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50 free Customs and Traditions trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Every country has a rule that visitors break within an hour of landing: the thing you must never touch, the gift that insults, the drink you are supposed to refuse three times before accepting. Customs are the unwritten manual of a place, and they are far stranger and more logical than the guidebooks let on. These 50 questions travel through more than thirty countries across six continents. They cover how people greet each other, what is expected at a birth, a coming of age, a wedding and a funeral, how to behave at the table and with a gift, what happens at midnight on New Year's Eve from the Andes to the Baltic, and the local festivals in which whole towns throw fruit, leap over fire or parade through the streets before dawn. Each answer comes with a short explanation of where the custom came from and why it survives. It suits a pub quiz round, a classroom geography lesson, a travel-club night or a warm-up before a long trip. Play it on your phone with instant answers, or print it for the table.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Japan, what must a visitor do at a home's genkan, the sunken entryway just inside the front door?
Remove their shoes
Visitors remove their shoes at the genkan and avoid touching its lower tiled floor even in socks, so no outside dirt crosses into the house. Inside, they change into slippers kept for the purpose.
Q 02In Thailand, which part of the body is considered unclean, never to be pointed at a person or a thing?
The feet
The feet are symbolically unclean, so the soles are kept from pointing at others when sitting on the floor, and pointing a dangling foot at someone older or of higher status gives real offence.
Q 03Which gesture, common across India, can mean yes, okay or 'I understand' depending on the context?
The head bobble
The head bobble, a side-to-side tilt, is so context-dependent that it can also signal 'maybe' or plain polite acknowledgement. It is found across South Asia but is most associated with India.
Q 04Which practice, routine in American restaurants, is not a custom in Japan and may be politely refused by staff?
Tipping
Tipping is not a custom in Japan; where a charge for service exists it is fixed or built into the price, so coins placed on the table mostly puzzle the waiter.
Q 05On 1 April in France, what do pranksters try to attach to a victim's back without being noticed?
A paper fish
A paper fish is the French April Fool, the poisson d'avril, a phrase a poet wrote as early as 1508, long before English speakers wrote of April fools.
Q 06English Morris dancers traditionally wear which noisy accessory strapped to their shins?
Bells
Bells on pads strapped to the shins or footwear jingle with every rhythmic step of a Morris side, whose dancers may also wave handkerchiefs or clash sticks and swords.
Q 07Which aristocrat, Anna Russell, is credited with starting afternoon tea to fill the long gap before the evening meal?
Duchess of Bedford
The Duchess of Bedford, Anna Russell, is commonly cited as afternoon tea's originator; her spread of tea, scones and small cakes filled the hours between an early lunch and a fashionably late supper.
Q 08During Swan Upping, the annual ceremony on England's River Thames, what happens to the mute swans that are rounded up?
Ringed and released
Ringed and released is the swans' fate, because by prerogative right the Crown owns every unmarked mute swan in open water, and the annual round-up keeps track of them.
Q 09Which small case holding a parchment with Torah verses do Jewish families fix to the doorposts of their homes?
A mezuzah
A mezuzah takes its name from the Hebrew for 'doorpost', and the parchment inside carries the passages of Deuteronomy that command the practice itself.
Q 10Under the traditional Korean age system, scrapped by law in 2023, how old was a baby counted as at birth?
One
One was the starting age because the count is of calendar years lived, and everyone then gained a year together at New Year, so a late-December baby could be two within days. South Korea switched to international age on 28 June 2023.
Q 11German children starting school are handed a Schultüte, a large decorated cone traditionally filled with what?
Sweets
Sweets filled the cone so completely that its other name is Zuckertüte, 'sugar cone'; these days crayons, small toys and books crowd out some of the chocolate.
Q 12Which song, sung early in the morning to wake the birthday person, is Mexico's traditional birthday serenade?
Las Mañanitas
Las Mañanitas, credited to composer Alfonso Esparza Oteo, is also the serenade of choice for courting women, and Pedro Infante's version in Nosotros los pobres made it famous.
Q 13How many months does the Ethiopian calendar have, the last of them only five or six days long?
13
Q 21Which Māori New Year festival, named for the Pleiades star cluster, became a New Zealand public holiday in 2022?
Matariki
Matariki marks the cluster's first pre-dawn rising in late June or early July, and the first public holiday in its name was observed on 24 June 2022.
Q 22Ukraine's pysanka, a national symbol, is an Easter egg decorated using which technique?
