woodrow Wilson's first term. It's that local government that governs today. (Nothing says '21st century' quite like 'Woodrow Wilson.')"

I still couldn't guess, given so many possibilities.

Mr. Connors, 48, a local historian, had contacted me because I had written in January about a free computer game on sporcle.com challenging you to name all of the county's municipalities in 12 minutes.

That game has been played nearly 700 times. There has been a perfect score only 3 percent of the time -- and you know those people cheated. Even in a forum that would appeal only to numbers geeks obsessed with all things Pittsburgh, about half the players couldn't name more than 50 communities.

See if you can guess where Mr. Connors is from.

"In 1920, the population was slightly under 1,200. After the last profitable shovelful of coal was extracted from the borough's hillside, after the Works Progress Administration extinguished the last mine fire [in the 1930s], the town doubled its housing stock. A little 'Levittown' was built on the mine site.

"With help from the GI Bill, the population maxed out near 1,400. Today, it's a bit less than 800 or two-thirds of its 1920 population.''

I thought "Glenfield,'' the community tucked between Route 65 and the Ohio River. But Glenfield has only 200-some residents. This place is Gotham City compared with Glenfield.

Yet, as Mr. Connors described his town, "You could load the entire municipal population on 10 EBA buses -- eight if people were willing to stand. With seven or eight council persons, a mayor, secretary, solicitor, tax collector and ordinance officer, there would be plenty of officials to drive.''

I called Chris Briem of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research to see if he could rank the county's municipalities by land area. He could, and when I described the place as one that could fit in Point State Park, he guessed "Pennsbury Village.''

That wasn't a bad guess. That borough is 6/100 of a square mile. To paraphrase a line from the movie "Arthur," "They recently had the whole community carpeted."

But that isn't Mr. Connors' place.

"Police and public works were subbed out long ago. But there's a director of parks and recreation in this one-park town. There's a road department director -- and not one red light. The entire active volunteer fire department could fit in a Honda Civic.

"There's one council person for every hundred residents. The city of Pittsburgh would need to elect another 3,000 council members to reach that level of representation.''

OK, now he was scaring me.

"A morning drive from my bank to Giant Eagle encompasses six municipalities, 30-plus council persons and enough police chiefs for a basketball team, all in less than five miles.''

OK, any guesses? Show of hands? West Elizabeth? Osborne? Ben Avon Heights?

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Here are more hints, not that they should help.

It's less than 20 minutes east of Point State Park, but you couldn't likely get directions from there even if you could name the place. This municipality was the Least Likely To Be Named in that sporcle game I mentioned. Less than 21 percent of players thought of it.

It has the second smallest land area after Pennsbury Village. Mr. Connors and I walked it Friday afternoon and it reminded me of my Long Island hometown, only steeper. In 1914, this place broke away from "the tyranny of Wilkins Township, which is why, I think, 96 years later our trash can't be mingled with theirs,'' Mr. Connors said.

This borough is one of 25 communities in this county smaller than one-half of a square mile, one of 50 of a square mile or less. There are 56 municipalities in Pennsylvania smaller in area -- but that only means there are 2,509 larger.

The answer is Chalfant, but the question is whether a county divided for a pre-automobile, factory-and-village economy is set up for the 21st century.

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Read Michael Connors' essays on The Next Page: "Boxer Jack Johnson -- the Fight Goes On" (January 2010), "The Steps of Chalfant, Ascending Still" (December 2008) and "Finding Private Enright" (November 2007).