Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
This seasons trivia quiz has 47 free questions with answers and covers everything that makes spring, summer, autumn and winter happen and everything humans have built around them. The science comes first: the 23.4-degree tilt that causes the seasons, why perihelion falls in January, seasonal lag, what solstice and equinox actually mean, and why the South Pole is colder than the North. Then it widens out to the way cultures count the year, from meteorological seasons and the Celtic cross-quarter days to India's six ritus and the eight seasons of the Sami, plus the folklore of Groundhog Day, Midsummer, harvest moons, dog days and Indian summers. There are questions on autumn leaf chemistry, cherry-blossom season, hibernation, Persephone, Stonehenge, Vivaldi, Haydn and Frankie Valli's Four Seasons, and even Uranus, where a season lasts 21 years. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer has been checked against a reliable source.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the primary cause of Earth's seasons?
The tilt of the planet's axis
The tilt of the planet's axis is the cause: each hemisphere leans toward the Sun for half the orbit, getting more direct sunlight and longer days, then leans away.
Q 02By roughly how much is Earth's axis tilted relative to its orbital plane?
23.4°
Earth's obliquity is about 23.4°; it wobbles between 22.1° and 24.5° over a 41,000-year cycle, one of the Milankovitch cycles that pace ice ages.
Q 03In which month is Earth closest to the Sun?
January
Perihelion, Earth's closest approach, falls in early January, around the 3rd or 4th, while aphelion comes in early July, so distance works against the Northern Hemisphere's seasons.
Q 04Why is Earth as a whole slightly warmer when it is farthest from the Sun?
The Northern Hemisphere has more land, which warms faster
Aphelion falls during the northern warm season, and the Northern Hemisphere has more land, which warms faster than sea, so Earth's mean temperature peaks in July despite the extra distance.
Q 05The word 'solstice' comes from Latin words meaning what?
Sun and stand still
Solstice joins Latin sol, 'sun', and sistere, 'to stand still': at the solstices the Sun's daily path reaches its northern or southern limit and seems to pause before reversing.
Q 06'Equinox' comes from Latin words meaning what?
Equal night
Equinox comes from Latin aequus, 'equal', and nox, 'night': at the two equinoxes the Sun stands overhead at the Equator and day and night are nearly equal everywhere.
Q 07Around what date does the Northern Hemisphere tip most toward the Sun?
June 21
Around June 21 the Northern Hemisphere tips most toward the Sun: the June solstice, the longest day north of the Equator; the Southern Hemisphere's turn comes around December 21.
Q 08Why are July and August, not June, usually the hottest months in the Northern Hemisphere?
Seasonal lag as oceans absorb and release heat
Seasonal lag is the cause: sunlight peaks at the solstice, but oceans absorb and release heat slowly, so air temperatures crest weeks later in July and August.
Q 09Under meteorological reckoning, on what date does spring begin in the Northern Hemisphere?
March 1
Meteorological spring starts March 1: meteorologists split the year into three-month blocks beginning March 1, June 1, September 1 and December 1 for tidy record-keeping.
Q 10On the traditional Celtic calendar, which festival on November 1 marked the start of the coldest season?
Samhain
Imbolc opened spring on February 1, Beltane summer on May 1 and Lughnasadh autumn on August 1. Samhain is the Celtic root of Halloween.
Q 11How many seasons, or ritus, does the traditional Hindu calendar recognize?
Six
They are Vasanta, Grishma, Varsha (monsoon), Sharada, Hemanta and Shishira. Some Aboriginal Australian peoples and the Sami count up to eight.
Q 12The ancient Egyptian year had three seasons defined by what?
The flooding of the Nile
They were flood, growth and low water. Many tropical regions today still count just two seasons, wet and dry.
Q 13Which of these names a season in the ecological calendar used for temperate regions?
Prevernal
Prevernal, vernal, estival, serotinal, autumnal and hibernal make up the ecological model, keyed to biological events such as budding and leaf fall rather than calendar dates.
Q 21In the German tradition before Groundhog Day, which animal's Candlemas shadow predicted four more weeks of cold?
