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50 free London Underground trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Tube has been carrying Londoners since the 1860s, and in that time it has collected more stories than any other railway: a line named by squashing two words together, stations that were built and never opened, a bunker where a prime minister sat out the bombs, and a platform announcement so old that a widow asked for it back. These 50 questions dig beneath the headline facts. Expect line colours and nicknames, the people behind the roundel and the typeface, the deepest platforms and the longest escalators, wartime shelters, the map edition that dropped a landmark, and the Underground's cameos in film, radio and song. Made for commuters, pub-quiz teams and anyone who has ever stared at the map on a stalled train. Play it in ten-question rounds, or print it for your next trivia night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which insect got its Underground name by biting Londoners sheltering in Tube stations in the Blitz?
Mosquito
The London Underground mosquito, a form of Culex pipiens, bit shelterers during the Blitz and became a textbook example of rapid evolution. Its Tube origin is now thought to be a myth, since the same form turns up worldwide.
Q 02Whose 'Mind the gap' recording returned to Embankment in 2013 so his widow could hear his voice?
Oswald Laurence
Oswald Laurence's announcement had been phased out until his widow, Margaret McCollum, asked to hear it again and TfL reinstated it on Embankment's curved northbound platform. The warning itself was coined around 1968.
Q 03What was cut from the Tube map in 2009, then put back three months later after a public outcry?
The River Thames
The River Thames vanished from the September 2009 map, its first absence since a 1926 pocket map, and Mayor Boris Johnson joined the chorus of disapproval. The December 2009 edition quietly put the river back.
Q 04Which Chelsea station has the River Westbourne flowing over its platforms in a large iron pipe?
Sloane Square
Sloane Square was built where the Westbourne, one of London's lost rivers, crossed the line, so engineers slung the river above the tracks in an iron conduit that is still in place today. Passengers can spot it from the platforms.
Q 05Which station beside Lord's cricket ground is the only one sharing no letters with the word 'mackerel'?
St John's Wood
St John's Wood contains none of the letters A, C, E, K, L, M or R, which makes it a long-running pub-quiz favourite. Every other stop on the map fails the test somewhere in its name.
Q 06Where did 1938-built Tube trains keep running as Britain's oldest passenger stock until January 2021?
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight's Island Line ran refurbished 1938 Tube stock, renumbered Class 483, from 1989 until 3 January 2021. By then they were the oldest passenger trains in regular service in Great Britain.
Q 07Which computing pioneer lent her name to a Crossrail tunnel borer, twinned with one called Phyllis?
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace and Phyllis Pearsall, who created the London A-Z, named the pair that bored from Royal Oak to Farringdon. All eight Crossrail machines carried women's names, including athletes Jessica Ennis and Ellie Simmonds.
Q 08Which station, Gillespie Road until 1932, is the only Tube stop named directly after a football club?
Arsenal
Arsenal got its name on 31 October 1932 after the club moved from Woolwich to Highbury and campaigned for the change; it was first styled Arsenal (Highbury Hill). West Ham and Wimbledon merely share a name with their local clubs.
Q 09What name was given to London's 2003 travel smartcard to suggest a pearl kept safe in a hard shell?
Oyster
Oyster was picked by brand consultant Andrew McCrum for 'the metaphorical implications of security and value in the hard bivalve shell and the concealed pearl'. The card was first issued to the public on 30 June 2003.
Q 10Which Mayfair station, shut in 1932, became a wartime bunker that Churchill nicknamed 'The Barn'?
Down Street
Down Street housed the Railway Executive Committee during the Second World War, and Winston Churchill and his war cabinet sheltered there until the Cabinet War Rooms were ready. It had closed to passengers on 21 May 1932.
Q 11Which line's name is a portmanteau of the two stations in the name of the railway that opened it in 1906?
Bakerloo
Bakerloo was coined as a portmanteau of the original company's name, fusing its two termini into a single word that stuck. The line opened on 10 March 1906 and today serves 25 stations, 15 of them underground.
Q 12Which north London hilltop station has the network's deepest platforms, 58.5 metres below ground?
Hampstead
Hampstead's platforms are 58.5 metres (192 ft) below ground because the station sits high on a hill, and its 55-metre lift shaft is the deepest on the Underground as well, making the lifts a long, slow ride.
Q 13Which Islington station has the Underground's longest escalators, a 61-metre climb rising 27 metres?
Q 21Counting its two-stop shuttle but not the Overground or DLR, how many lines does the Underground run?
11
The Underground has 11 lines over 250 miles (400 km) of track; the Overground, the DLR and the purple line that opened in 2022 are run by TfL as separate services with their own roundels.
Q 22Which woven pile fabric with a wool face and cotton backing has upholstered Tube seats for a century?
