Latter-day Saints Trivia
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119 free Latter-day Saints trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Latter-day Saints trivia questions with answers. This quiz covers the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the faith most people still call Mormon: Joseph Smith and the golden plates, Kirtland and Nauvoo, the killing at Carthage, Brigham Young and the 1847 trek, the handcart companies, the 1890 Manifesto and Utah statehood. It moves on to how the church works today: temples and open houses, tithing, the Word of Wisdom, missionaries and their name tags, the Quorum of the Twelve, the 2018 request to drop the nickname. There is a culture round too: the Tabernacle Choir, BYU and Cosmo the Cougar, FamilySearch's mountain vault, Mitt Romney's mission and the Broadway musical. It is written for anyone curious about the faith, for members testing their own knowledge, and for youth or family-night games. Difficulty runs from very easy to questions on Little Cottonwood Canyon and the Genealogical Society of Utah. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 119 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Joseph Smith's church called when he organised it in 1830, before 'Latter Day Saints' joined its name?
Church of Christ
Church of Christ. Other congregations already used that name, so an 1834 conference voted to become the Church of the Latter Day Saints, and an 1838 revelation joined the two.
Q 02Joseph Smith was born on 23 December 1805 in which state?
Vermont
Vermont. Killing frosts in 1816, the 'year without a summer', ruined the family's crops there, so the Smiths gave up their farm and moved to western New York.
Q 03Joseph Smith said that in 1823 an angel directed him to a buried book made of what?
Golden plates
Golden plates. Smith said he handed them back to the angel once the translation was finished, so no outsider has ever been able to examine the Book of Mormon's original.
Q 04Which angel, now a trumpet-blowing statue atop many temples, did Joseph Smith say guarded the buried record?
Moroni
Moroni, whom Smith called the last prophet of the Book of Mormon, is the figure in Cyrus Dallin's 1892 statue on the Salt Lake Temple; a 2020 earthquake knocked the trumpet from its hand.
Q 05Whom did Joseph Smith elope with and marry in January 1827?
Emma Hale
Emma Hale married Joseph Smith on 18 January 1827 after they eloped; he had met her while boarding at her family's home in Harmony, Pennsylvania, and she remained in Illinois after his death.
Q 06Which Ohio town became the headquarters of Joseph Smith's church in 1831 and the site of the first temple?
Kirtland
Kirtland, Ohio, became church headquarters in 1831 and the site of the first temple; the era ended after the collapse of the church-backed Kirtland Safety Society bank.
Q 07Which denomination owned the first Latter Day Saint temple, in Ohio, for over a century before transferring it in 2024?
Community of Christ
Community of Christ. First led by Joseph Smith's eldest son, it kept the temple until 2024, when the building passed to the Salt Lake church along with historic sites in Illinois.
Q 08What Hebrew-derived name did Joseph Smith give the Illinois town of Commerce?
Nauvoo
Nauvoo. Smith said the name meant a beautiful place of rest; the Saints arrived as refugees and drained the riverside swamps to build their new city.
Q 09At its mid-1840s peak, the Saints' city on the Mississippi was nearly as large as which other Illinois city?
Chicago
Chicago. Converts from the eastern states and England swelled the Saints' city until the two were close in size; mobs then drove most of its people west in 1846 while Chicago kept growing.
Q 10Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed by a mob on 27 June 1844 in the jail of which Illinois town?
Carthage
Joseph and Hyrum Smith were held in Carthage Jail after the destruction of a dissident newspaper's press; a mob with blackened faces stormed the jail and shot both brothers.
Q 11How did Joseph Smith's 1844 presidential platform propose to end American slavery?
Buying their freedom with land-sale money
Buying their freedom with land-sale money. He wanted Congress to pay slaveholders from public land sales by 1850, but he was killed that June, the first US presidential candidate to be assassinated.
Q 12Who took over leadership of most of the church after Joseph Smith's death and led its members west?
Brigham Young
Brigham Young, the senior apostle, won the Saints' vote over Sidney Rigdon in August 1844, led them to Utah in 1847 and became the territory's first governor in 1851.
Q 13What did the Saints' leader reportedly say on first seeing the Salt Lake Valley?
Q 21Which star pattern is carved into the exterior of the Salt Lake Temple?
The Big Dipper
The Big Dipper. Its pointer stars line up with the real North Star, a sign that the priesthood guides people home; the temple's six spires stand for that same priesthood authority.
