Madison, Wisconsin Trivia
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110 free Madison, Wisconsin trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Madison is a city built on an isthmus between two lakes, wrapped around a granite-domed Capitol and a Big Ten campus, with a plastic flamingo for an official bird. This quiz covers the whole town: how a land speculator bribed freezing legislators with buffalo robes to make it the capital, why no building may rise above the Capitol's columns, and what Bucky Badger's middle initial actually stands for. You will find questions on the University of Wisconsin and its traditions (Jump Around, the Terrace chairs, the Paul Bunyan's Axe rivalry, Vitamin D milk), on the businesses that started here (The Onion, American Girl, Epic Systems, Oscar Mayer), on Frank Lloyd Wright's Madison buildings, and on the city's music and protest history, from Otis Redding's fatal crash into Lake Monona to the Sterling Hall bombing and the Mifflin Street Block Party. Questions run from easy ones any Badger fan will get to expert stumpers for lifelong residents. Every answer has been checked against a source, mainly Wikipedia and local institutions, so the set is safe for a bar trivia night on State Street, a classroom or a family argument about the Great Taste of the Midwest.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Madison's original downtown streets were named for the men who signed which document?
The US Constitution
The US Constitution: the founder named his paper city for James Madison, who had died months earlier, and its streets for the other signers while lobbying lawmakers to make it the capital.
Q 02The Ho-Chunk name for the Madison area, Teejop, means what?
Land of the four lakes
Land of the four lakes: more than a thousand years ago, mound builders ringed those lakes with earthworks shaped like bears, birds and water spirits.
Q 03Which land speculator handed out buffalo robes and cheap lots to get Madison chosen as Wisconsin's capital?
James Duane Doty
James Duane Doty: once the vote was won, his own partner, Michigan governor Stevens Mason, called him 'a liar, a calumniator and a swindler' and warned buyers away.
Q 04Where does Madison rank among Wisconsin's cities by population?
Second-largest
Second-largest: only Milwaukee is bigger, but Milwaukee has lost about a fifth of its people since its 1960 peak, while Madison added nearly 37,000 in the 2010s.
Q 05The Wisconsin State Capitol has the only dome in the United States clad in which stone?
Granite
Granite: the white stone came from Bethel, Vermont, picked for its durability and a colour pale enough to pass for marble.
Q 06Old Abe, a Civil War regimental mascot who later lived in the Wisconsin Capitol, was what kind of animal?
A bald eagle
A bald eagle: carried into battle on a perch by the 8th Wisconsin Infantry, he retired to a two-room Capitol apartment with his own bathtub and now flies on the 101st Airborne's shoulder patch.
Q 07Why is the Capitol still the tallest building in Madison?
State law caps buildings within a mile of it
State law caps buildings within a mile of it: nothing may rise above the base of the columns around the dome, so the Capitol stays in view from most of the city.
Q 08Wisconsin's current Capitol was built between 1906 and 1917 after its predecessor did what?
Burned down in 1904
Burned down in 1904: a gas jet set fire to freshly varnished woodwork soon after lawmakers had chosen to drop the building's fire insurance, leaving the state to bear the whole loss.
Q 09The University of Wisconsin was founded in 1848, the year Wisconsin did what?
Became a state
Became a state: Wisconsin joined the Union in May 1848 and chartered its university that July, yet the first classes met the next February in temporary quarters near the Capitol, two years before the campus had a building.
Q 10What is the full name of UW's mascot, Bucky?
Buckingham U. Badger
Buckingham U. Badger: students picked the name in a 1949 contest, and the U. is his whole middle name; the story that it stands for Ulysses is a campus myth.
Q 11Camp Randall Stadium stands on ground that served what purpose during the Civil War?
Training Union Army soldiers
Training Union Army soldiers: some 70,000 Wisconsin recruits drilled at the camp, and when the site was later slated to be sold off as house lots, veterans persuaded the state to buy it.
Q 12At Badger home football games, when do the students 'Jump Around' to the House of Pain song?
Between the third and fourth quarters
Between the third and fourth quarters: when officials quietly dropped the song for the 2003 opener, amid stadium construction and unease about the swaying upper deck, the outcry had it back within days.
Q 13Which team is the Badgers' opponent in the most-played rivalry in college football's top division?
Q 21Which health-records software giant, founded by Judy Faulkner in 1979, is based in Verona, Wisconsin?
Epic Systems
Epic Systems: Faulkner started it in a basement in 1979 with about $70,000 from colleagues, has never taken venture capital, and moved it from Madison to its Verona campus in 2005.