Moquette
Moquette, a French-named weave of cut or looped pile, has covered the seats of Tube trains for a century, its busy patterns disguising wear. Modern versions use a wool-nylon face on a cotton backing.
Q 23Which band's 1978 single 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight' describes a late-night mugging by a gang?
The Jam
Angel
Angel's escalators, 200 ft long with a 90 ft vertical rise, are the longest on the Underground and in the United Kingdom. They arrived with a rebuild that replaced the station's lifts and its notoriously narrow island platform.
Q 14Which station is only 260 metres from Leicester Square, the shortest gap between Tube neighbours?
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a 260-metre Piccadilly line ride from Leicester Square, so short that walking is often quicker than queueing for the lifts. The station is also said to be haunted by actor William Terriss, murdered nearby in 1897.
Q 15Which station has more Underground platforms than any other on the network, ten in all?
Baker Street
Baker Street's ten platforms are the most of any station on the network, and its 1980s refurbishment replaced the old tiling with silhouettes of Sherlock Holmes, who lived at 221B. Five lines call there.
Q 16Which disused station hid the Elgin Marbles in wartime and later doubled as a film set for Atonement?
Aldwych
Aldwych closed on 30 September 1994 when new lifts could not be justified for so few passengers, and it has since appeared in V for Vendetta, Atonement and Fast & Furious 6. Its tunnels sheltered British Museum treasures during the war.
Q 17Which East End station's 1943 stairway crush killed 173, wartime Britain's largest single civilian loss?
Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green's unfinished station was in use as a shelter on 3 March 1943 when a crowd surged down the stairs and 173 people, 62 of them children, died in the crush. A memorial there calls it the war's worst civilian disaster.
Q 18A 1987 fire that killed 31 people and doomed the Tube's wooden escalators broke out at which station?
King's Cross
King's Cross St Pancras's fire began under a wooden escalator on 18 November 1987 and erupted into the ticket hall in a flashover, killing 31. Wooden escalators were phased out afterwards, the last going at Greenford in 2014.
Q 19Which service opened from Paddington to Abbey Wood in 2022, yet is not officially part of the Underground?
Elizabeth line
The Elizabeth line began carrying passengers through its new central tunnels on 24 May 2022, under a name that honours Queen Elizabeth II. TfL treats it as a distinct service with its own purple roundel.
Q 20Which Berkshire town marks the western end of the Crossrail route that tunnelled through central London?
Reading
Reading, alongside Heathrow Airport, is the western terminus, with trains running along the Great Western Main Line before diving into the new tunnels west of Paddington. At the eastern end the route splits for Shenfield and Abbey Wood.
The Jam's single, released in October 1978, reached No. 15 in the UK with its story of a lone traveller set upon by a gang while waiting for the last train home.
Q 24Which Camden station lends its name to a Radio 4 panel-show game whose rules are never explained?
Mornington Crescent
Mornington Crescent, the game on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, first aired on 22 August 1978 and consists of panellists naming stations while solemnly inventing rules and strategies, every one of them fictional.
Q 25What opened in 1900 with a flat 2d fare that earned it the nickname 'Twopenny Tube'?
Central line
The Central line's uniform 2d fare earned it the 'Twopenny Tube' nickname when it opened in 1900. Printed red on the map, it now serves 49 stations over 46 miles, making it the network's longest line.
Q 26Which of the Tube's lines, opened in stages from 1968, was the world's first full-scale automatic railway?
Victoria line
The Victoria line ran under automatic train operation from the outset, a system that lasted until 2012 and made it the world's first full-scale automatic railway. It is printed light blue and is one of only two lines entirely underground.
Q 27Which two-station shuttle, nicknamed 'the Drain', was sold to London Underground for £1 in 1994?
Waterloo & City line
The Waterloo & City line, opened on 8 August 1898, runs between Waterloo and Bank with no stops in between and belonged to the main-line railway until British Rail handed it over for a nominal £1 on 1 April 1994. It is printed turquoise.
Q 28Which London company's name, shortened in French, gave Paris and then the world the word 'métro'?
Metropolitan Railway
The Metropolitan Railway was already being shortened to 'métropolitain' in French by the 1860s, and the Paris Métro, opened in July 1900, took its name directly from it. The magenta line still carries the name today.
Q 29Which calligrapher designed the Underground's sans-serif typeface from 1913 and then redrew its roundel?
Edward Johnston
Edward Johnston's typeface, first used in 1916, gave the Underground a single lettering style across every sign and poster, and it is still in use more than a century later. His redrawn roundel is the one still seen today.
Q 30Which architect designed 55 Broadway, the 1929 headquarters straddling St James's Park station?
Charles Holden
Charles Holden's 55 Broadway, built between 1927 and 1929 for the Underground Electric Railways Company, was London's tallest steel-framed office block when finished. He later designed the 1930s modernist stations.