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47 free Toilet trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
48 free toilet trivia questions with answers. The flush toilet was described by Queen Elizabeth's godson in 1596, Thomas Crapper did not invent it, and 827,280 Victorians paid a penny to try one at the Great Exhibition. This toilet trivia quiz covers the whole unglamorous history: Indus Valley sewers, Roman pay toilets, castle garderobes, the S-trap, the 1.6-gallon law, the Australian dual flush and the Japanese Washlet. It also takes in toilet paper (perfumed sheets for a Ming emperor, splinter-free tissue, the 1973 Johnny Carson panic, over versus under), the bidet's horsey name, Duchamp's urinal, the space toilet, the outhouse and World Toilet Day. Easy questions ask which artist signed a urinal 'R. Mutt'; the hard ones want who invented the waterless urinal and where America's first pay toilet stood. It suits a pub quiz novelty round, a plumbing office party or anyone who reads in the bathroom. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01Which Elizabethan courtier described England's first flushing toilet, the 'Ajax', in a 1596 book?
Sir John Harington
Sir John Harington described his flushing 'Ajax' in the 1596 book The Metamorphosis of Ajax; its name punned on a slang word for a privy, and its satire got him banished from court.
Q 02The 1596 toilet book The Metamorphosis of Ajax angered which monarch, its author's godmother?
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I was the author's godmother; the story goes she had earlier banished him from court until he translated the whole of Orlando Furioso after a racy canto circulated.
Q 03Which Scottish watchmaker patented the S-trap in 1775 to keep sewer gas out of bathrooms?
Alexander Cumming
Alexander Cumming patented the S-trap in 1775; its bend holds a plug of water that seals the pipe. Joseph Bramah began his career installing closets built to Cumming's design.
Q 04Which Victorian plumber, contrary to legend, did NOT invent the flush toilet, though he held nine patents?
Crapper
Crapper held nine patents but did not invent the flush toilet; Wallace Reyburn's tongue-in-cheek 1969 biography Flushed with Pride inflated his fame, and his firm's manhole covers at Westminster Abbey draw tourists.
Q 05Which royal residence earned a Chelsea plumber his first royal warrant for thirty water closets?
Sandringham House
Sandringham House, the Norfolk estate bought for the future Edward VII in 1862, later had thirty water closets installed by the firm, which earned it its first royal warrant.
Q 06What did a famous Chelsea plumbing firm open on King's Road that was a world first?
A bath, toilet and sink showroom
A bath, toilet and sink showroom on King's Road was the firm's world first, letting customers inspect sanitary ware on open display instead of ordering it unseen.
Q 07At the 1851 Great Exhibition, 827,280 visitors each paid how much to use George Jennings' 'Monkey Closets'?
One penny
One penny bought a clean seat, a towel, a comb and a shoe shine at Jennings' closets, and the Exhibition gave English the phrase 'spend a penny'.
Q 08Which Roman emperor's tax on collected urine inspired the saying 'money has no smell'?
Vespasian
Vespasian taxed the urine collected from Rome's public latrines and sold to fullers; Suetonius records his retort that the coins did not smell, and French street pissoirs were later named vespasiennes after him.
Q 09Which ancient civilization, in cities like Mohenjo-Daro and Lothal, had the first known urban sanitation systems?
Indus Valley
The Indus Valley cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Lothal had covered brick drains; at Lothal, houses had private toilets flushing into a sewer built with gypsum-based mortar.
Q 10Which Neolithic village in Orkney, occupied from about 3100 BC, had small rooms over a communal drain?
Skara Brae
Skara Brae, a stone-built Neolithic settlement on Orkney, was buried in sand and re-exposed by a storm in 1850; some of its huts had small cells over a communal drain.
Q 11What was a garderobe in a medieval castle?
A toilet
A toilet: a garderobe was usually a hole discharging into the moat or a cesspit, and cloaks were sometimes hung there in the belief that the ammonia fumes kept moths and fleas away.
Q 12Which of these was NOT a nickname for a chamber pot?
Puddle jug
Puddle jug is invented; thunder mug, jerry and guzunder (it 'goes under' the bed) were all real nicknames for the chamber pot.
Q 13The word 'toilet' entered English from French in 1540 meaning what?