A badger
In German lore a badger (Dachs) emerging into sunshine at Candlemas foretold more weeks of cold; Pennsylvania German settlers swapped in the groundhog and stretched the forecast by a further fortnight.
Q 22Midsummer celebrations were Christianized as the June 24 feast of which biblical figure?
John the Baptist
The feast is the Nativity of John the Baptist, placed half a year before Christmas; Sweden takes Midsummer so seriously that there have been proposals to make it the national day.
Q 23In Greek myth, Hades tricked Persephone into eating what, binding her to the underworld?
Pomegranate seeds
Q 14Before the 16th century, what word was commonly used in English for the season we now call autumn?
Harvest
Harvest was the usual English word for the season until the 16th century, a cognate of Dutch herfst and German Herbst; 'fall' later caught on in North American English.
Q 15The yellow and orange colors of autumn leaves come from which pigments?
Carotenoids
Carotenoids such as xanthophylls and beta-carotene sit in the leaf all through the growing season, masked by chlorophyll's green, and show through as yellow and orange once chlorophyll breaks down.
Q 16Which pigment gives autumn leaves their red color?
Anthocyanin
Anthocyanin gives leaves their red: unlike the yellows, it is made fresh in autumn from sugars trapped in the leaf, while browns come from tannins.
Q 17Which full moon is the one farmers traditionally named for bringing in the crops?
The one nearest the autumnal equinox
This full moon is the one nearest the autumnal equinox, so it can fall up to about two weeks either side of September 22 or 23 and occasionally lands in October.
Q 18What is an 'Indian summer'?
A warm, dry spell in autumn
An Indian summer is a warm, dry spell in autumn after the first frost; the term was first recorded in North America in the 1770s and its origin is uncertain.
Q 19The 'dog days' of summer were named for the rising of which star?
Sirius
Sirius, the Dog Star, rises with the Sun in the hottest weeks of the year; Hellenistic astrology blamed that rising for heat, drought, lethargy and mad dogs. The Greek Seirios means 'scorcher'.
Q 20On what date is Groundhog Day observed?
February 2
Groundhog Day falls on February 2, the old feast of Candlemas; Punxsutawney Phil has delivered his forecast at Gobbler's Knob since 1887.
Persephone ate pomegranate seeds in the underworld, so she must spend part of each year with Hades; Demeter's grief during those months was the myth's explanation for the cold, barren part of the year.
Q 24Stonehenge is aligned toward the sunrise on which day?
The summer solstice
Stonehenge's main axis points to sunrise on the summer solstice, when the Sun rises over the Heel Stone; the same axis frames sunset on the December solstice.
Q 25Each concerto in Vivaldi's Four Seasons is paired with what kind of poem?
A sonnet
Each concerto is paired with a sonnet whose lines are keyed to passages in the score; the three movements match three sections of each poem, and Vivaldi himself may have written them.
Q 26In what year were Vivaldi's Four Seasons published?
1725
The Four Seasons were published in Amsterdam in 1725 as the opening concertos of Vivaldi's Op. 8, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention).
Q 27Frankie Valli's group The Four Seasons took its name from what?
A bowling alley
The group took its name from the Four Seasons bowling alley in Union, New Jersey, after failing a 1960 audition to play its cocktail lounge.
Q 28Which of these was a number one single for The Four Seasons?
Sherry
'Sherry', written by Bob Gaudio, topped the Hot 100 in 1962 and was followed to number one by 'Big Girls Don't Cry', 'Walk Like a Man' and 'Rag Doll'.
Q 29Haydn's oratorio The Seasons, first performed in 1801, is based on a long English poem by whom?
James Thomson
Thomson's The Seasons was published in 1730. Baron van Swieten adapted it so freely that scholars say the libretto often loses touch with the poem.
Q 30On Uranus, tilted almost 98 degrees, roughly how long does each pole spend in continuous sunlight?
42 years
Its orbit takes 84 Earth years, so each pole gets about 42 years of daylight followed by 42 years of dark, the most extreme seasons in the solar system.