New Jersey Trivia
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116 free New Jersey trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
65 free New Jersey trivia questions with answers. New Jersey trivia for anyone who has ever defended the state to an out-of-towner. This quiz covers the whole place: the Channel Island it is named for, the two English lords who first owned it, the winter Washington crossed the Delaware, the third-state ratification of the Constitution, and the wizard of Menlo Park who lit the first street in the world. It also covers what makes Jersey Jersey: more diners than anywhere on Earth, the full-service gas rule, the Taylor ham and pork roll divide, Atlantic City's boardwalk and Monopoly streets, the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, the first baseball game and first drive-in, the Jersey Devil, Springsteen, Sinatra and Bon Jovi, the Sopranos, the Meadowlands, and a whole roster of state firsts and symbols. A dedicated Jersey City trivia round covers Pavonia and Bergen, the Battle of Paulus Hook, Hamilton's Jersey Company, Boss Hague, the Colgate Clock, Liberty State Park, Wall Street West and the city motto. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 116 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01New Jersey takes its name from a place in which body of water?
The English Channel
The English Channel: the colony was named for Jersey, the Channel Island whose former governor, Sir George Carteret, received the land from the Duke of York in 1664.
Q 02What is New Jersey's state capital?
Trenton
Trenton, on the Delaware River, has been New Jersey's capital since 1790 and briefly served as the national capital when Congress met there in late 1784.
Q 03New Jersey holds which population distinction among US states?
Most densely populated
Most densely populated: the 2020 census counted about 9.29 million people in the fifth-smallest state by land area, roughly 1,260 residents per square mile.
Q 04New Jersey ratified the US Constitution in December 1787, making it which state to do so?
Third
Third: only Delaware and Pennsylvania were quicker, and New Jersey's convention took barely a week to approve the Constitution unanimously.
Q 05Which Indigenous people lived across what is now New Jersey when Europeans arrived in the 17th century?
The Lenape
The Lenape lived across the whole of what became New Jersey; English colonists called them the Delaware because they lived along the river the English had named for Virginia's governor, Lord De La Warr.
Q 06Which troops did Washington's army surprise after crossing the Delaware on the night of December 25-26, 1776?
Hessians
Hessians: the German auxiliaries under Colonel Johann Rall were caught off guard on the morning of December 26, 1776, and routed, with Rall mortally wounded and about 900 of his men captured.
Q 07Because of its many Revolutionary War battles, New Jersey earned what title?
Crossroads of the Revolution
Crossroads of the Revolution: the Continental Army camped in New Jersey through three winters between its marches across the state, and the phrase is stamped on the state's 1999 quarter.
Q 08Edison perfected his incandescent light bulb in 1879 at his laboratory in which New Jersey community?
Menlo Park
Menlo Park: Edison's team got a lamp to burn for over thirteen hours in October 1879 and lit up the laboratory for the public that December; in 1954 the surrounding township renamed itself Edison.
Q 09Which machine did Thomas Edison invent in New Jersey in 1877?
The phonograph
The phonograph: Edison's machine recorded sound on a sheet of tinfoil and played it back, a feat so startling that he went on to demonstrate it for President Hayes.
Q 10The first patented drive-in movie theater opened in June 1933 just outside which city on the Delaware?
Camden
Camden: Richard Hollingshead tested the idea in his own driveway, with a projector on his car's hood and a screen hung in the trees, before opening the theater in neighbouring Pennsauken.
Q 11The 1846 match long called baseball's first recorded game was played at the Elysian Fields in which city?
Hoboken
Hoboken: on June 19, 1846, the Knickerbockers lost 23-1 in four innings at the Elysian Fields; it was long counted as the first recorded match, but reports of three games from October 1845 have since surfaced.
Q 12Rutgers played the first intercollegiate football game in 1869 against which college?
Princeton
Princeton: on November 6, 1869, Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 in New Brunswick, with the Rutgers players wearing scarlet turbans and handkerchiefs to tell the sides apart.
Q 13Rutgers was chartered in 1766 as Queen's College, honouring Charlotte, the wife of which British king?
George III
Q 21The Jersey Shore's first boardwalk, built in 1870, was intended to solve what problem?
Sand being tracked into hotel lobbies
Sand being tracked into hotel lobbies: two local men tired of sand on their floors persuaded the city to lay the 1870 boardwalk, and its planks were hauled away at the end of every season.
