Twins Trivia
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This twins trivia quiz has 101 free questions with answers and covers everything twin-related except the baseball team: the biology of identical and fraternal twins, mirror twins and conjoined twins, the countries and towns where twins are most common, and the science of vanishing twins, superfetation, and twins with different fathers. It also runs through the famous pairs, from Romulus and Remus and Castor and Pollux to the Olsens, the Sprouses, the Winklevosses, the Bryan brothers, and the astronaut Kelly twins. It was built to double as a free twin trivia baby shower game: every question is clean, fun, and multiple choice, so guests who don't know a zygote from a zodiac sign can still guess along. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a few real stumpers for the twin parents in the room. Every answer has been checked against a reference page (mostly Wikipedia and a peer-reviewed twinning-rate study), so you can trust the answers when the arguments start.
30 of 101 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which term describes identical twins, as opposed to fraternal ones?
Monozygotic
Monozygotic twins grow from a single fertilized egg that splits in two, which is why identical twins share nearly all their DNA and are almost always the same sex.
Q 02Worldwide, roughly one delivery in how many produces twins?
About 1 in 90
About 1 in 90: a 2021 global study put twinning at 12 per 1,000 deliveries, while identical twins are rarer at roughly 3 to 4 per 1,000.
Q 03What do Yoruba parents traditionally commission when a twin dies?
A wooden figure
A wooden figure called an ere ibeji is carved to stand in for the dead twin, and the parents dress it and care for it as if it were a living child.
Q 04A 2011 study of developing countries found the highest national twinning rate, 27.9 per 1,000 births, in which country?
Benin
Benin topped the 2011 Smits and Monden survey at 27.9 twin births per 1,000; the study showed high twinning was no single country's quirk but ran across most of Central Africa, with far lower rates in Asia and Latin America.
Q 05Igbo-Ora, nicknamed the 'Twin Capital of the World,' is a town in which country?
Nigeria
Igbo-Ora sits in Nigeria's Oyo State; locals credit the local diet, though researchers have found no proven cause for its twinning rate.
Q 06In Yoruba tradition, if the first-born twin is Taiwo, what is the second-born called?
Kehinde
Kehinde, 'the one who came last', is considered the elder, having sent Taiwo out first to check whether the world was fit to enter.
Q 07Which Nazi fugitive did one author blame for the twins of Brazil's Cândido Godói?
Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele hid in South America after the war, and an author's book tied the town's twins to experiments he supposedly ran there; researchers instead pointed to a founder effect among its few settler families.
Q 08Which of these differs even between identical twins, who share almost all their DNA?
Fingerprints
Fingerprints differ because the ridges are shaped not only by genes but by each baby's own contact with the womb, so even identical twins end up with prints nobody else has.
Q 09Fraternal twins run in families because some women inherit a tendency to do what?
Release more than one egg per cycle
Release more than one egg per cycle: this tendency, called hyperovulation, is partly inherited, so fraternal twins cluster in families, while most identical twins are not explained by genes at all.
Q 10Fraternal twins with two different biological fathers are the result of a phenomenon with what name?
Heteropaternal superfecundation
Heteropaternal superfecundation turned up in 2.4 percent of fraternal twins in one study, but every pair came from a paternity suit, so its authors warned against applying that rate to twins in general.
Q 11Roughly how long is the longest reported gap between twin births?
Three months
Three months: twins in Cologne were reported born 97 days apart in 2018 and 2019; after a very early first birth, doctors sometimes delay the second to give that baby more time in the womb.
Q 12A private language developed by twins that only the two of them understand is called what?
Cryptophasia
Cryptophasia was made famous by Grace and Virginia Kennedy, American twins born in 1970 who called each other Poto and Cabengo and went on speaking their own invented language well into childhood.
Q 13Conjoined twins are most often joined at which part of the body?
The chest
Q 21What name was given to Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother?
Jesse Garon
Jesse Garon was stillborn, leaving Elvis to grow up an only child in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi; his own middle name was first spelled Aron, a near match for his twin's.
Q 22Which actor played both Kray twins in the 2015 film Legend?
Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy played both Ronnie and Reggie Kray, East End gangsters who became 1960s celebrities, photographed by David Bailey and interviewed on television, before both were jailed for life in 1969.
Q 23Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen got their start sharing the role of Michelle Tanner on which sitcom?
Full House
The chest is the most common join, ahead of the abdomen, pelvis and head, and twins joined there often share a single heart.
Q 14As of 2019, how many cases of semi-identical 'sesquizygotic' twins had been documented?
Two
Only two: in the second case an early scan pointed to identical twins, yet later ones showed a boy and a girl, who turned out to share all of their mother's DNA but only part of their father's.
Q 15Chang and Eng Bunker, the original 'Siamese twins', were born in Siam, now called what?
Thailand
Thailand first replaced Siam as the country's name in 1939; the brothers left Siam in 1829, toured as 'the Siamese Twins', then settled as farmers in North Carolina, where they married two sisters and had more than twenty children.
Q 16According to legend, the twin founders of Rome were suckled as infants by which animal?
A she-wolf
A she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus after they were set adrift on the Tiber; a shepherd, Faustulus, then raised them, and in most tellings Romulus killed Remus as they quarrelled over their new city.
Q 17Which pair of mythological twins was placed in the sky as the constellation Gemini?
Castor and Pollux
In the usual version only Pollux, son of Zeus, was immortal; when mortal Castor died, Pollux chose to share his immortality, and Castor and Pollux were set among the stars together.
Q 18Who was the famous sister of the Gemini twins of Greek myth?
Helen of Troy
Helen of Troy was, in the usual telling, Leda's daughter like the twins; long before the Trojan War, when Theseus carried the young Helen off, her brothers invaded Attica and brought her home.
Q 19Gemini, the zodiac sign of the twins, is ruled by which planet?
Mercury
Mercury rules Gemini, the third sign of the zodiac; NASA borrowed the twins' name for its 1960s Gemini capsules because each one carried a crew of two.
Q 20In the Book of Genesis, the twin Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob in exchange for what?
A bowl of stew
A bowl of stew, the red lentil 'mess of pottage', bought the birthright; Jacob later dressed in Esau's clothes to claim their blind father Isaac's blessing as well.
Full House ran from 1987 to 1995; despite looking alike, the Olsens are fraternal twins, and they founded the luxury fashion label The Row in 2006.
Q 24What was the 1990s sitcom starring Tia and Tamera Mowry as twins separated at birth?
Sister, Sister
Sister, Sister was cancelled by ABC after two seasons and picked up by The WB for four more; both sisters were born in Gelnhausen, West Germany.
Q 25In which sport did the Winklevoss twins compete for the US at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?
Rowing
Rowing: they finished sixth in the men's coxless pair; Armie Hammer played both brothers in The Social Network, and they later founded the crypto exchange Gemini.
Q 26In which 1999 Adam Sandler comedy did twins Dylan and Cole Sprouse share the role of a five-year-old?
Big Daddy
Big Daddy cast the Arezzo-born brothers as Julian; Cole later played Jughead Jones on Riverdale while Dylan opened a meadery in Brooklyn.
Q 27Twins James and Oliver Phelps played which prankster brothers in the Harry Potter films?
Fred and George Weasley
Fred and George Weasley went to twins with no acting experience, who skipped school for an open audition in Leeds; James played Fred, and Oliver, the elder by 13 minutes, played George.
Q 28Which actress has a twin brother named Hunter?
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson took her first leading role in 1996's Manny & Lo, and her fraternal twin Hunter appeared in it too; their older sister Vanessa also became an actress.
Q 29Which Oscar-winning actor has an identical twin brother who is four minutes younger?
Rami Malek
Rami Malek's twin is named Sami; after graduating in 2003, Rami spent years in small television roles before Mr. Robot made his name and Bohemian Rhapsody won him the Oscar.
Q 30Which US president is the father of twin daughters Jenna and Barbara?
George W. Bush
George W. Bush's twins were born in 1981; Barbara, the elder, was named for their father's mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, while Jenna was named for their mother's mother, Jenna Welch.