Silver
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50 free Silver trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Silver is the metal that turns up everywhere. It sits in the periodic table and in jewellery boxes, it paid for empires and navies, and its name is attached to film titles, rock bands, comic book heroes and sports teams. That makes it a surprisingly rich theme for a quiz night. These questions cover both sides of the subject. Some are about the element itself: where its symbol comes from, why it tarnishes, and how it has been used in medicine, photography and coinage. Others follow the word through popular culture, from classic adventure novels and westerns to chart hits and racing circuits. The set is written for anyone planning a silver anniversary party or a themed trivia round, and for players who simply like general knowledge with a twist. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the difficulty runs from easy openers to a handful of questions for experts.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Dorothy's magic shoes are silver in L. Frank Baum's novel, but which jewel names them in the 1939 film?
Ruby
Ruby slippers replaced the book's silver shoes because the studio wanted a colour that would show off the new three-strip Technicolor process.
Q 02Which South American country takes its name from the Latin word for silver?
Argentina
Argentina means roughly 'silvery land'. Early explorers believed the Río de la Plata, the 'River of Silver', led to vast riches, but no silver mines were ever found along it.
Q 03Which hero of American radio and television westerns rides a horse named Silver?
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger won Silver's loyalty by saving the wild horse from an enraged buffalo. He also handed out bullets made of silver as proof of who he was.
Q 04Silver conducts electricity better than any other metal, but which cheaper metal is used for most electrical wiring?
Copper
Copper is second only to silver as a conductor and far cheaper, which is why about 60 percent of the world's supply ends up as electrical wire.
Q 05Long John Silver is the one-legged ship's cook who leads a mutiny in which classic adventure novel?
Treasure Island
Treasure Island nearly carried a different name: Robert Louis Stevenson's working title was The Sea Cook, after Silver's job aboard the schooner Hispaniola.
Q 06Which liquid metal has been known for centuries as quicksilver because of the way it shines and flows?
Mercury
Mercury earned the old name quicksilver, meaning 'living silver', and alchemists tied it to the fastest planet, named for the swift Roman messenger god.
Q 07Which wedding anniversary is traditionally marked with silver, as couples in German-speaking lands did by the 1500s?
25th
25th anniversaries have been linked with silver in Germanic countries since the 1500s. The custom of naming the big milestones after precious metals later spread around the world.
Q 08Which American patriot, remembered for a midnight ride in 1775, earned his living as a silversmith?
Paul Revere
Paul Revere left school at thirteen to become an apprentice to his father, a French Huguenot immigrant, and built a prosperous Boston business in silver and engraving.
Q 09Which US state is officially nicknamed the Silver State after the Comstock Lode strike of 1859?
Nevada
Nevada boomed when the Comstock Lode was found under Virginia City. The rush of miners was big enough to carve a new territory out of western Utah in 1861.
Q 10In horror films and modern folklore, a silver bullet is the classic weapon against which monster?
A werewolf
A werewolf can be killed only by silver in the 1941 film The Wolf Man, the movie that fixed the rule in popular culture. Older folklore aimed such bullets at witches too.
Q 11Which two-letter chemical symbol, taken from the metal's Latin name, stands for silver on the periodic table?
Ag
Ag is short for a Latin name that goes back to an ancient root meaning white or shining, a fair description of the most reflective metal there is.
Q 12Which word describes silver that is 92.5 percent pure, the standard grade for jewellery and cutlery?
Sterling
Sterling silver is hardened with a little of another metal because the pure element is too soft for forks, rings and flutes to survive daily use.
Q 13The black tarnish on old silver cutlery forms when the metal reacts with compounds of which element?
Sulfur
Sulfur, not oxygen, is what blackens silver: traces of it in the air build a dark film of silver sulfide. Gold shrugs off the same attack, which is why it never tarnishes.
Q 21Which Bolivian city grew up beneath Cerro Rico, a mountain so rich in silver that Spain kept a colonial mint there?
Potosí
Potosí sprang up after the prospector Diego Huallpa found the 'rich mountain' in 1545, and for centuries its silver was turned into coins on the spot.
