New England Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This New England trivia quiz has 118 free questions with answers and covers all six states and the things that make the region a place rather than a map label. There are questions on how it got its name, the Pilgrims and Puritans, Salem, the Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, Rhode Island's stubborn independence and Vermont's fourteen years as a republic, plus the states' capitals, mottos, nicknames and odd distinctions (the state that borders only one other; the shortest coastline; the smallest capital). Then the fun stuff: chowder styles, lobster rolls, Boston cream pie, coffee milk, Moxie, whoopie pies, Necco and Ben & Jerry's; the Celtics, Bruins, Patriots and the Boston Marathon; Frost, Thoreau, Dickinson, Melville and Stephen King; Mount Washington's wind, the Old Man of the Mountain, Acadia, Cape Cod, Nantucket and Newport's cottages. Good for a pub round, a road trip or settling arguments with someone from Connecticut. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic or primary source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 118 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many states make up New England?
Six
Six: the count was five until 1820, when Maine, until then a part of Massachusetts, became a state of its own.
Q 02Which English explorer put the name 'New England' on the map in 1616?
John Smith
John Smith, of Jamestown fame, charted the coast in 1614; at his request Prince Charles swapped Native place names on the map for English ones, and Plymouth and the Charles River still carry them.
Q 03Which mountain range, home to Mount Washington, is the highest in New England?
The White Mountains
The White Mountains top out at just 6,288 feet, yet their highest summits rise above the treeline into bare alpine tundra.
Q 04The Connecticut River, New England's longest, empties into which body of water?
Long Island Sound
Long Island Sound: on its way south the river divides Vermont from New Hampshire, but the border runs along its western side, so that whole stretch of water belongs to New Hampshire.
Q 05Which lake, shared with New York and Quebec, is New England's largest body of fresh water?
Champlain
Champlain was the water gateway between French Canada and the English colonies, which is why it saw battles in the French and Indian Wars, the Revolution and the War of 1812.
Q 06Mount Washington's summit observatory measured which world record in April 1934?
The fastest surface wind
The fastest surface wind: a 231 mph gust on April 12, 1934, a record that stood until a 1996 cyclone off Australia and is still the highest measured outside a tornado or tropical cyclone.
Q 07Sylvester Marsh's 1869 line up Mount Washington was the world's first mountain-climbing railway of which type?
Cog railway
Cog railway: a gear under the engine grips a toothed rail to climb the grade; when Marsh sought his charter, New Hampshire lawmakers joked that he might as well build a railway to the Moon.
Q 08Before becoming the 14th state in 1791, Vermont spent fourteen years as what?
An independent republic
An independent republic: Vermont minted its own copper coins and ran a postal service, and it joined the Union only after agreeing to pay New York $30,000 to settle rival land claims.
Q 09Vermont's Montpelier holds what distinction among US state capitals?
Least populous
Least populous: about 8,000 people live in Montpelier, which was chosen as capital in 1805 and whose townspeople paid for the first State House themselves.
Q 10Vermont makes about half of America's supply of which farm product?
Maple syrup
Maple syrup: sugar makers boil about 40 gallons of sap down to each gallon of syrup, and they must do it in the few weeks at winter's end when the sap runs.
Q 11Maine's Mount Katahdin is the northern end of which long-distance hiking trail?
The Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian Trail ends on Katahdin's Baxter Peak, named for the governor who spent much of his own fortune buying the mountain for the public after legislators refused to pay for it.
Q 12Maine left Massachusetts in 1820 as a free state to balance the admission of which slave state?
Missouri
Missouri: the Senate tied the two statehood bills together, so Maine could join as a free state only if Missouri came in as a slave state, keeping the two sides level at twelve states each.
Q 13Maine's capital was moved from Portland to which more central city in 1832?
Augusta
Q 21What has been Rhode Island's official state drink since 1993?
Coffee milk
Coffee milk, milk stirred with sweet coffee syrup, beat Del's frozen lemonade when legislators chose a state drink in 1993; it is usually traced to the sweetened coffee of Providence's Italian immigrants.
Q 22Connecticut's nickname, the Constitution State, refers to which 1639 document?
