118 Fun Facts About New England

How many states make up New England?

Six: the count was five until 1820, when Maine, until then a part of Massachusetts, became a state of its own.

Which English explorer put the name 'New England' on the map in 1616?

John Smith, of Jamestown fame, charted the coast in 1614; at his request Prince Charles swapped Native place names on the map for English ones, and Plymouth and the Charles River still carry them.

Which mountain range, home to Mount Washington, is the highest in New England?

The White Mountains top out at just 6,288 feet, yet their highest summits rise above the treeline into bare alpine tundra.

The Connecticut River, New England's longest, empties into which body of water?

Long Island Sound: on its way south the river divides Vermont from New Hampshire, but the border runs along its western side, so that whole stretch of water belongs to New Hampshire.

Which lake, shared with New York and Quebec, is New England's largest body of fresh water?

Champlain was the water gateway between French Canada and the English colonies, which is why it saw battles in the French and Indian Wars, the Revolution and the War of 1812.

Mount Washington's summit observatory measured which world record in April 1934?

The fastest surface wind: a 231 mph gust on April 12, 1934, a record that stood until a 1996 cyclone off Australia and is still the highest measured outside a tornado or tropical cyclone.

Sylvester Marsh's 1869 line up Mount Washington was the world's first mountain-climbing railway of which type?

Cog railway: a gear under the engine grips a toothed rail to climb the grade; when Marsh sought his charter, New Hampshire lawmakers joked that he might as well build a railway to the Moon.

Before becoming the 14th state in 1791, Vermont spent fourteen years as what?

An independent republic: Vermont minted its own copper coins and ran a postal service, and it joined the Union only after agreeing to pay New York $30,000 to settle rival land claims.

Vermont's Montpelier holds what distinction among US state capitals?

Least populous: about 8,000 people live in Montpelier, which was chosen as capital in 1805 and whose townspeople paid for the first State House themselves.

Vermont makes about half of America's supply of which farm product?

Maple syrup: sugar makers boil about 40 gallons of sap down to each gallon of syrup, and they must do it in the few weeks at winter's end when the sap runs.

Maine's Mount Katahdin is the northern end of which long-distance hiking trail?

The Appalachian Trail ends on Katahdin's Baxter Peak, named for the governor who spent much of his own fortune buying the mountain for the public after legislators refused to pay for it.

Maine left Massachusetts in 1820 as a free state to balance the admission of which slave state?

Missouri: the Senate tied the two statehood bills together, so Maine could join as a free state only if Missouri came in as a slave state, keeping the two sides level at twelve states each.

Maine's capital was moved from Portland to which more central city in 1832?

Augusta beat Portland, Brunswick and Hallowell for the title in 1827, yet lawmakers went on meeting in Portland for five more years until Charles Bulfinch's State House was ready.

New Hampshire's state motto is what?

Live Free or Die comes from a toast General John Stark wrote in 1809; after the state stamped it on license plates, the Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that no driver could be forced to display it.

New Hampshire's ocean coastline, the shortest of any US state, is home to which historic harbour city?

Portsmouth gave its name to the 1905 treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War, though the talks were held at its naval shipyard, which stands across the river in Kittery, Maine.

New Hampshire state law requires it to hold the nation's first what in each presidential election year?

Primary: the law has the vote set at least seven days ahead of any similar contest, so when Democrats put South Carolina first in 2024, New Hampshire simply voted earlier anyway.

New Hampshire's deciding vote in 1788 put which document into effect?

The US Constitution needed nine states, and New Hampshire's vote supplied the ninth, leaving holdouts such as Virginia and New York to join the new union or stand outside it.

What did Roger Williams found in Providence in 1638, counted as the first of its kind in America?

A Baptist church: Williams gathered it after Massachusetts Puritans banished him, yet he stayed a Baptist only briefly and by 1639 called himself a 'Seeker', tied to no church at all.

Rhode Island became the first colony to renounce its allegiance to which king on May 4, 1776?

George III: Rhode Islanders had already burned the royal revenue schooner Gaspee in 1772, and their assembly broke with the king two months before the Declaration of Independence.

In 2020, Rhode Island voters dropped which words from the state's official name?

'And Providence Plantations' went by 53% to 47%, ten years after voters had kept the words by 78% to 22%; backers of the change said 'plantations' now called slavery to mind.

What has been Rhode Island's official state drink since 1993?

