Headaches
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40 free Headaches trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Almost everyone gets headaches, yet few people know much about them. The brain itself cannot feel pain, an ice lolly can floor you in seconds, and some of the best-known remedies began as folk medicine or lucky accidents. That mix of everyday experience and odd science makes headaches a surprisingly rich subject for a quiz. These questions range across the main types of headache, from the mild everyday kind to migraine and cluster attacks, along with triggers such as food, drink and hangovers. They also cover where common painkillers came from, the strange treatments people tried in the past, and the warning symptoms that send doctors looking for something more serious. The quiz suits curious general-knowledge players as much as nursing and medical students who want a light revision break. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing more than when you began. It is trivia, not medical advice: see a doctor about any headache that worries you.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Brain freeze begins when something icy touches which part of the body, sending pain to the forehead?
The roof of the mouth
The roof of the mouth has blood vessels that tighten and swell at the sudden chill, and the alarm is passed on as if the pain came from the head.
Q 02In Greek myth, which goddess was born from the head of Zeus after he suffered an unbearable headache?
Athena
Athena leapt out fully grown and armed, in most tellings after an axe split his skull open. Hesiod says Zeus had earlier swallowed her pregnant mother, Metis.
Q 03Which painkiller did British chemist Stewart Adams, who led its discovery, try on his own hangover?
Ibuprofen
Ibuprofen cleared its inventor's vodka hangover before a conference speech in Moscow, after the drug had already gone on sale in Britain in 1969 as a prescription arthritis medicine.
Q 04A bedtime cup of which drink is a recognised treatment for hypnic headaches, which wake older adults from sleep?
Coffee
Coffee before bed sounds backwards, yet one or two cups can prevent these attacks, which tend to strike at the same hour every night.
Q 05A dull headache is the most common symptom of poisoning by which invisible gas from faulty heaters and furnaces?
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide poisoning is often mistaken for flu, because the headache tends to arrive with dizziness, weakness and vomiting.
Q 06Salicin, a chemical forerunner of the headache pill aspirin, is found in the bark of which tree?
Willow
Willow bark won medical attention in 1763, when the English clergyman Edward Stone told the Royal Society how the powdered bark had eased fevers.
Q 07Doctors give which stormy name to a severe headache that hits full force almost instantly and needs emergency care?
Thunderclap
Thunderclap headache can be the only warning of bleeding around the brain, a link the London neurologist Charles Symonds described in the 1920s.
Q 08Which type of headache, usually a dull ache felt on both sides of the head, is the most common of all?
Tension
Tension headache is more widespread even than migraine, and everyday painkillers such as aspirin or paracetamol usually settle it.
Q 09Which stimulant is added to some headache tablets, yet causes withdrawal headaches when regular users suddenly stop?
Caffeine
Caffeine withdrawal can also bring sleepiness and irritability, which is why a missed morning cup can sour a whole day.
Q 10A Chinese text of about 30 BCE naming the 'Big Headache Mountains' is credited as the earliest account of which illness?
Altitude sickness
Altitude sickness makes headache its main early symptom, and the old name is thought to describe passes in the Karakoram range.
Q 11Roman physician Scribonius Largus recorded treating headaches by applying which live sea creature to the patient?
An electric ray
An electric ray, the torpedo fish, was pressed into service for its shocks, and the same first-century text prescribes the jolt for gout as well.
Q 12Factory workers making which explosive got 'Monday disease' headaches after losing their tolerance over the weekend?
Nitroglycerin
Nitroglycerin widens blood vessels, so every return to work brought a racing heart, dizziness and a pounding head. That same effect has made it a medicine for angina since 1878.
Q 13Breathing which pure gas through a mask is a standard way to stop a cluster headache attack in its tracks?
Oxygen
Q 21The external compression headache, caused by tight headwear, is also named after which item worn in the pool?
Swim goggles
Swim goggles pressing on the forehead are a classic cause, though tight hats, helmets, headbands and even headphones can do the same.
