Guyana Trivia
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60 free Guyana trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Guyana is the only English-speaking country on the South American mainland, a place that drives on the left, plays cricket for the West Indies, sits below sea level behind a seawall, and hides a waterfall roughly four and a half times the height of Niagara in its rainforest. Since 2015 it has also become the fastest-growing economy on Earth thanks to offshore oil. This Guyana trivia quiz covers all of that and more. Fifty-six questions run from geography (Kaieteur Falls, Mount Roraima, the Essequibo, Shell Beach) through history (Dutch colonies, British Guiana, independence in 1966, Jonestown, Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham) to national symbols (the Golden Arrowhead, the hoatzin, the giant water lily), food (pepperpot, El Dorado rum), music (Eddy Grant) and sport (Chanderpaul, Providence Stadium, the 2019 Gold Cup). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know the Guianas. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, heights and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Guyana?
Georgetown
Georgetown sits at the mouth of the Demerara River, much of it below high-tide level behind a long seawall, and is laid out on a Dutch-style grid of canals.
Q 02Guyana is the only country in mainland South America with which official language?
English
English, inherited from British rule, is the sole official language, making Guyana unique on the South American mainland; most people speak Guyanese Creole day to day.
Q 03The name "Guyana" comes from an Indigenous Amerindian word meaning what?
Land of many waters
'Land of many waters' is the usual rendering of the Amerindian word behind the name; Guiana once meant the whole coast from the Orinoco to the Amazon, which is why the neighbours were long called Dutch and French Guiana.
Q 04What is Guyana's currency?
Guyanese dollar
The Guyanese dollar goes back to 1839, when the colony began keeping accounts in dollars because Spanish silver dollars already circulated there beside Dutch guilders; the Bank of Guyana, set up in 1965, issues it today.
Q 05The British Guiana 1c magenta, sold for a record $9.5 million in 2014, is a one-of-a-kind what?
Postage stamp
A postage stamp printed locally in 1856 as an emergency issue, the 1c magenta survives in a single copy, which a 12-year-old schoolboy found in 1873 and sold for a few shillings.
Q 06Who remained Guyana's head of state until the 1970 republic?
Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II stayed on as Queen of Guyana, with a governor-general acting for her; independence had ended British rule but not the monarchy, which lasted until 1970.
Q 07Since 1970 Guyana's official name has called it what kind of republic?
Co-operative
Co-operative Republic of Guyana became the official name in 1970, when a government that had veered sharply to the left set out to organise the country's economy into co-operatives.
Q 08The annual Mashramani festival, held on 23 February, celebrates what event?
Guyana becoming a republic
Mashramani marks Guyana becoming a republic, with costume bands and floats through the capital; the name is said to come from an Amerindian word for a celebration after hard work.
Q 09Which American religious group's members died at Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978?
Peoples Temple
The Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, lost more than 900 members in a single day, most to a cyanide-laced fruit drink; the phrase 'drinking the Kool-Aid' comes from the event.
Q 10Which US congressman was murdered at the Port Kaituma airstrip on the day of the Jonestown deaths?
Leo Ryan
Leo Ryan, a California Democrat, had flown in to investigate the commune; its gunmen shot him and four others dead at the airstrip on 18 November 1978, hours before the poisonings.
Q 11Which former US president oversaw Guyana's 1992 elections, the first recognised as free and fair since 1964?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter's Carter Center led the international observers for the October 1992 vote, which ended 28 years of People's National Congress rule and was the first accepted as free and fair since 1964.
Q 12Which Guyanese dentist became chief minister in 1953, only for Britain to suspend the constitution within months?
Cheddi Jagan
Cheddi Jagan, a US-trained dentist, was removed when Britain sent in troops in October 1953; he came back as president in 1992, and his American-born wife Janet later held the office too.
Q 13Who served as Guyana's first executive president, from 1980 until his death in 1985?
Q 21Which town on the Demerara River is the centre of Guyana's bauxite industry?
Linden
Linden unites the old settlements of Mackenzie, Wismar and Christianburg, which grew around a mining camp; ore is processed there and loaded onto ocean-going ships that come up the river.
Q 22Which animal of Guyana's rivers and savannah wetlands is the world's largest living rodent?