Coffee milk, milk stirred with sweet coffee syrup, beat Del's frozen lemonade when legislators chose a state drink in 1993; it is usually traced to the sweetened coffee of Providence's Italian immigrants.

Connecticut's nickname, the Constitution State, refers to which 1639 document?

The Fundamental Orders grew out of a 1638 sermon in which Thomas Hooker argued for government by the people, and they never once mention the king or any other English authority.

Which Connecticut city is the historic centre of the American insurance industry?

Hartford made its name in 1835, when fire gutted New York's financial district and Hartford Fire Insurance's president pledged his own fortune to pay every claim while most New York insurers went under.

Which Connecticut town is home to Electric Boat, builder of the US Navy's submarines?

Groton: Electric Boat launched the first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, there in 1954, and the Navy's submarine base next door is named for New London, the city across the Thames River.

Which two Olympic sports were invented in the western Massachusetts cities of Springfield and Holyoke?

Basketball and volleyball: James Naismith devised basketball in Springfield in 1891, and four years later William Morgan created volleyball in Holyoke as a gentler game for businessmen who found basketball too rough.

Harvard College was founded by Massachusetts Puritans in 1636 largely to supply the colony with which professionals?

Ministers: the founders dreaded leaving 'an illiterate ministry to the churches', and the college took the name of John Harvard, a young clergyman who left it his library and half his money in 1638.

Which Ivy League school is in Hanover, New Hampshire?

Dartmouth College: when New Hampshire tried to turn it into a state university, alumnus Daniel Webster won its 1819 Supreme Court case, calling it 'a small college, and yet there are those who love it'.

What fate met Giles Corey for refusing to plead at the Salem witch trials?

Crushed: Corey, about 80, was pressed to death under stones, by tradition saying only 'More weight'; nineteen others were hanged, and nobody at Salem was burned.

The Sons of Liberty who dumped about 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor in 1773 were loosely disguised as whom?

Mohawks: in about three hours the raiders dumped some 92,000 pounds of East India Company tea, and Parliament hit back the next spring by closing Boston's port to all shipping.

Which phrase from an 1837 hymn describes the 1775 fight at Concord?

The shot heard round the world comes from the 'Concord Hymn', sung at a monument's dedication, though redcoats and militia had already clashed that morning on Lexington Green, and the two towns have long argued over the honour.

Paul Revere's midnight ride was turned into a famous 1861 poem by which New England writer?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made Revere a lone hero who rouses every village, though a British patrol stopped the real rider on the road to Concord, while his companion Samuel Prescott escaped with the warning.

Which two New England states abolished slavery outright, in 1777 and 1783?

Vermont and Massachusetts: Vermont's 1777 constitution banned adult slavery, and Massachusetts courts ended it in the 1783 Quock Walker cases; Rhode Island and Connecticut chose gradual emancipation in 1784.

What is New England clam chowder made with that Manhattan chowder replaces with tomatoes?

Milk or cream: New Englanders guard the recipe so fiercely that in 1939 a Maine legislator drafted a bill to ban tomatoes from chowder, with offenders sentenced to dig a barrel of clams at high tide.

Maine lobster rolls come cold with mayonnaise; how are Connecticut's served?

Warm with butter: Perry's of Milford is credited with the hot roll in the 1920s, and both styles ride in a split-top bun that Howard Johnson's had a Maine bakery devise in the 1940s for its fried clam rolls.

Boston cream pie is said to have been created in 1856 in the kitchen of which Boston hotel?

The Parker House: its French chef is credited with the custard-filled, chocolate-topped cake, which is called a pie because cakes and pies were then baked in the same pans and the two words were used interchangeably.

Which ice cream company began in 1978 in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont?

Ben & Jerry's: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield had planned a bagel shop until they priced the equipment, so they took a five-dollar correspondence course in ice cream making instead.

Dunkin' Donuts was founded in 1950 in which Massachusetts city just south of Boston?

Quincy: William Rosenberg ran catering trucks for factory workers, noticed that coffee and pastries brought in 40 percent of his sales, and opened a shop that sold coffee and doughnuts.

Maine named which sweet its official state treat in 2011?

Whoopie pie: the bill set out to crown it the state dessert, but lawmakers gave that title to pie made with wild Maine blueberries and settled for calling the whoopie pie the state treat.

Which bitter soda, once sold as 'Nerve Food', is Maine's official soft drink?

Moxie gets its bite from gentian root, which its inventor passed off as a rare South American plant, and by 1930 the brand name had become American slang for courage.