Q 22Bruxism, which can leave people with headaches and an aching jaw on waking, is the medical name for which habit?
Teeth grinding
Teeth grinding often goes unnoticed because it happens during sleep, and the ache it causes tends to settle in the temples before easing through the day.
Q 23Bourbon tends to give a worse hangover headache than vodka because it contains far more of which by-products?
Congeners
Oxygen is a first-choice treatment for an attack, whose pain bores in around one eye and can last anywhere from 15 minutes to three hours.
Q 14Which German company began selling aspirin in 1899 and also marketed heroin as a cough remedy?
Bayer
Bayer coined Aspirin as a brand name, then lost or sold the trademark in many countries, which is how the word became an everyday one.
Q 15Which ancient practice of boring a hole in the skull is popularly, but doubtfully, said to have treated headaches?
Trepanation
Trepanation owes its headache story to the physician William Osler, who made the link in 1913. No solid evidence shows Stone Age healers opened skulls for that reason.
Q 16A severe headache with fever and a stiff neck is the classic warning pattern of which dangerous infection?
Meningitis
Meningitis inflames the membranes wrapped around the brain, which can hurt even though brain tissue itself has no pain receptors.
Q 17Children with a headache or fever are not given aspirin because of its link to which rare, dangerous illness?
Reye's syndrome
Reye's syndrome, a fast-moving brain illness, became more than 90% rarer after aspirin was withdrawn for children in the 1980s.
Q 18Paracetamol, a standard remedy for a mild headache, goes by which other generic name in the United States?
Acetaminophen
Acetaminophen and paracetamol are both clipped from chemical names for the same compound, coined by rival drug firms a year apart in the 1950s.
Q 19Taking painkillers on too many days each month can itself cause which self-perpetuating kind of headache?
Rebound
Rebound headaches can strike daily, and for simple painkillers the danger line is use on 15 or more days a month for over three months.
Q 20The headache that can follow a spinal tap or epidural is distinctive because it eases in which position?
Lying down
Lying down helps because spinal fluid leaking through the needle hole lowers the pressure around the brain, and being upright makes the drop worse.
Congeners form as a drink ferments and ages, and bourbon carries about 37 times as many of them as vodka does.
Q 24A British pharmacist noticed his wife, on MAOI antidepressants, got severe headaches after eating which food?
Cheese
Cheese, above all the strong aged kinds, is rich in tyramine, which those drugs stop the body from clearing. Doctors came to call the result the cheese reaction.
Q 25Which flavour enhancer was blamed for 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' headaches, a link blinded tests have not confirmed?
Monosodium glutamate
Monosodium glutamate got its bad name from a 1968 letter to a medical journal, which early readers took for a joke before the scare caught on.
Q 26Which cranial nerve, which also powers biting and chewing, is activated during a migraine attack?
Trigeminal
Trigeminal means roughly 'triplet': on each side of the head the nerve splits into three branches, serving the eye, the upper jaw and the lower jaw.
Q 27Aspirin takes its name from Spiraea, the old botanical name of which wild plant rich in salicylic acid?
Meadowsweet
Meadowsweet gave the word its middle syllable, while the opening letter stands for the acetyl group that chemists added in the laboratory.
Q 28Which name is given to the flashing lights or zigzag lines that some people see shortly before a migraine headache?
Aura
Aura usually lasts between five minutes and an hour, and it is mostly visual because the disturbance starts in the part of the brain that handles sight.
Q 29Headache is the most common symptom of which injury, often picked up in contact sports such as rugby?
Concussion
Concussion needs no knockout: fewer than one in ten sports-related cases in children is thought to involve any loss of consciousness.
Q 30A severe headache in late pregnancy can be a warning sign of which condition marked by high blood pressure?
Pre-eclampsia
Pre-eclampsia can tip over into seizures, and a headache is the most consistent warning that this is about to happen.