The Fundamental Orders
The Fundamental Orders grew out of a 1638 sermon in which Thomas Hooker argued for government by the people, and they never once mention the king or any other English authority.
Q 23Which Connecticut city is the historic centre of the American insurance industry?
Hartford
Augusta beat Portland, Brunswick and Hallowell for the title in 1827, yet lawmakers went on meeting in Portland for five more years until Charles Bulfinch's State House was ready.
Q 14New Hampshire's state motto is what?
Live Free or Die
Live Free or Die comes from a toast General John Stark wrote in 1809; after the state stamped it on license plates, the Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that no driver could be forced to display it.
Q 15New Hampshire's ocean coastline, the shortest of any US state, is home to which historic harbour city?
Portsmouth
Portsmouth gave its name to the 1905 treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War, though the talks were held at its naval shipyard, which stands across the river in Kittery, Maine.
Q 16New Hampshire state law requires it to hold the nation's first what in each presidential election year?
Primary
Primary: the law has the vote set at least seven days ahead of any similar contest, so when Democrats put South Carolina first in 2024, New Hampshire simply voted earlier anyway.
Q 17New Hampshire's deciding vote in 1788 put which document into effect?
US Constitution
The US Constitution needed nine states, and New Hampshire's vote supplied the ninth, leaving holdouts such as Virginia and New York to join the new union or stand outside it.
Q 18What did Roger Williams found in Providence in 1638, counted as the first of its kind in America?
A Baptist church
A Baptist church: Williams gathered it after Massachusetts Puritans banished him, yet he stayed a Baptist only briefly and by 1639 called himself a 'Seeker', tied to no church at all.
Q 19Rhode Island became the first colony to renounce its allegiance to which king on May 4, 1776?
George III
George III: Rhode Islanders had already burned the royal revenue schooner Gaspee in 1772, and their assembly broke with the king two months before the Declaration of Independence.
Q 20In 2020, Rhode Island voters dropped which words from the state's official name?
and Providence Plantations
'And Providence Plantations' went by 53% to 47%, ten years after voters had kept the words by 78% to 22%; backers of the change said 'plantations' now called slavery to mind.
Hartford made its name in 1835, when fire gutted New York's financial district and Hartford Fire Insurance's president pledged his own fortune to pay every claim while most New York insurers went under.
Q 24Which Connecticut town is home to Electric Boat, builder of the US Navy's submarines?
Groton
Groton: Electric Boat launched the first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, there in 1954, and the Navy's submarine base next door is named for New London, the city across the Thames River.
Q 25Which two Olympic sports were invented in the western Massachusetts cities of Springfield and Holyoke?
Basketball and volleyball
Basketball and volleyball: James Naismith devised basketball in Springfield in 1891, and four years later William Morgan created volleyball in Holyoke as a gentler game for businessmen who found basketball too rough.
Q 26Harvard College was founded by Massachusetts Puritans in 1636 largely to supply the colony with which professionals?
Ministers
Ministers: the founders dreaded leaving 'an illiterate ministry to the churches', and the college took the name of John Harvard, a young clergyman who left it his library and half his money in 1638.
Q 27Which Ivy League school is in Hanover, New Hampshire?
Dartmouth
Dartmouth College: when New Hampshire tried to turn it into a state university, alumnus Daniel Webster won its 1819 Supreme Court case, calling it 'a small college, and yet there are those who love it'.
Q 28What fate met Giles Corey for refusing to plead at the Salem witch trials?
Crushed
Crushed: Corey, about 80, was pressed to death under stones, by tradition saying only 'More weight'; nineteen others were hanged, and nobody at Salem was burned.
Q 29The Sons of Liberty who dumped about 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor in 1773 were loosely disguised as whom?
Mohawks
Mohawks: in about three hours the raiders dumped some 92,000 pounds of East India Company tea, and Parliament hit back the next spring by closing Boston's port to all shipping.
Q 30Which phrase from an 1837 hymn describes the 1775 fight at Concord?
Shot heard round the world
The shot heard round the world comes from the 'Concord Hymn', sung at a monument's dedication, though redcoats and militia had already clashed that morning on Lexington Green, and the two towns have long argued over the honour.