April Fools' Day
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6correct to beat the crowd
This April Fools trivia quiz has 194 free questions with answers and covers the day's murky origins (Chaucer, the calendar change, a 1561 Flemish poem, the 1698 'washing of the lions'), how it is celebrated around the world (poisson d'avril in France, Hunt the Gowk in Scotland, Sizdah Be-dar in Iran, Humorina in Odesa, and the December prank day in Spain and Latin America), and the hoaxes that fooled millions: the BBC's spaghetti harvest, Sidd Finch, the Taco Liberty Bell, San Serriffe, Patrick Moore's floating listeners and two decades of Google jokes. About a third of the questions are easy enough for a classroom or office quiz on 1 April, a third are medium, and the rest will catch out people who think they know all the famous pranks. Nothing here is mean-spirited. Every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 194 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which English poet's 1392 tale of the cock Chauntecleer is a disputed early reference to April Fools' Day?
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale seems to set the fox's trick 32 days after March began, but many scholars blame a scribal slip and place it in early May.
Q 02The earliest clear reference to April Fools' Day is a 1561 poem by Bruges writer Eduard de Dene in which language?
Flemish
Eduard de Dene wrote in Flemish; his 1561 poem has a nobleman send his servant on absurd errands on 1 April, and the servant suspects he is being sent on a fool's errand.
Q 03Which author called 1 April 'the day upon which we are reminded of what we are' the rest of the year?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain gave the line to Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, sayings credited to a small-town lawyer his neighbours have written off as a fool, which head each chapter of the 1894 novel.
Q 04In France, Italy and Belgium, what do pranksters try to attach to a victim's back on 1 April?
A paper fish
A paper fish is taped on unnoticed; the 'April fish' is said to stand for a young spring fish that is easily caught, like a gullible person.
Q 05One theory says the first 'April fools' were French people who kept celebrating which holiday around 1 April?
New Year's Day
New Year's Day was fixed on 1 January by royal edict in 1564, and the story says those still feasting in late March were mocked; historians doubt it, since April fooling is recorded in 1561.
Q 06On 1 April 1698, several Londoners were tricked into going to the Tower of London to see what?
The lions being washed
The lions being washed was a ceremony that never existed, yet the trick ran for well over a century; by the 1850s jokers were printing official-looking admission tickets.
Q 07In the United Kingdom, tradition holds that April Fools' pranks must stop at what time of day?
Noon
In the UK, April Fools' pranks traditionally stop at noon; anyone who plays a joke after midday is said to become the fool.
Q 08What is Scotland's April Fools' prank of sending someone off with a sealed 'Dinna laugh, dinna smile...' note called?
Hunt the Gowk
Hunt the Gowk uses the Scots word for a cuckoo, a byword for a fool; the sealed note reads 'Hunt the gowk another mile', so each reader passes the bearer on.
Q 09In Scotland, what was traditionally pinned to people's backs on the day after April Fools' Day?
Paper tails
Paper tails, often bearing an unflattering message, were pinned on unnoticed on 'Tailie Day', which stretched Scotland's fooling over two days.
Q 10Iran's 'Lie of the Thirteenth' pranks are played on the thirteenth day of which new-year festival?
Nowruz
Nowruz ends on its thirteenth day with Sizdah Be-dar, when Iranians leave the house to picnic outdoors and play the 'lie of the thirteenth' on one another, around 1 or 2 April.
Q 11Spain's prank day, Día de los Santos Inocentes, falls three days after which major holiday?
Christmas
Christmas comes three days before 28 December, when Spain and Hispanic America play 'inocentadas' such as false news stories; the feast itself mourns the children killed in the Nativity story.
Q 12Humorina, the 1 April humour festival and parade founded in 1973, belongs to which Ukrainian city?
Odesa
Humorina is Odesa's festival of laughter, started by the city's KVN comedy team in protest after Soviet censors took the KVN contest off television.
Q 13Poland's April 1 prank belief is so strong that a 1683 alliance signed that day was officially dated to when?
31 March
The 1683 Polish–Austrian alliance with Leopold I was backdated to 31 March so nobody would take it for an April Fools' joke.