Capybara
The capybara, which can top 60 kg, is semiaquatic: it takes to the water to escape predators, and it lives in every South American country except Chile.
Q 23Which table-top mountain of the Pakaraima range is Guyana's highest point?
Mount Roraima
Mount Roraima reaches 2,772 m on Guyana's side of a plateau shared with two neighbours; its sheer cliffs kept climbers off the flat top until Everard im Thurn's expedition found a way up in 1884.
Forbes Burnham
Forbes Burnham led Guyana from December 1964, as premier and then prime minister, before the 1980 constitution made him executive president; he nationalised the bauxite and sugar industries.
Q 14Which Guyanese historian, author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, was killed in 1980?
Walter Rodney
Walter Rodney, a leading voice of the opposition Working People's Alliance, earned his SOAS doctorate at 24 and was killed at 38 on 13 June 1980 when a bomb exploded in his car.
Q 15Who became Guyana's president after the disputed 2020 election?
Irfaan Ali
Irfaan Ali of the People's Progressive Party/Civic was sworn in on 2 August 2020, five months after the March vote, once a recount confirmed his party's win over David Granger's coalition.
Q 16Which country claims the territory west of Guyana's longest river, about two-thirds of the country?
Venezuela
Venezuela claims everything west of the river, about two-thirds of Guyana, although an 1899 tribunal in Paris awarded the land to the British colony; it revived the claim in 1962.
Q 17Which is the longest river in Guyana, at about 1,010 km?
Essequibo
The Essequibo rises in the Acarai Mountains on the far southern border, yet small ocean vessels can sail only about 80 km up it, to Bartica, before rapids take over; islands such as Leguan and Wakenaam fill its wide mouth.
Q 18Which river forms Guyana's border with Suriname?
Courentyne
The Courentyne marks the frontier, but the line runs along its west bank, so the whole river belongs to Suriname; the two countries also dispute the New River Triangle near its headwaters.
Q 19Kaieteur Falls plunges over which river?
Potaro
The Potaro River plunges off a sandstone plateau at Kaieteur on its way to the country's longest river; the falls are so remote that most visitors fly in by small plane.
Q 20Kaieteur Falls' 226 m drop is about four times the height of which waterfall?
Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls is about 57 m high, so Kaieteur's single plunge is roughly four times as tall and about twice the height of Victoria Falls; it is sheer because the river runs straight off the edge of a sandstone plateau.
Q 24Guyana's sheer, flat-topped tepuis are said to have inspired which 1912 adventure novel?
The Lost World
The Lost World, by Arthur Conan Doyle, puts living dinosaurs on a cliff-walled plateau; he built it from explorers' accounts, among them reports of these table mountains and Percy Fawcett's tales of a Bolivian plateau.
Q 25Which Black Panther star was born in Guyana and moved to London as a child?
Letitia Wright
Letitia Wright plays Shuri, the king's younger sister; after lead actor Chadwick Boseman died in 2020, the part was not recast and her Shuri took up the Black Panther mantle in Wakanda Forever.
Q 26Which bird, nicknamed the stinkbird and known locally as the Canje pheasant, is Guyana's national bird?
Hoatzin
The hoatzin ferments leaves in an enlarged crop, which gives it its smell; its chicks drop into the water to escape danger, then climb back to the nest using claws on their wings.
Q 27Guyana's national flower, a giant water lily named in 1837, honours which monarch?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria had just come to the throne when the lily, found in British Guiana by the explorer Robert Schomburgk, was named Victoria regia in her honour; it is now called Victoria amazonica.
Q 28Which animals serve as the supporters on Guyana's coat of arms?
Jaguars
Two jaguars flank the shield, one holding a pickaxe for mining and the other sugar cane and a rice stalk for the sugar and rice industries.
Q 29What is Guyana's motto?
One People, One Nation, One Destiny
'One People, One Nation, One Destiny' appears on the scroll beneath the shield; the crest above is an Amerindian head-dress, the Cacique's Crown, flanked by two diamonds for the mining industry.
Q 30By what name is Guyana's national flag known?
The Golden Arrowhead
The Golden Arrowhead, hoisted at independence, takes its name from the gold arrow pointing across a green field; red stands for zeal, green for farmland and forests, black for endurance and white for the rivers.