Q 22American Girl dolls were launched from the Madison area in 1986 by which founder?
Pleasant Rowland
Pleasant Rowland: a visit to Colonial Williamsburg gave the former textbook author the idea of teaching history through dolls; Mattel bought her company for $700 million in 1998.
Q 23Which meat brand bought a Madison plant in 1919 and made the city its headquarters in 1957?
Oscar Mayer
Minnesota
Minnesota: the rivals' first trophy, a wooden Slab of Bacon, vanished in the 1940s and turned up in a Camp Randall storage room in 1994; they now play for Paul Bunyan's Axe.
Q 14Which Badger running back won the 1999 Heisman while setting the NCAA career rushing record?
Ron Dayne
Ron Dayne: most colleges wanted the 270-pound teenager at fullback, but Wisconsin promised him the ball, and he carried it past Ricky Williams's year-old career record.
Q 15Which Wisconsin pro team did Herb Kohl, the senator who gave $25 million for the Kohl Center, own?
Milwaukee Bucks
Milwaukee Bucks: Kohl bought the team in 1985 to stop it leaving the state, and his 1995 gift for the arena was then the largest single donation the university system had received.
Q 16The Dane County Farmers' Market, held Saturdays around Capitol Square, is America's largest market of what kind?
Producers-only
Producers-only: the mayor launched it in 1972 to bring the county's farmers and city dwellers together, and every stall is still staffed by the people who grew or made the goods.
Q 17The Vilas family donated the land for Madison's Henry Vilas Zoo in 1904 on what condition?
Free admission forever
Free admission forever: William and Anna Vilas gave the parkland in memory of their son Henry, who died young of diabetes, and the zoo that grew there from 1911 has never charged.
Q 18The Memorial Union Terrace's iconic metal chairs feature what design on their backs?
A sunburst
A sunburst: a rival chair design trapped rain and rusted, so the sunbursts took over, painted John Deere green, Allis-Chalmers orange and sunshine yellow in a nod to Wisconsin farming.
Q 19Olbrich Botanical Gardens' gilded sala pavilion was a gift from which country's king?
Thailand
It was a gift to the university via the Thai chapter of the Wisconsin Alumni Association and King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
Q 20Which satirical publication did two UW students start as a weekly paper in Madison in 1988?
The Onion
The Onion: its two founders soon sold the paper to staff cartoonist Scott Dikkers and partners, and the newsroom left Madison for New York in 2001.
Oscar Mayer: the Chicago firm's first expansion became its headquarters and the home of the Wienermobile, until owner Kraft Heinz shut the plant and moved the offices back to Chicago.
Q 24Which bicycle maker, based in Waterloo near Madison, began building steel touring frames in 1976?
Trek
Trek: it started with a payroll of five, hand-building steel frames to take on Japanese and Italian imports, and its bikes later carried Lance Armstrong through the Tour de France.
Q 25Otis Redding's plane crashed into which Madison lake in December 1967?
Lake Monona
Lake Monona: the crash came three days after he finished recording '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay', which became the first posthumous number one on the Billboard Hot 100; one bandmate survived.
Q 26Which Saturday Night Live comedian was born in Madison in 1964 and attended Edgewood High School?
Chris Farley
Chris Farley: after college he worked at his father's oil company in Madison and learned improv at a local theatre, later naming his shouting motivational speaker Matt Foley after a rugby teammate.
Q 27Which three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, author of Our Town, was born in Madison?
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder: his father ran the Wisconsin State Journal until a 1906 posting as US consul general in Hong Kong took the family to China, where Thornton spent part of his boyhood.
Q 28Which Scottish singer fronts the rock band Garbage, formed in Madison in 1993 with Butch Vig?
Shirley Manson
Shirley Manson: guitarist Steve Marker spotted her on MTV fronting Angelfish; her first audition in Madison flopped, but she asked for a second try and got the job.
Q 29Butch Vig's Smart Studios in Madison recorded which 1991 debut album by The Smashing Pumpkins?
Gish
Gish: Butch Vig co-produced it over the winter of 1990-91 with a longer schedule and bigger budget than he had ever had, and the same year he produced Nirvana's Nevermind.
Q 30The 1970 Sterling Hall bombing at UW targeted which military-funded unit?
The Army Mathematics Research Center
The Army Mathematics Research Center: the van bomb barely touched its upper-floor offices but wrecked the physics labs below, killing researcher Robert Fassnacht, who had no link to the military work.