Q 22The Spanish silver dollar was nicknamed the piece of eight because it was worth eight of which smaller coin?
Reales
Reales gave the coin its nickname, from the Spanish real de a ocho. The piece of eight circulated so widely in Britain's North American colonies that the United States matched its new dollar to it in 1792.
Q 23In the Gospel of Matthew, which disciple betrays Jesus in exchange for thirty pieces of silver?
Judas Iscariot
Q 14Which early photographic process, introduced worldwide in 1839, formed its image on a polished silver-plated sheet?
Daguerreotype
Daguerreotype plates were buffed to a mirror finish, so each one-off picture flips between positive and negative as the viewer tilts it.
Q 15A weak silver nitrate solution was once routinely dropped onto which part of a newborn baby to prevent infection?
Eyes
Eyes were treated at birth after 1881, when a doctor named Credé showed that the solution stopped an infection, caught from the mother, that could leave a child blind.
Q 16Taking too much colloidal silver can cause argyria, a condition that turns a person's skin which colour?
Blue-gray
Blue-gray skin is the main sign of argyria. In 2007 an American man made the news after a homemade silver remedy for his sinus trouble slowly turned his skin that shade.
Q 17Silver iodide is released into the sky in which weather-changing technique meant to produce extra rain or snow?
Cloud seeding
Cloud seeding works because crystals of silver iodide are shaped much like ice, so water freezes onto them and grows heavy enough to fall.
Q 18German silver contains no silver at all and is more accurately named after which metal in the alloy?
Nickel
Nickel silver is the alloy's usual name today. European metalworkers created it to copy paktong, a silvery metal that arrived on wares imported from China.
Q 19Which chemist devised a way to coat the back of glass with silver in 1835, creating the modern mirror?
Justus von Liebig
Justus von Liebig's chemical silvering eventually replaced the older backing of tin and mercury, which was harming the health of mirror makers, and the same reaction still lines vacuum flasks.
Q 20Medieval alchemists paired each known metal with a heavenly body; which one did they link with silver?
Moon
The Moon gave silver its alchemical name, luna, which is why sticks of silver nitrate used to cauterise wounds were long sold as lunar caustic.
Judas Iscariot agreed the price with the chief priests before the Last Supper and, filled with remorse, later tried to hand the money back.
Q 24Which animal, shown walking, has been stamped on English silver since 1544 as a mark of its purity?
A lion
A lion in the walking pose that heralds call passant joined the older marks in 1544. The system dates from 1300, when Edward I ordered silver to be tested before sale.
Q 25Which American orator championed free silver in the 1896 'Cross of Gold' convention speech?
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was a 36-year-old former congressman from Nebraska and a dark-horse candidate when he rose to speak, and the address won him the Democratic nomination for president.
Q 26Which family of Dallas oil heirs tried to corner the world silver market before the Silver Thursday crash of 1980?
The Hunts
The Hunts and their company controlled about 195 million ounces of silver by the end of 1979, but when prices fell they could not find the cash their lenders demanded.
Q 27At the first modern Olympics in 1896, winners received a silver medal and a branch of which tree?
Olive
Olive branches went to the winners along with their silver medals and a diploma. Runners-up were handed laurel, and third place received nothing at all.
Q 28Silver from the mines of Laurion paid for the fleet of triremes that made which Greek city a naval power?
Athens
Athens struck a rich new vein around 483 BC, and the statesman Themistocles talked its citizens into spending the windfall on a fleet of 200 warships.
Q 29Which president was placed on the US dime in 1946, a coin struck in silver until the mid-1960s?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt was chosen for the ten-cent piece because he had helped found the March of Dimes, the campaign against the polio he had lived with since 1921.
Q 30Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion that was never actually covered in silver, stands in which Japanese city?
Kyoto
Kyoto's Silver Pavilion was built as a retirement villa for the shogun Yoshimasa. By one account he died before a planned coat of silver foil could be applied, and the nickname only appeared in the Edo period.