Q 22Which pageant was first staged on Atlantic City's boardwalk in September 1921?
Miss America
Miss America: the contest was timed for the days after Labor Day to keep summer visitors in town a little longer, and Margaret Gorman of Washington DC took the first title.
Q 23Which Monopoly property misspells the name of the real New Jersey place it copies?
George III: the college carried his queen's name for nearly sixty years, then became Rutgers in 1825 to honour Colonel Henry Rutgers, a Revolutionary War veteran whose $5,000 gift helped the struggling school.
Q 14At New Jersey's Nassau Hall in 1783, Congress learned which treaty had been signed?
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris: Congress had fled to Nassau Hall that June after unpaid soldiers surrounded its meeting place in Pennsylvania, and was still sitting there when word came that the war was formally over.
Q 15Which Caldwell, New Jersey-born president was the first to serve non-consecutive terms?
Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland, born in Caldwell in 1837, won more votes than Benjamin Harrison in 1888 yet lost in the Electoral College, then beat him four years later to return to the White House.
Q 16New Jersey is often called the world capital of which type of eatery?
Diners
Diners: the state earned the title as the hub of America's diner-building trade, and one firm, O'Mahony, turned out about 2,000 of the prefabricated restaurants.
Q 17New Jersey law requires every service station to do what for drivers?
Pump the gas for you
Pump the gas for you: the state's ban on self-service gasoline cites the fire hazard, and since Oregon loosened its own ban New Jersey is the only state where drivers may not pump it themselves.
Q 18Which New Jersey breakfast meat was sold as Taylor's Prepared Ham until a 1906 food law forced a new name?
Pork roll
Pork roll: it failed the legal definition of ham in the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, yet North Jersey still orders it as Taylor ham while the south of the state says pork roll.
Q 19Which fruit is New Jersey's official state fruit?
Blueberries
Blueberries: Elizabeth White and botanist Frederick Coville bred the first cultivated blueberries from wild New Jersey bushes at Whitesbog, selling their first crop in 1916.
Q 20New Jersey is the only US state that has yet to adopt which official symbol?
An official song
An official song: New Jersey has never adopted one, and in 2021 Maryland joined it in having none by scrapping the state song it had used since 1939.
Marvin Gardens
Marvin Gardens: the real place is Marven Gardens, but the couple who taught Charles Darrow the game misspelled it on their homemade board, and Parker Brothers copied the slip.
Q 24When Atlantic City's first casino opened in 1978, which was the only other state with legal casinos?
Nevada
Nevada had the only legal casinos until New Jersey voters, who had turned down a statewide plan in 1974, approved them for Atlantic City alone two years later; Resorts opened the first in May 1978.
Q 25Which South Jersey town, famed for its Victorian houses, bills itself as the nation's oldest seashore resort?
Cape May
Cape May: a fire in 1878 destroyed much of the town centre, and the owners rebuilt almost entirely in the Victorian style that later made the whole city a National Historic Landmark.
Q 26The Hindenburg burst into flames in 1937 while landing at which New Jersey naval air station?
Lakehurst
Lakehurst: the airship burned on May 6, 1937, killing 36 people; Herbert Morrison's 'Oh, the humanity!' was never heard live, but was recorded on the field and broadcast the next day.
Q 27Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast placed the Martian landing in which New Jersey hamlet?
Grover's Mill
Grover's Mill, in West Windsor Township, is where the Mercury Theatre's October 30, 1938 broadcast landed the first Martian cylinder; the panic it reportedly caused was later shown to be exaggerated.
Q 28Before reaching New Jersey in 1982, the Devils began NHL life in 1974 as the Scouts in which city?
Kansas City
Kansas City: the Scouts lasted only two seasons there before moving to Denver as the Colorado Rockies in 1976, and six years later the franchise moved again to become the New Jersey Devils.
Q 29Which two NFL teams share MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey?
Giants and Jets
Giants and Jets: both carry New York's name yet play in New Jersey, the Giants since 1976 and the Jets since 1984, and they opened MetLife Stadium together in 2010.
Q 30Which crooner was born in Hoboken in 1915 and got his break with the Hoboken Four?
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken on December 12, 1915, and won the Major Bowes Amateur Hour in 1935 with a local group renamed the Hoboken Four.