Q 21In 1962, Swedish television told viewers they could get colour TV by stretching what over the screen?
A nylon stocking
A nylon stocking would bend the light into colour, technical expert Kjell Stensson told viewers; thousands tried it, and real colour broadcasts waited until 1970.
Q 22The Guardian's 1977 April Fools' island San Serriffe took its place names from puns on what?
Typography
Typography supplied the names, from the islands Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse to General Pica, yet the paper's phones rang all day with readers asking about holidays there.
Q 23The map of The Guardian's fictional San Serriffe was drawn in the shape of which punctuation mark?
A semicolon
Q 14What is the Danish word for an April Fools' prank or its victim?
Aprilsnar
Aprilsnar names both the prank and the person fooled; Danish news outlets each run one made-up story on 1 April.
Q 15On 1 April 1957, the BBC current-affairs programme Panorama aired a three-minute report showing Swiss farmers harvesting what from trees?
Spaghetti
Spaghetti was still an exotic dish in 1950s Britain, so hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC, many asking where they could get a tree of their own.
Q 16Which respected broadcaster's voice-over made the BBC's 1957 pasta-harvest hoax so believable?
Richard Dimbleby
Richard Dimbleby had anchored Panorama since 1955 and was among the most trusted voices in Britain, so the producers borrowed his authority to sell the joke.
Q 17The BBC's 1957 pasta harvest was supposedly gathered beside Lake Lugano in which Swiss canton?
Ticino
Ticino is Switzerland's Italian-speaking canton, and the narration set its pasta orchards there, 'on the borders of Switzerland and Italy'.
Q 18Which branch of the British military was formed on April Fools' Day 1918, late in the First World War?
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force was created by merging the army's Royal Flying Corps with the navy's Royal Naval Air Service, and both older services ceased to exist that day.
Q 19In 1980 the BBC announced that which London landmark's clock face was going digital?
Big Ben
The BBC World Service reported that Big Ben's clock face would go digital, offering the old hands to the first listeners who called in.
Q 20Which astronomer told BBC Radio 2 listeners in 1976 that a planetary alignment would let them float if they jumped?
Patrick Moore
Patrick Moore told Radio 2 listeners that a rare planetary alignment would briefly weaken Earth's gravity, and callers duly reported a floating sensation.
A semicolon was the shape of designer Geoffrey Taylor's map, printed in a seven-page supplement whose joke adverts real companies paid for.
Q 24In which animated series does a son's April Fools' revenge with a shaken beer can put his father in hospital?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons aired the episode on 1 April 1993: Bart's exploding can hospitalises Homer, and the bedside memories let an overworked staff fill the half-hour with old clips.
Q 25Which author, known for participatory journalism, wrote the Sidd Finch hoax for Sports Illustrated?
George Plimpton
George Plimpton was asked for a piece on sporting April Fools' jokes, found too few, and got leave to invent his own; almost 2,000 readers wrote in.
Q 26Which social network announced in 2013 that it would charge $5 a month to use vowels?
Twitter named the vowel-free tier 'Twttr', which really had been the service's name when it was created in 2006.
Q 27Taco Bell's 1996 April Fools' claim to have bought the Liberty Bell sent angry callers to the bell's home in which city?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park was flooded with outraged calls, and officials held a press conference to deny any sale before Taco Bell owned up hours later.
Q 28In 1992, National Public Radio reported that which former president would run for the White House again?
Richard Nixon
NPR's Talk of the Nation announced Richard Nixon's surprise 1992 candidacy, complete with an impersonator's voice; outraged listeners flooded the switchboard.
Q 29What was Google's first April Fools' hoax in 2000, which asked users to stare into a circle and picture their search?
MentalPlex
MentalPlex answered every attempt with a joke error, such as 'Brainwaves received in analog. Please re-think in digital.'
Q 30Gmail's real launch on 1 April 2004 was widely taken for a hoax because it promised how much free storage?
1 gigabyte
1 gigabyte was hundreds of times the 4 megabytes or less that rival webmail offered, and Google was already known for 1 April spoofs, so many dismissed the news outright.