A little cloth over the shoulders
A little cloth over the shoulders, draped during hairdressing, was the 1540 sense of toilette; the word shifted to the dressing table, the act of dressing, the room and finally, first in America, the fixture.
Q 21The world's first known toilet paper, in the 6th century AD, was used in which country?
China
China: the scholar Yan Zhitui wrote in 589 AD that he would not use paper bearing the classics for toilet purposes, the earliest known reference to toilet paper.
Q 22How many perfumed soft toilet-paper sheets were made for the Hongwu Emperor's family in 1393?
15,000
15,000 soft, perfumed sheets went to the imperial family in 1393, while the wider court at Nanjing received 720,000 ordinary sheets that year.
Q 23Who introduced the first commercial US toilet paper in 1857, as medicated sheets watermarked with his name?
Joseph Gayetty
Joseph Gayetty's Medicated Paper, sold from 1857 in flat packs of aloe-treated sheets watermarked with his name, was the first commercially packaged toilet paper in the United States.
Q 14Which 1858 London event, caused by sewage in the Thames, spurred Parliament to fund Bazalgette's sewers?
The Great Stink
The Great Stink of summer 1858 made the sewage-laden Thames so foul that Parliament, sitting beside it, quickly funded Joseph Bazalgette's interceptor sewer system for London.
Q 15Which US law required that from 1994 new toilets use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush?
Energy Policy Act of 1992
The Energy Policy Act of 1992 capped new toilets at 1.6 gallons per flush from 1994; older models used 3.5 gallons or more, and the new ones were dubbed ultra-low-flow.
Q 16The two-button dual-flush cistern was developed in 1980 by Caroma, a company from which country?
Australia
Australia's Caroma launched the Duoset dual-flush cistern in 1980, letting users choose a half or full flush to save water in a drought-prone country.
Q 17Which Japanese company launched the 'paperless' Washlet toilet-bidet in 1980?
Toto
Toto launched the Washlet in 1980, combining a seat with a warm-water spray so users could skip paper; its heated seats became standard in Japanese homes.
Q 18What does the 'Otohime' device fitted in many Japanese women's toilets do?
Plays a flushing sound to mask noise
Plays a flushing sound to mask noise: the Otohime was introduced so users need not flush repeatedly for privacy, saving large volumes of water in public toilets.
Q 19The word 'bidet' comes from the French for what?
A small horse
A small horse: bidet is an old French word for a pony, and the fixture took the name because the user straddles it like a rider.
Q 20Which European country's 1975 decree made a bidet compulsory in every home bathroom?
Italy
Italy's ministerial decree of 5 July 1975 listed a bidet among the fixtures every home bathroom must contain, which is why a bidet sits beside almost every Italian toilet.
Q 24As late as the 1930s, the Northern Tissue company advertised its toilet paper as being free of what?
Splinters
Splinters: Northern Tissue's 1935 campaign promised 'splinter-free' paper, a real selling point when cheap early rolls sometimes contained slivers of wood.
Q 25Which talk-show host's 1973 joke about a possible shortage triggered a real run on toilet paper in the US?
Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson's December 1973 Tonight Show monologue riffed on a press release by Wisconsin congressman Harold Froehlich about a possible paper shortage; viewers rushed out and emptied the shelves.
Q 26Which British brand introduced softer two-ply toilet roll in 1942 from a mill in Walthamstow?
Andrex
Andrex, made at St Andrew's Mill in Walthamstow from 1942, brought soft two-ply tissue to Britain, where hard, glossy sheets like Izal had been the norm.
Q 27Which British king died in 1760 after collapsing on his close stool?
George II
George II died on 25 October 1760 at Kensington Palace after collapsing on his close stool; the post-mortem found a ruptured aorta.
Q 28What did rural Americans commonly use in the outhouse before toilet paper was widely available?
Mail-order catalogs
Mail-order catalogs from Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, along with old newspapers, were the standard outhouse paper in rural America before soft rolls became cheap.
Q 29Which Australian word means outhouse?
Dunny
Dunny, from the older British 'dunnekin', is the local word for an outhouse; long-drop is the New Zealand term and bog the British one.
Q 30Which UN-recognised day falls on 19 November each year?
World Toilet Day
World Toilet Day, 19 November, was started by the World Toilet Organization in 2001 and recognised by a UN General Assembly resolution in 2013 to draw attention to sanitation.