Wax-resist dyeing
Wax-resist dyeing, in which melted wax shields each colour before the next dye bath, gives the pysanka its name from an Old Slavonic word for writing.
Q 23How is Iceland's telephone directory alphabetised, a consequence of most Icelanders having no family surname?
By first name
13 months come from twelve of exactly thirty days plus a short thirteenth made of the leftover days, and the year count runs seven to eight years behind the Gregorian calendar.
Q 14Two-up, the coin-tossing gambling game, is traditionally played in Australian pubs on which single day of the year?
Anzac Day
Anzac Day two-up honours the diggers who played it in the trenches, and for decades it was illegal at all other times, which only encouraged the 'two-up schools' that flourished while police turned a blind eye.
Q 15In a New Orleans jazz funeral, what name is given to the crowd that follows the brass band purely for the music?
The second line
The second line follows behind the family and band, twirling parasols and handkerchiefs once the sombre dirges give way to upbeat tunes after the body is entombed.
Q 16At what age does Rumspringa, the Amish period of freedom before deciding on baptism, normally begin?
16
16 is when Amish youth begin Rumspringa, which ends only when they choose baptism into the church or leave the community; Wenger Mennonites run theirs between 17 and 21.
Q 17The Inuit kunik, often mislabelled an 'Eskimo kiss', presses the nose tip against which part of the other person?
The cheek
The cheek, not another nose, receives the kunik: the nose tip is pressed or rubbed against it as a gesture of affection, very often towards small children.
Q 18Which two staples greet honoured guests in Russia, giving the language its word for hospitality, khlebosolny?
Bread and salt
Bread and salt are offered to guests in a welcome ceremony across the Slavic world, the salt once being the most expensive thing a host could give an awaited visitor.
Q 19On Koningsdag, 27 April, the Dutch government lets citizens do what in the street without a permit or VAT?
Sell used goods
The right to sell used goods on the pavement creates the vrijmarkt, or 'free market'; a 2011 ING survey found one in five Dutch residents planned to set up a stall.
Q 20Which chocolate-dipped biscuit stick gives South Korea a gift day on 11 November, a date that looks like four of them?
Pepero
Pepero is made by Lotte, which sells about 60% of its annual supply around Pepero Day and shifts roughly 84 times the usual daily volume on the day itself.
By first name is the only workable order because Icelanders carry patronymics such as Jónsdóttir rather than inherited surnames; to tell namesakes apart, the directory also lists professions.
Q 24Which 18-minute English-language comedy sketch, recorded in 1963, is watched in Germany every New Year's Eve?
Dinner for One
Dinner for One, with Freddie Frinton and May Warden, was by 1995 the most frequently repeated television programme in Germany, yet it remains little known in Britain where the sketch began.
Q 25At a Korean doljanchi first-birthday party, what does the doljabi ritual invite the baby to do?
Pick an object from a tray
Pick an object from a tray and the choice is read as a forecast of the child's future, a brush hinting at scholarship, in a custom modelled on the Chinese zhuazhou.
Q 26Which dish do Koreans eat for breakfast on their birthday, in honour of the mother who ate it after giving birth?
Seaweed soup
Seaweed soup, miyeok-guk, is eaten by new mothers for months after childbirth, a practice said to date to the Goguryeo period after people noticed whales eating seaweed once they had calved.
Q 27In South Korea, how should a younger person drink beer poured by an elder, according to traditional table etiquette?
Facing away from them
Facing away from them while drinking shows deference, just as drinks and objects are passed and received with two hands rather than with a single hand.
Q 28Which carved wooden birds, symbols of fidelity, are exchanged in pairs at a traditional Korean wedding?
Mandarin ducks
Mandarin ducks are carved in pairs as 'wedding ducks' to represent peace, fidelity and plentiful offspring; wedding geese likewise stand for a long and happy marriage.
Q 29Which Japanese festival on 15 November celebrates children aged three, five and seven, as its name spells out?
Shichi-Go-San
Shichi-Go-San, 'seven-five-three', marks girls at three and seven and boys at five, who are dressed up and taken to shrines to celebrate their growth and well-being.
Q 30How many times is the year rung out at Japanese temples on New Year's Eve, one toll per worldly desire in Buddhism?
108
108 tolls answer the 108 bonnō, the worldly desires or kleshas of Buddhism; the custom came from Song-dynasty Zen temples in China and reached Japanese Zen temples in the Kamakura period, when bells were rung 108 times morning and evening.