Which Boston-area candy, made since 1847, vanished in 2018 when its maker went bankrupt?

Necco Wafers vanished when new owners abruptly shut the Revere factory two months after buying it, until Spangler, the Ohio maker of Dum-Dums, bought the brand and its machines and restarted the line.

The Boston Marathon, first run in 1897, is traditionally held on the third Monday of which month?

April: Boston's race was inspired by the first modern Olympic marathon in Athens a year earlier and was set on the Patriots' Day holiday, which moved to the third Monday of the month in 1969.

Who ran the 1966 Boston Marathon unregistered after being told women couldn't run 26 miles?

Bobbi Gibb hid in bushes near the start, then beat two-thirds of the field in 3 hours 21 minutes, a year before Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to run Boston with an official number.

The Celtics' 18th NBA title in 2024 broke a tie at 17 with which rival franchise?

The Los Angeles Lakers had caught Boston in 2020 after trailing for decades, so the 2024 title put the Celtics back in front of the rival they have met in a record 12 Finals.

Which Bruins great was photographed flying through the air after scoring the 1970 Stanley Cup-winning goal?

Bobby Orr had just been tripped by a Blues defender as his overtime shot went in, giving the Bruins, the NHL's oldest American club, their first championship in 29 years.

The Patriots played their home games at which baseball ground from 1963 to 1968?

Fenway Park was one of four borrowed homes in the Patriots' first decade; the merged NFL's demand for a stadium of at least 50,000 seats finally sent them out to Foxborough in 1971.

Which Patriots kicker's 48-yard field goal as time expired won Super Bowl XXXVI?

Adam Vinatieri got his chance only because the Patriots, out of timeouts, ignored broadcaster John Madden's advice to settle for overtime and drove downfield, sinking a Rams team favoured by 14 points.

Stephen King's fictional Derry, the setting of It, is his portrait of which Maine city where he made his home?

Bangor: King told his biographer that Derry is his portrait of the city, and his house there drew so many fans that in 2019 he announced plans to turn it into an archive and writers' retreat.

Robert Frost, the poet of rural New England, was born far away in which city?

San Francisco: Frost's father edited a newspaper there, and the boy came east to Massachusetts only at eleven, after his father died; he went on to win four Pulitzer Prizes for poems of New England farm life.

Thoreau's famous cabin in the woods near Concord stood on land owned by which friend and fellow writer?

Ralph Waldo Emerson lent him the woodlot by Walden Pond, and when Thoreau left after two years, two months and two days he moved straight into Emerson's house to help run it while its owner toured Europe.

Which Amherst poet saw only about ten of her nearly 1,800 poems published during her lifetime?

Emily Dickinson made her sister Lavinia promise to burn her papers; Lavinia burned most of the letters but, finding the poems sewn into little handmade booklets, set about getting them into print instead.

In Moby-Dick, Ishmael hears a sermon in a whalemen's chapel in which Massachusetts port, once a leading whaling centre?

New Bedford: Melville gave the chapel a pulpit shaped like a ship's bow, a detail he made up, so in 1961 the real Seamen's Bethel had one built to match the novel.

Samuel Slater built America's first successful water-powered cotton-spinning mill in the 1790s in which Rhode Island town?

Pawtucket: Slater had memorised British spinning machinery as an apprentice and rebuilt it from memory beside the Blackstone River, which earned him the name 'Slater the Traitor' back in England.

Which president had Maine's Portland Head Light finished in 1791, among the first lighthouses completed by the new federal government?

George Washington: Massachusetts had begun the tower in 1787, and once the new federal government took charge of the nation's lighthouses, Congress voted $1,500 for the president to see it finished.

Acadia National Park was the first in which part of the country?

East of the Mississippi: the Mount Desert Island reserve became Sieur de Monts National Monument in 1916 and Lafayette National Park in 1919, renamed Acadia in 1929; Cadillac Mountain is the tallest peak on the US Atlantic coast.

Since 1914, most of Cape Cod has been cut off from the mainland by what?

A canal: a financier's company dug it as a private shortcut, but days after a German U-boat shelled a tug off the Cape in 1918 the government took it over, later buying it as a free public waterway.

Nantucket's nickname 'The Little Grey Lady of the Sea' refers to how the island looks when what?

Fog-bound: that is how the low island looks from the sea; in 1659 its English owner sold nine-tenths of it to settlers for thirty pounds and two beaver hats, one for himself and one for his wife.

