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50 free Catan trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Catan, once The Settlers of Catan, is the game that taught a generation outside Germany what a Eurogame was. Klaus Teuber's island of hexes came out from Kosmos in 1995, won the Spiel des Jahres that year and has since sold more than 32 million copies in 40 languages, with a film and TV universe now in development at Netflix. These 50 questions cover the rules, the history and the sprawl around it: which hex makes which resource, what a 7 does, how many cards force a discard, the five development cards, the 4:1 bank trade and the ports, then the expansions from Seafarers to Explorers & Pirates, the spin-offs from Starfarers to Catan Junior and Star Trek Catan, the novel, the documentary, the short film and the World Championship that alternates between Germany and the United States. Easy questions cover the designer, the resources and the robber; the expert tier asks about the robber's colour change, the first historical scenario pack, the 2005 collector's edition and the Teuber game that inherited Catan's unused mechanics. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation. Play it solo or print it for game night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who designed the game?
Klaus Teuber
His original design was a sprawling game of exploration; he and Kosmos spent 1993 to 1995 simplifying it.
Q 02In which year was the game first published?
1995
It swept the 1995 awards: Spiel des Jahres, Deutscher Spiele Preis, the Essen Feather and the Meeples' Choice.
Q 03In which country was the game first published?
Germany
It became one of the first Eurogames to catch on outside Europe.
Q 04Which company first published the game?
Kosmos
Its full name is Franckh-Kosmos Verlag; Mayfair later handled the English editions for years.
Q 05Under what longer name was the game originally sold?
The Settlers of Catan
The line was rebranded to the single word for its 20th anniversary in 2015.
Q 06How many victory points does a player normally need to win?
10
Settlements score one, cities two, and bonuses come from the longest road and largest army.
Q 07The island is built from tiles of what shape?
Hexagons
They are laid out at random each game, though newer editions recommend a fixed beginner layout.
Q 08Which of these is NOT one of the five resources in the base game?
Stone
The five are wool, grain, lumber, brick and ore; older editions called them sheep, wheat, wood, brick and ore.
Q 09Which land type produces brick?
Hills
Forests give lumber, mountains ore, fields grain and pastures wool.
Q 10Mountains produce which resource?
Ore
Ore and grain together are what you need to upgrade a settlement into a city.
Q 11Pastures produce which resource?
Wool
The original German edition called it sheep, which is why players still say it.
Q 12Where does the robber token start the game?
On the desert
The desert is the one land type that never produces anything, so parking the robber there costs nobody.
Q 13Rolling which number forces the robber to move?
7
The hex it lands on stops producing, and the mover may steal a card from a neighbouring player.
Q 14When a 7 is rolled, players holding at least how many resource cards must discard half?
Q 21The base game is designed for how many players?
3 to 4
A 1996 extension stretched it to six and added a building phase between turns.
Q 22What was the first expansion, adding ships and exploration, released in 1997?
Seafarers
Combined with the base game it is probably the closest thing to Teuber's original sprawling design.
Q 23The 1997 ships expansion added hexes producing what, which let a player take any resource?
Gold
It also introduced scenarios in which players explore an archipelago.
Q 24Cities & Knights adds three commodities: paper, cloth and what?
8
Half rounded down: a player with nine cards loses four.
Q 15Without a port, players may trade resources with the bank at what ratio?
Four to one
A generic port improves that to three to one and a specialised port to two to one.
Q 16How many victory points is a city worth?
Two
A city also doubles production, taking two cards instead of one when its number is rolled.
Q 17The 'largest army' bonus goes to whoever has played the most of which card?
Knight
Playing one moves the robber as if a 7 were rolled, but without forcing anyone to discard.
Q 18Which development card lets you take all of one resource from every other player?
Monopoly
It is one of five development card types, alongside cards worth a straight victory point.
Q 19Which development card lets you pick up any two resource cards?
Year of Plenty
Road Building, by contrast, lets you lay two roads without paying for them.
Q 20How many different types of development card are there?
Five
Victory point, knight, monopoly, road building and year of plenty.
Coin
It also brought in city improvements and knights to fend off invaders.
Q 25Which 2008 expansion includes the official two-player variant?
Traders & Barbarians
It collects a number of smaller scenarios, some previously published elsewhere.
Q 26The Settlers of Catan was rebranded to the single word Catan for which anniversary?
20th
That was 2015; the original game simply became Catan.
Q 27The 2005 tenth-anniversary collector's edition featured tiles and pieces that were what?
Hand-painted 3D
It bundled the base game with Cities & Knights.
Q 28In the 2007 fourth edition, the robber piece changed from black to what colour?
Grey
The same edition renamed the soldier development card the knight.
Q 29Who wrote the 2003 novel Die Siedler von Catan about Norse voyagers?
Rebecca Gablé
The historical novelist sent her Norsemen in search of the mythical island.
Q 30Which 1999 spin-off took the game into space with spaceships and spaceports?
Starfarers of Catan
It kept the dice-driven production, trading and building of the original.