Minnesota
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9correct to beat the crowd
This Minnesota trivia quiz has 175 free questions with answers on the Land of 10,000 Lakes (14,420 of them, in fact). It starts with the basics any Minnesotan should get (the capital, the state bird, where the Mississippi begins, the Mall of America) and moves into history: statehood in 1858, the Dakota War and the Mankato hangings, the flour mills that fed the nation and the iron ore that went out through Duluth. Then it gets to the things Minnesota gave everyone else: Spam from Austin, Post-it notes from 3M, the Honeycrisp apple, water skiing, Bob Dylan and Prince, Peanuts and Lake Wobegon, four Super Bowl losses, two World Series won entirely at home, the Lynx dynasty and the twelve Minnesotans on the Miracle on Ice team. Politics gets a look in too, from the DFL and Hubert Humphrey to a wrestler in the governor's mansion and a governor on a presidential ticket. Easy questions suit visitors and school groups; the later ones will test people who know the Northwest Angle from the Iron Range. Every answer was checked against a reference page and shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 175 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital city of Minnesota?
Saint Paul
Saint Paul is one of Minnesota's 'Twin Cities' and serves as the state capital. It is located on the east bank of the Mississippi River.
Q 02What is Minnesota's best-known state nickname?
The Land of 10,000 Lakes
The Land of 10,000 Lakes undersells it: the state counts well over 10,000 lakes of ten acres or more, and only four of its counties have no natural lake at all.
Q 03Minnesota, a state for only three years, was the first to offer troops for which war?
The Civil War
The Civil War had just begun when Governor Alexander Ramsey, who happened to be in Washington, promised the president a regiment of 1,000 volunteers, the first troops any state offered.
Q 04What is the highest natural point in Minnesota?
Eagle Mountain
Eagle Mountain, in Cook County, rises 2,301 feet, yet the state's lowest point, on the shore of its great northeastern lake, lies only about a dozen miles away.
Q 05Which Minnesota city hosts the Mall of America, one of the largest US malls?
Bloomington
Bloomington's giant mall has no central heating in its common areas: skylights, light fixtures and the body heat of shoppers keep it near 70°F through the winter.
Q 06Which famous medical institution has its main campus located in Rochester, Minnesota?
Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic grew out of an 1883 tornado: the nuns who nursed the injured offered to build a hospital in Rochester if a local doctor and his sons would staff it.
Q 07What is the official state bird of Minnesota?
Common Loon
Common Loon bones are solid, not hollow like most birds', and the extra weight lets it dive about 200 feet after fish; only Alaska has more loons than Minnesota.
Q 08The Mississippi begins its journey to the Gulf at which Minnesota lake?
Lake Itasca
Lake Itasca spills out as a stream only 20 to 30 feet wide, the narrowest the river ever gets, and the flow needs about three months to reach the Gulf of Mexico.
Q 09What is the official state flower of Minnesota?
Showy Lady's Slipper
The showy lady's slipper orchid has been protected by state law since 1925, so picking or uprooting one is illegal anywhere in Minnesota.
Q 10What does Minnesota's state motto, 'L'Étoile du Nord,' mean in English?
The Star of the North
The Star of the North was picked by Henry Sibley, the first governor, for the new state seal, and the legislature approved seal and motto together in 1861.
Q 11Which lake forms Minnesota's northeastern border and is also its lowest elevation point?
Lake Superior
Lake Superior's shore, about 600 feet above sea level, is Minnesota's lowest ground, yet the state's highest point rises only about a dozen miles inland.
Q 12Which million-acre Minnesota preserve adjoins Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park?
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is guarded even from above: a 1949 order by President Truman barred aircraft from flying below 4,000 feet over it.
Q 13The 'Minne' in Minnesota, Minneapolis and Minnetonka comes from the Dakota word for what?
Water
Q 21Which isolated corner of Minnesota is the only part of the lower 48 states north of the 49th parallel?
The Northwest Angle
The Northwest Angle exists because the 1783 treaty makers used a map that drew Lake of the Woods as an oval; today it can be reached by road only through Canada.
Q 22What destroyed the Washburn A Mill in Minneapolis on a May evening in 1878?