Newport, Rhode Island hosted every challenge for which sailing trophy between 1930 and 1983?

The America's Cup had stayed with the New York Yacht Club for 132 years, the longest winning streak in sport, until Australia II and its disputed winged keel beat the defender off Newport in 1983.

Which Gilded Age family built The Breakers, the grandest of Newport's summer 'cottages', in 1895?

The Vanderbilts: Cornelius Vanderbilt II had the 70-room Italian Renaissance-style palace finished in 1895 to Richard Morris Hunt's design, after the family's earlier wooden house on the site burned in 1892.

The Head of the Charles, held each October on the river between Boston and Cambridge, is a race in which sport?

Rowing: it is a 'head' race, so to avoid collisions crews set off one at a time, 15 seconds apart, and race the clock rather than each other side by side.

Many New England communities still govern themselves through which form of direct democracy?

Town meetings: once a year voters gather in person to argue over and decide the local budget, taxes and bylaws themselves, and Vermont law gives workers unpaid leave from their jobs to attend.

Connecticut's unofficial nickname recalls Yankee peddlers said to have sold wooden fakes of which spice?

Nutmeg: the wooden-nutmeg tale is told as a joke on sharp Yankee traders, but the true origin of the Nutmeg State's name is unknown and may simply recall the prized spice its sailors brought home.

Which 1814 New England Federalist gathering aired grievances about the War of 1812?

The Hartford Convention met behind closed doors for three weeks, but its envoys reached Washington just as news of peace and of Jackson's victory at New Orleans arrived, and the Federalists never recovered as a national party.

Which mountain range forms the north-south spine of Vermont?

The Green Mountains lent their name to Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys, the frontier militia that surprised the British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775 and took it.

Which of these New England exports is grown mainly on Cape Cod and Massachusetts' South Shore?

Cranberries grow on low vines in beds that are not under water in summer; farmers flood them at harvest, when the loosened berries float to the surface to be corralled.

Which king merged the colonies into the Dominion of New England in 1686?

James II put the colonies under one royal governor, but when news of his fall reached Boston in 1689 the militia rose, arrested that governor, Edmund Andros, and the Dominion collapsed.

America's first cotton mill was founded in 1787 in which Massachusetts North Shore seaport?

Beverly: the Beverly Cotton Manufactory, opened in 1787 with horse-driven machinery, was the largest cotton mill of its day and preceded Samuel Slater's 1793 water-powered Rhode Island mill.

Heady Topper, from Vermont brewery The Alchemist, launched a hazy New England take on which beer style?

India pale ale: John Kimmich's Waterbury brewpub was destroyed by the floods of Irene in 2011, the very month his new cannery opened, so Heady Topper lived on only in cans.

Colonists and their Native allies destroyed a fortified village of which people at Mystic in 1637?

The Pequots lost hundreds of people in the burning fort, and the peace that followed forbade survivors even to call themselves Pequots, yet their descendants now run the Foxwoods casino resort.

Montpelier, Vermont, is the only US state capital without a single branch of which fast-food chain?

McDonald's has no restaurant in Montpelier, and Starbucks has no café there either, a double absence that no other state capital shares.

Massachusetts, like Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, officially styles itself as which kind of entity?

Commonwealth is purely a matter of style and carries no legal weight, though criminal charges in those states are brought in its name instead of the state's.

The gold-domed Massachusetts State House stands in which historic Boston neighbourhood?

Beacon Hill gave the capitol a commanding site on land once owned by John Hancock. The dome was plain wood, then copper, and was not gilded until 1874.

Which former mill city has more residents than any other in New Hampshire, although it is not the state capital?

Manchester grew around the Amoskeag mills, once the largest cotton textile plant in the world. The capital, Concord, lies 18 miles to its north.

Which novelist's Gothic mansion is now a museum in Connecticut's capital city, his family home from 1874 to 1891?

Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn while living there. A biographer likened the house to a steamboat crossed with a cuckoo clock.

Which Ivy League university occupies College Hill in Rhode Island's capital city?

Brown is the seventh-oldest college in the United States, founded in 1764. The family it is named for bought the hilltop lot for its campus.

Which patriotic song, its words traditionally credited to a British Army surgeon, is Connecticut's official state song?

Yankee Doodle may have been aimed at Connecticut from the start: in one account its author was poking fun at colonial troops led by the governor's son.

Maine is the top American producer of the wild, low-bush variety of which fruit?

