Old Wives' Tales Trivia
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97 free Old Wives' Tales trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
47 free Old wives' tales trivia questions with answers. Old wives' tales trivia for anyone who was told to wait an hour after eating before swimming. Each question takes a piece of folk wisdom - cracking your knuckles causes arthritis, swallowed gum stays for seven years, carrots help you see in the dark, going out with wet hair gives you a cold, toads give you warts, shaving makes hair grow back thicker, sugar makes kids hyper, turkey makes you sleepy - and asks what is really going on. There are questions on where the sayings came from too: the RAF propaganda that started the carrot story, the German badger behind Groundhog Day, why 'red sky at morning' works in Britain but not the tropics, the doctor who cracked one hand's knuckles for sixty years, and what the 'wives' in the phrase actually meant. It suits a family quiz, a classroom or a pub round, and nobody needs any special knowledge, just a willingness to be surprised. Every answer is checked against a reference page - mainly encyclopaedia entries that cite the underlying medical studies - and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the phrase 'old wives' tale', what did the word 'wife' originally mean?
Woman
Woman was the plain meaning of Old English wīf; the sense survives in 'midwife', literally the 'with-woman' who stays beside a mother during the birth.
Q 02The King James Bible's warning against 'old wives' fables' comes in a letter traditionally credited to which apostle?
Paul
Paul is the traditional author of 1 Timothy, where the 1611 text says to 'refuse profane and old wives' fables'; most scholars now think a later follower wrote the letter in his name.
Q 03What makes the popping sound when you crack your knuckles, a habit wrongly blamed for arthritis?
Gas bubbles in the joint fluid
Gas bubbles in the joint fluid make the pop. One doctor cracked the knuckles of only his left hand every day for decades, found no arthritis in either hand, and won an Ig Nobel Prize for it.
Q 04The 'sit too close to the TV' warning began with 1967 X-ray leaks from whose sets?
General Electric
General Electric had to recall and repair large colour sets in 1967 after they were found to leak X-rays; the fault was fixed long ago, but the warning to sit back outlived it.
Q 05The old tale claims that swallowed chewing gum sits in your stomach for how long?
Seven years
Seven years, says the tale, but gum base is merely indigestible: it moves through the gut at the same pace as everything else and leaves the usual way.
Q 06The wartime carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark story was propaganda hiding which technology?
Radar
Radar, newly fitted to RAF night fighters, was the real secret: wartime propaganda credited aces such as John 'Cat's Eyes' Cunningham with eyesight sharpened by eating carrots.
Q 07Carrots sharpen night vision only in people who are short of which nutrient?
Vitamin A
Vitamin A is made in the body from the beta-carotene in carrots, and a lack of it harms eyesight; once you have enough, eating more carrots adds nothing to your night vision.
Q 08What actually causes the common cold, long blamed on wet hair and winter chills?
Viruses
Viruses cause every cold, rhinoviruses most often, and more than 200 different ones can do it, one reason there is still no vaccine.
Q 09'An apple a day' was first recorded in 1866 as a proverb from Pembrokeshire, in which country?
Wales
Wales: the 1866 Pembrokeshire rhyme ran 'Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread'; the snappier 'apple a day' wording only appeared decades later.
Q 10What really causes warts, which folklore says you catch from handling toads?
A papillomavirus
A papillomavirus (HPV) causes warts and is known to infect only humans, so toads are innocent; their bumps are skin glands that merely look like warts.
Q 11Why does regrowth feel coarser after shaving, wrongly said to make hair grow back thicker?
The cut end is blunt, not tapered
The cut end is blunt, not tapered like the fine tip of an uncut hair, so stubble feels coarse and can look darker; shaving changes neither the thickness nor the growth rate.
Q 12In a 1994 study, mothers rated their sons as hyperactive after a 'sugar' drink that actually contained what?
An artificial sweetener
An artificial sweetener, aspartame, was all the boys drank, yet mothers told it was sugar rated them as more hyperactive; double-blind trials find that sugar itself makes no difference.
Q 13How long does the old poolside rule usually tell you to wait after eating before you swim?
Q 21Despite the tale that brandy warms you, what does alcohol do to core body temperature in the cold?
It can lower it
It can lower it: alcohol widens the blood vessels near the skin, so you feel warm while your body sheds heat faster, which is why first-aiders never give a drink to someone with hypothermia.
Q 22A 2019 trial of the hangover rule 'grape or grain but never the twain' gave volunteers which two drinks in turn?