A flour-dust explosion
A flour-dust explosion, set off by a spark, levelled the mill and made national news; mills across the country then fitted ventilation systems to stop dust building up.
Q 23As of 2023, which Minnesota-based company was the largest privately held company in the United States?
Cargill
Water is mni in Dakota: Minnetonka is 'big water' and Minneapolis adds the Greek for city, while the state's own name is read as both 'cloudy water' and 'clear blue water'.
Q 14Which Minnesota city is nicknamed the 'Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas'?
Duluth
Duluth got the name from Thomas Preston Foster, founder of its first newspaper, who coined it in a speech at a Fourth of July picnic in 1868.
Q 15Which North Shore lighthouse, run by the Minnesota Historical Society, was built after one November gale wrecked nearly 30 ships?
Split Rock Lighthouse
Split Rock Lighthouse was completed in 1910; its keeper today is older than Minnesota itself, founded by the territorial legislature in 1849, almost a decade before statehood.
Q 16Which of these U.S. states does NOT share a border with Minnesota?
Illinois
Illinois sits across Wisconsin and Iowa from Minnesota; the land neighbours are Wisconsin, Iowa and the two Dakotas, plus Manitoba and Ontario to the north, with a water boundary with Michigan across Lake Superior.
Q 17The Mall of America was built on the former site of which Minnesota sports venue?
Metropolitan Stadium
Metropolitan Stadium was home to the Twins and Vikings until both left after the 1981 season; a plaque in the mall's amusement park now marks where home plate lay.
Q 18Which Minneapolis theater, founded in 1963 by a British director, now overlooks the Mississippi from its 'Endless Bridge'?
The Guthrie
The Guthrie is named for Sir Tyrone Guthrie, who found it a home by placing a small notice in the New York Times in 1959 inviting cities to host a resident theater.
Q 19Which river, flowing towards Hudson Bay, forms most of Minnesota's western boundary?
Red River of the North
Red River of the North floods so often because it runs north: snow melts first in the warmer south, and the surge meets ice still blocking the channel ahead.
Q 20Which president commuted most of the death sentences passed on Dakota men after Minnesota's US–Dakota War?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln had the trial records of all 303 condemned men reviewed and let 39 sentences stand; 38 men were hanged at Mankato, still the largest mass execution in US history.
Cargill was founded in Iowa in 1865 and has never gone public: about nine-tenths of it still belongs to descendants of the founding family.
Q 24The nation's first indoor shopping mall opened in which Minnesota suburb?
Edina
Edina's Southdale Center opened in 1956; its architect, Victor Gruen, meant it as a town square against car culture and later refused to 'pay alimony' for the malls it inspired.
Q 25Aviator Charles Lindbergh spent his boyhood in which Minnesota town on the Mississippi?
Little Falls
Little Falls saw the empty house wrecked by souvenir hunters once his 1927 flight made him famous, so the Lindbergh family gave the farm to the state in 1931 to protect it.
Q 26In 1984, Minnesota was the only state carried by which Democratic presidential nominee?
Walter Mondale
Walter Mondale held his home state by just 3,761 votes, so Ronald Reagan came that close to carrying all 50 states; Mondale's only other win was the District of Columbia.
Q 27What hyphenated suffix does Minnesota's state Democratic Party carry in its name?
Farmer-Labor
Farmer-Labor was a third party that outgrew the state's Democrats, electing three Minnesota governors in the 1930s before the two parties merged in 1944.
Q 28Which former professional wrestler was elected governor of Minnesota in 1998 on the Reform Party ticket?
Jesse Ventura
Jesse Ventura stood third in a poll two weeks before the vote, on 21 percent, then beat both major-party candidates with about 37 percent.
Q 29Which Minnesota governor was Kamala Harris's running mate in the 2024 election?
Tim Walz
Tim Walz was a high-school teacher who had never held office when he unseated a six-term Republican congressman in 2006; Kamala Harris chose him in August 2024.
Q 30What was unusual about the Twins' World Series wins in 1987 and 1991?
The home team won every time
The home team won every time, a World Series first in 1987: the Twins lost 52 of 81 road games that season yet took all four at the Metrodome.