Blueberry barrens in eastern Maine were tended long before statehood: Native Americans regularly burned off trees and shrubs there to spur the plants into fruiting.

Vermont's name is a French rendering of which mountain range that runs up the middle of the state?

Green Mountains won out late: for the first months of its independence the young republic was called New Connecticut instead.

Which songbird is the state bird of both Maine and Massachusetts, as well as the emblem of New Brunswick?

Black-capped chickadee brains grow for winter: the bird's hippocampus enlarges at the time of year when it hides seeds, helping it remember where each one is stored.

Which state outside the region borders Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut along their western edges?

New York once laid claim to Vermont itself, which could join the Union in 1791 only after settling that dispute.

Which teacher from Concord High School in New Hampshire's capital was chosen in 1985 to fly on the space shuttle?

Christa McAuliffe was picked from more than 11,000 applicants to NASA's Teacher in Space Project, and died when Challenger broke apart in January 1986.

Which US president kept a home in Concord, New Hampshire, and is buried in the city's Old North Cemetery?

Franklin Pierce lived in Concord before and after his term, and spent his last night there before leaving for his inauguration. He lies beside his wife and two of their sons.

Which single word, written on a ribbon beneath a gold anchor on the state flag, is Rhode Island's motto?

Hope has long shared Rhode Island's seal with the anchor, a pairing probably borrowed from a New Testament verse that likens one to the other.

Which coastal city, where showman P. T. Barnum once served as mayor, has the most residents in Connecticut?

Bridgeport was winter quarters for Barnum's circus, and it was there that he met the local boy he turned into a star as General Tom Thumb.

Maine's capital city stands at the head of tide on which river, explored by English settlers in 1607?

Kennebec floods still threaten the capital's low-lying downtown each spring. An English trading post called Cushnoc stood on the east bank by 1628.

Which tree, said to have hidden Connecticut's most prized colonial document in 1687, appears on the state quarter?

The Charter Oak is said to have held the colony's 1662 royal grant in its hollow, placed there to stop Sir Edmund Andros from confiscating it.

A statue of which Roman goddess crowns the gold dome of the Vermont State House in Montpelier?

Ceres, goddess of agriculture, has twice needed replacing: when the 1858 original rotted, the statehouse's 87-year-old sergeant-at-arms carved a new figure in 1938, and a third went up in 2018.

Maine's one-word Latin state motto, Dirigo, appears above a North Star on the state seal and means what?

I lead suited a state that was once alone in holding its elections in September, so the rest of the country watched its results for a hint of what was coming.

Which Boston architect designed both the Massachusetts State House and the original Maine State House?

Charles Bulfinch modelled the Maine capitol on his earlier Boston one, and it is the only one of his buildings whose complete set of drawings survives.

Which Massachusetts island, lying just south of Cape Cod, was where Steven Spielberg filmed Jaws in 1974?

Martha's Vineyard is the third-largest island on the East Coast, and two Jaws sequels came back to shoot scenes there.

Which Canadian province shares a land border with Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine?

Quebec sent people south as well: after 1890 it became one of the leading sources of immigrants to New England.

Which town at the very tip of Cape Cod was where the Mayflower Pilgrims first dropped anchor in November 1620?

Provincetown is where the Mayflower Compact was drawn up and signed, after the ship gave up trying to sail south against the winter seas.

Which New England highland region is home to Tanglewood, summer base of the Boston Symphony Orchestra?

The Berkshires spill over the state line: the uplands of northwestern Connecticut can be counted as part of the same highlands.

Which mountain, the highest in Maine, marks the northern end of the Appalachian Trail?

Mount Katahdin was kept wild by Governor Percival Baxter, who spent much of his own fortune buying the peak after legislators refused to pay for it.

Rhode Island's capital sits at the head of which body of water, the largest estuary in New England?

Narragansett Bay is a drowned river valley dotted with a small archipelago. It covers 147 square miles, most of them inside Rhode Island.

Which lake, New Hampshire's largest, sits in the Lakes Region at the foothills of the White Mountains?

Winnipesaukee is dotted with more than 250 islands, and since 1892 a floating post office has delivered mail to some of them every summer.

Maine's largest offshore landmass, home to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, goes by which name?

Mount Desert Island is the second-largest island on the Eastern Seaboard, and an estimated 3.5 million tourists visited its park in 2017.

Which river flows south through New Hampshire, then turns northeast past the mill cities of Lowell and Lawrence?