Beer and wine
Beer and wine: 90 volunteers drank beer then wine, wine then beer, or only one of the two, and the order changed nothing about the morning after; how drunk they felt was the better warning.
Q 23Dirty skin and greasy food get the blame for acne, but changes in what are a common real trigger?
An hour
An hour is the usual telling, half an hour in others, but digestion does not draw enough blood from your arms and legs to stop them working, and eating first has not been shown to raise the risk of drowning.
Q 14Turkey's tryptophan gets the blame for Thanksgiving drowsiness, but what is the likelier culprit?
A big, carb-heavy meal
A big, carb-heavy meal is the likelier culprit, dessert above all: carbohydrates trigger insulin, which clears rival amino acids from the blood and lets more tryptophan reach the brain.
Q 15Which of these foods contains more tryptophan, gram for gram, than Thanksgiving turkey?
Cheddar cheese
Cheddar cheese beats turkey for tryptophan, as does pork; turkey holds about the same amount as chicken or beef, so the bird's sleepy reputation is undeserved.
Q 16What do eye doctors say reading in dim light actually causes?
Temporary eye strain
Temporary eye strain is the only effect: poor light makes focusing harder work and tires the eyes sooner, but the discomfort passes with rest and leaves no lasting damage.
Q 17A US Army manual once claimed that 40 to 45 percent of body heat is lost through which body part?
The head
The head, it said, but the figure is thought to come from 1950s tests on volunteers in Arctic suits with only their heads bare; the head is about a tenth of the body's skin and sheds heat like the rest.
Q 18Milk doesn't make your body produce more mucus, so what creates the feeling that it does?
It briefly coats the throat
It briefly coats the throat: milk mixes with saliva into a thickish film that lingers and feels like phlegm, yet volunteers given a cold virus made no more mucus however much milk they drank.
Q 19The official advice thought to lie behind 'eight glasses of water a day' said most of that water comes from what?
Prepared foods
Prepared foods, said the US Food and Nutrition Board, already hold most of the water it advised; that sentence was overlooked, and real needs vary with body size, activity and climate.
Q 20Coffee is said to dehydrate you, but caffeine's mild diuretic effect shows up in which drinkers?
Only occasional drinkers
Only occasional drinkers notice it: regular coffee and tea drinkers build a strong tolerance to caffeine's diuretic effect, and a normal cup supplies more fluid than it costs.
Hormone levels
Hormone levels shift at puberty and around periods and pregnancy, making the skin's glands pump out more oil that blocks hair follicles; scrubbing harder only irritates the skin.
Q 24Why do hair and fingernails seem to keep growing after death, as the old tale claims?
The skin dries and shrinks back
The skin dries and shrinks back as the body dehydrates, exposing more of each nail and hair; real growth needs hormones and a blood supply that stop at death.
Q 25A widely repeated but baseless 'fact' says the average person swallows how many spiders a year while asleep?
Eight
Eight is the figure everyone quotes, yet no study backs it: a sleeper's breathing and heartbeat send out vibrations that warn spiders to keep well away.
Q 26Which nutrient, taken as tablets, is widely believed to prevent colds despite the evidence?
Vitamin C
Vitamin C, championed by Linus Pauling in a 1970 book, does not stop people catching colds; taken daily it shortens them only slightly, and starting once symptoms appear does nothing.
Q 27Chicken soup for a cold is nicknamed what?
Jewish penicillin
Chicken soup is nicknamed 'Jewish penicillin'; a 2000 University of Nebraska study found it slowed the migration of neutrophils in the lab, though no trial shows it cures a cold.
Q 28A fever from infection is widely feared for causing what, which it does not do by itself?
Brain damage
Brain damage: a fever from infection seldom passes 41°C and does not harm the brain by itself; only extreme hyperthermia above about 42°C, as in heatstroke, can.
Q 29A much-told story blames spinach's inflated reputation for iron on a scientist misplacing what?
A decimal point
A decimal point, the tale runs, made spinach's iron look ten times higher; the slip itself may be a legend, but spinach really does supply only modest iron, which the body absorbs poorly.
Q 30In the German Candlemas lore behind Groundhog Day, which animal did Germans usually watch?
The badger
The badger was the usual German Candlemas forecaster (a bear in some regions): if it met sunshine on emerging, more winter was coming, and German settlers in Pennsylvania handed the job to the local groundhog.