Q 22What must a Latter-day Saint hold to enter a temple once it has been dedicated?
A current recommend
A current recommend. Anyone may tour a new temple during its open house; after dedication a member needs this pass, signed after interviews with a bishop and a stake leader.
Q 23Which ordinance for the dead did Joseph Smith first preach at an 1840 funeral in Illinois?
Baptism for the dead
This is the right place, drive on
The church's leader reportedly said 'This is the right place, drive on' from a wagon at the mouth of Emigration Canyon; Utah marks 24 July as Pioneer Day.
Q 14Winter Quarters, the Latter-day Saints' 1846-47 encampment before Utah, was in what is now which state?
Nebraska
Nebraska. Winter Quarters stood at present-day Florence, now part of Omaha, where hundreds of Saints died of disease in makeshift shelters before the 1847 trek to Utah.
Q 15Between 1856 and 1860, nearly 3,000 poor European converts crossed the plains pulling what?
Handcarts
Handcarts, a cheap substitute for wagons and oxen. In 1856 two late-starting companies were trapped by early snow in Wyoming, and more than 200 people died before rescuers reached them.
Q 16On the 1847 trek to the Salt Lake Valley, what did the first pioneer company's men build onto a wagon wheel?
An odometer
An odometer. Scribe William Clayton was tired of walking beside a wagon counting its wheel's turns, so the Vanguard Company's men cut wooden gears to do it; his mileages became a guidebook for later emigrants.
Q 17Which church president issued the declaration that suspended new plural marriages among Latter-day Saints?
Wilford Woodruff
Wilford Woodruff, church president from 1889, issued the declaration after Congress had disincorporated the church and seized its assets; Utah statehood followed in 1896.
Q 18Which 1857 atrocity saw Utah territorial militiamen kill 120 or more members of an Arkansas wagon train?
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
The Mountain Meadows Massacre of September 1857 saw militiamen kill about 120 members of the Baker-Fancher party in southern Utah; John D. Lee, the only man tried, was executed by firing squad in 1877.
Q 19The Salt Lake Temple took how many years to build?
40
40 years, from 1853 to 1893. In 1858 the Saints buried the foundation to hide it from an approaching US army, and when they dug it up, cracked stones forced them to rebuild much of it.
Q 20The Salt Lake Temple's stone was quarried in which canyon, now home to the Alta and Snowbird ski resorts?
Little Cottonwood Canyon
Little Cottonwood Canyon. Wagon teams needed about four days for each round trip with the pale quartz monzonite blocks until a railway spur reached the quarry in the 1870s.
Baptism for the dead, first preached by Joseph Smith at a funeral in August 1840, lets living members be baptised by proxy for deceased ancestors, driving the church's vast genealogical work.
Q 24Which monthly donation, given on top of tithing, does a Latter-day Saint bishop spend on local members in need?
Fast offerings
Fast offerings. Members go without two meals on the first Sunday of the month and give at least what the food would have cost; tithing, a tenth of income, is separate.
Q 25The church's health code, dictated by Joseph Smith as a revelation in 1833, is known as what?
The Word of Wisdom
The Word of Wisdom. It was first sent out 'not by commandment or constraint', and only in the 1920s did abstaining become a firm requirement for entering the church's temples.
Q 26The church's health code bans 'hot drinks', which has been interpreted as forbidding which two beverages?
Coffee and tea
Coffee and tea. Church leaders have long taught that 'hot drinks' means those two specifically, and in 2012 the church pointed out that the revelation never mentions caffeine.
Q 27How long do young male Latter-day Saint missionaries typically serve?
Two years
Two years for young men and 18 months for young women. They are not paid: missionaries or their families generally cover the cost themselves.
Q 28The name tags worn by LDS missionaries give their surname with which title for men?
Elder
Elder. Young men are ordained to that priesthood office before they leave, which is why an 18-year-old can carry the title; women missionaries are called Sister.
Q 29What do Latter-day Saint missionaries call the one day a week set aside for errands and emails home?
Preparation day
Preparation day. Since 2019 missionaries may also phone or video-call their families on it; before that change, home heard from them mostly through letters and email.
Q 30By the church's own count, more than half the people of which Pacific nation are Latter-day Saints?
Tonga
Tonga. As of 2025 the church lists about 69,000 members there, roughly three in five Tongans; its first missionaries landed in 1891 and went to ask the king's leave to preach.