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50 free Graffiti trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Graffiti is older than the alphabet in some places and younger than the spray can in others, and this quiz runs the whole length of it. It starts with the ancient stuff: the word's Italian root, the oldest known graffito on a Greek island, the boasts and Sator squares of Pompeii, the donkey-headed crucifixion mocking a Christian named Alexamenos, the runes of Viking tourists and the mirror wall at Sigiriya. Then Kilroy, the shipyard inspector whose chalk mark went round the world. The core of the quiz is the modern movement: Cornbread in Philadelphia, TAKI 183 in the New York Times, tags, throw-ups, pieces and wildstyle, whole cars on the subway, Style Wars and Subway Art, Fab 5 Freddy's Campbell's soup train, Lee Quinones, Dondi, Lady Pink, and the downtown crossover of Basquiat and Keith Haring. Then it crosses the Atlantic to Blek le Rat's stencilled rats, Banksy's shredded auction lot, Dismaland and Exit Through the Gift Shop, the East Side Gallery, Shepard Fairey's Obey and Hope, and finishes with 5Pointz, Michael Fay's caning, IBM's penguin fine and the Illinois man who put paint in a spray can in 1949. Easy questions suit anyone who has noticed a tag on a wall; the expert tier is for writers and street-art historians. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on graffiti, street art and the artists involved, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word graffiti comes from an Italian word meaning what?
Scratched
The rare singular graffito is now used mainly by archaeologists.
Q 02The oldest known written graffito, from around 500 BC, was found on an island of which country?
Greece
It turned up on Astypalaia in the Dodecanese; ancient graffiti were usually cut into walls with a sharp point.
Q 03The Alexamenos graffito (c. AD 200) shows a crucified figure with which animal's head?
A donkey
It mocks a Christian and may be the earliest surviving depiction of Jesus; it is kept in the Palatine Museum.
Q 04Ancient tourists left over 1,800 graffiti on a citadel's 'mirror wall' in which country?
Sri Lanka
Visitors to Sigiriya scribbled names and comments there between the 6th and 18th centuries.
Q 05The only known source of Safaitic, an ancient form of Arabic, is graffiti carved on rocks in what kind of desert?
Basalt
The inscriptions cover southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia.
Q 06The 'Kilroy was here' doodle spread worldwide in World War II through its use by whom?
American troops
Legend says Hitler thought Kilroy might be an Allied spy and Stalin asked who he was after finding it in a Potsdam bathroom.
Q 07James J. Kilroy, credited with the phrase, worked as what at the Fore River Shipyard?
A rivet inspector
His chalk mark stopped riveters erasing inspection marks to get paid twice; a 1946 contest drew more than 40 rival claimants.
Q 08The British version of the Kilroy doodle, a bald head peering over a wall, was known as what?
Mr Chad
The others were rival names for the same figure; Australia's Foo may predate Kilroy by 25 years.
Q 09The 1967 London graffito 'Clapton is God' was spray-painted on a wall in which district?
Islington
It is cited as an early example of graffiti outside the United States, and helped create the cult of the guitar hero.
Q 10Modern graffiti began in the early 1970s in New York City and which other US city?
Philadelphia
The two scenes grew up independently before hip hop carried the New York style around the world.
Q 11Which writer, born Darryl McCray, is widely considered the world's first modern graffiti artist?
Cornbread
He later worked with the city's Anti-Graffiti Network and Mural Arts Program to curb what he had started.
Q 12The number in the tag TAKI 183 came from what?
His street address
The Greek-American foot messenger lived on 183rd Street in Washington Heights; the New York Times profiled him in July 1971.
Q 13The New York Times article that made TAKI 183 famous in 1971 was headlined 'Taki 183 Spawns' what?
Pen Pals
He worked as a foot messenger and wrote his name along the routes he walked.
Q 21Fab 5 Freddy is name-checked in the rap section of which 1981 Blondie song?
Rapture
He also appears in the video painting graffiti in the background; it was the first hip-hop video shown on MTV.
Q 22Under which tag, shared with Al Diaz, did a young Jean-Michel Basquiat write cryptic epigrams around Manhattan?
SAMO
The name began as a schoolboy in-joke short for 'same old'; when the pair fell out in 1980 the tag was declared dead on SoHo walls.
Q 23Basquiat's Untitled (1982), a black skull with red and yellow rivulets, sold in 2017 for how much?
$110 million
The buyer was Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa; the artist had died of a heroin overdose at 27 in 1988.
Q 14What is a large, elaborate, letter-based graffiti work done with spray paint or rollers called?
A piece
It is short for masterpiece; a tag is the quick signature and a throw-up sits between the two.
Q 15The term wildstyle was popularised by a crew formed in the Bronx in 1974 by which writer?
Tracy 168
The interlocking, arrow-laden lettering became the movement's signature look.
Q 16Which New York mayor, quoted in Style Wars, regarded subway graffiti as defacement and public blight?
Ed Koch
The writer Norman Mailer, by contrast, was among the art's admirers.
Q 17The 1983 documentary Style Wars, directed by Tony Silver, first aired on which network?
PBS
It won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance and features Kase 2, Dondi, Seen and Skeme.
Q 18Which photographer co-created the 1984 graffiti book Subway Art with Henry Chalfant?
Martha Cooper
The two had documented the trains separately for a decade before finding a publisher, Thames & Hudson, at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Q 19The 1982 film Wild Style, regarded as the first hip hop movie, was directed by whom?
Charlie Ahearn
Lee Quinones stars as the anonymous writer Zoro alongside Fab 5 Freddy, Lady Pink and Grandmaster Flash.
Q 20In 1979 Fab 5 Freddy and Lee Quinones painted a subway train with giant cans of what, in homage to Warhol?
Campbell's Soup
The pair also had their first gallery show that month, at the Galleria La Medusa in Rome.
Q 24Keith Haring first drew attention with white chalk drawings on unused black ad panels where?
Subway stations
He called the subway his laboratory and kept drawing there even as his gallery prices soared.
Q 25Which crawling-infant image became Keith Haring's most recognised symbol and his tag?
Radiant Baby
The other three were also recurring Haring figures; the baby was embroidered on his AIDS Memorial Quilt panel in 1991.
Q 26Keith Haring's 1986 mural visible from New York's FDR Drive carried what anti-drug slogan?
Crack Is Wack
He repainted an updated version on the same East Harlem wall that October; he opened the Pop Shop in SoHo the same year.
Q 27Lady Pink, the 'first lady of graffiti', was born in which country?
Ecuador
Born Sandra Fabara in Ambato, she moved to New York at seven and starred in Wild Style in 1983.
Q 28Dondi White's most famous work, Children of the Grave Parts 1 to 3, was painted on what?
Whole subway cars
The three whole cars were painted between 1978 and 1980; he founded the CIA (Crazy Inside Artists) crew in 1978.
Q 29Blek le Rat, the 'father of stencil graffiti', began stencilling which animal on Paris walls in 1981?
Rats
He called it the only free animal in the city; 'rat' is also an anagram of 'art'.
Q 30Blek le Rat was caught by police in 1991 while stencilling a Madonna and Child by which painter?
Caravaggio
After the arrest he switched to pre-stencilled posters, which are quicker to paste and carry lighter penalties.