Merrimack water once ran straight on to the sea near Boston. Debris left by a retreating glacier filled the lower valley and forced the bend.

Which reservoir, created by drowning several Massachusetts towns in the 1930s, supplies Boston's tap water?

Quabbin wiped Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott off the map in 1938 and displaced 2,500 people. Even the towns' cemeteries were moved.

In Boston speech, what does 'wicked' mean when it comes before an adjective, as in 'wicked cold'?

Very is all it means: the word works as an intensifier before adjectives and adverbs, a habit heard across northern and eastern New England.

In Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as in parts of Wisconsin, a 'bubbler' is the local name for what?

A drinking fountain is also a bubbler in Portland, Oregon, where a former Wisconsin resident paid for 20 of them in the early 1900s.

Across much of New England, which word names a milkshake made with ice cream, pronounced to rhyme with 'trap'?

Frappe is also the word in parts of eastern Canada. The distinction matters because a 'milkshake' there can be flavoured milk shaken with nothing frozen in it.

Ask for 'jimmies' on your ice cream in Boston and which topping will you be given?

Chocolate sprinkles were on record as jimmies by 1930. A Pennsylvania candy firm claims it named them after an employee, but the true origin is uncertain.

Which word do New Englanders use for the long sandwich called a hoagie in Philadelphia and a sub almost everywhere else?

Grinder is one of thirteen names linguists counted for the sandwich in a survey of 100 American cities. Boston has a rarer one of its own: spuckie.

In Massachusetts and Connecticut, a 'packie' is the local name for which kind of shop?

A liquor store is officially a package store in those states, so called because the alcohol has to leave the premises in sealed containers.

Massachusetts drivers use which word for the circular junction most of the world calls a roundabout?

Rotary is the older term: American engineers keep 'modern roundabout' for junctions built after 1960 to stricter safety rules.

Bostonians refer to their subway and wider transit system by which one-letter nickname?

The T runs through the first subway tunnel in the United States, a stretch under Tremont Street that opened in 1897 and still carries trolleys today.

Which two-word name do people in southwestern New England give to selling unwanted household goods from the driveway?

Tag sale is the local label for what other Americans call a garage or yard sale. Mainers, for their part, hold lawn sales.

In older Boston speech, a 'tonic' bought at the corner store is what?

A fizzy soft drink has been called tonic in eastern Massachusetts since at least 1888, though the word is fading as speakers switch to soda.

In the traditional Maine accent, the drawled word 'ayuh' is a way of saying what?

Yes, okay, sure and that's right are all covered by the one word. The same Maine vocabulary has fishermen calling a lobster a bug.

Rhode Islanders use the word 'quahog' for which shellfish, also the name of the hometown in Family Guy?

A hard clam is Rhode Island's official shellfish, and the state has supplied a quarter of the country's annual commercial catch.

In Vermont, a 'creemee' is the local name for which summer treat, often flavoured with maple?

Soft-serve ice cream is a creemee in other parts of northern New England too, and maple syrup is the signature flavouring.

In Maine slang, a 'flatlander' is a teasing name for which kind of person?

An outsider gets the label because of the flatter country back home, and the usual suspect is someone up from Massachusetts.

Which name do New Englanders give the wooden apartment houses, one flat per floor, built for immigrant factory workers?

Triple-deckers went up by the tens of thousands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a cheap alternative to the narrow row houses of other Northeastern cities.

Which name for Maine's Hancock and Washington county coast comes from ships running before the wind from Boston?

Down East gave sailors a matching phrase that survives in Maine: going 'up to Boston', even though Boston lies to the south.

In Rhode Island, which furniture-sounding word is the local name for an ice cream milkshake?

Cabinet is a usage peculiar to the state: the rest of the region has its own, different word for a shake made with ice cream.

In old-fashioned Maine speech, describing a baby as 'cunning' means the child is what?

Cute is the meaning, usually said with the final g dropped. The same Maine word list gives 'numb' for stupid and 'gawmy' for clumsy.

Which nickname for Boston shortens a phrase about the solar system recorded by the writer Oliver Wendell Holmes?

The Hub has grown grander with retelling: the solar system of the original phrase has since become the whole Universe.

Concord, New Hampshire's capital, gave its name to which horse-drawn vehicle built there by the Abbot-Downing Company?

A stagecoach from the city's workshops hung its body on leather thoroughbraces, so it swayed constantly and soaked up the shocks of rough ground.