Watches
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50 free Watches trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A wristwatch is a small machine with a long memory. The same object has timed races and deep dives, crossed oceans on pilots' wrists, been issued to soldiers, and ended up in auction rooms selling for millions. This quiz covers the big names and the models that made them, from Rolex and Seiko to Casio, along with the stories collectors love: who wore what, which design came from where, and how a cheap battery nearly finished off an entire national industry. A good share of the questions are on terminology, so you will meet the parts of a case, the workings of a movement and the extra functions watchmakers prize. It suits anyone from the owner of a single watch to the enthusiast who reads case backs for fun. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more than when you arrived.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which watch model did Buzz Aldrin wear on the Moon during Apollo 11, earning the nickname Moonwatch?
Speedmaster
The Speedmaster became the first watch worn on the Moon after surviving NASA's 1965 trials within about five seconds a day. It had been launched in 1957 for sport and racing.
Q 02Which singer wore the asymmetrical Hamilton Ventura, an early electric watch, in the film Blue Hawaii?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley wore the Ventura, a case designed by Richard Arbib. Hamilton had introduced the world's first electric watch, the Electric 500, in 1957.
Q 03Which cartoon character's 1933 Ingersoll watch became a million-dollar line and saved its maker from ruin?
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse watches were unveiled at the Chicago World's Fair in June 1933. Their maker, Waterbury Clock, had been struggling through the Great Depression.
Q 04Which radioactive element made early watch dials glow and poisoned the women who painted them?
Radium
Radium paint went on with fine brushes that workers were told to point between their lips. The lawsuits brought by the Radium Girls left a lasting mark on American labour law.
Q 05Which mineral, vibrating thousands of times a second, has kept battery watches on time since the 1969 Seiko Astron?
Quartz
Quartz in most watches is cut into a tiny tuning fork that vibrates 32,768 times a second. The first Astron, unveiled in Tokyo on Christmas Day 1969, cost about as much as a medium-sized car.
Q 06Which shellfish names the waterproof Rolex case that Mercedes Gleitze wore on a 1927 English Channel swim?
Oyster
Oyster was the name given to the sealed, dustproof case of 1926. Gleitze wore one on a necklace as she swam, becoming the first Rolex ambassador.
Q 07Which actor's own Rolex Daytona sold for $17.8 million at a New York auction in 2017?
Paul Newman
Paul Newman had given the watch to his daughter's boyfriend in 1984. Its sale set a record price for a wristwatch at the time.
Q 08Which mountain did an expedition equipped with Rolex watches first climb in 1953, the year of the first Rolex Explorer?
Everest
Everest was first climbed by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, whose expedition was given a Rolex to wear and return for testing in thin air and deep cold.
Q 09Which plastic Swiss watch brand was launched in 1983 to fight back against cheap battery watches?
Swatch
Swatch is a contraction of "second watch": a casual, low-cost accessory to own beside a serious timepiece. Its first twelve models were unveiled in Zürich.
Q 10Which Swiss brand first served as official Olympic timekeeper at the Los Angeles Games of 1932?
Omega
Omega began in 1848 as Louis Brandt's workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds and took its present name only in 1903, after a line of watches that had sold under it.
Q 11Which actor made the square Heuer Monaco famous by wearing it in the 1971 racing film Le Mans?
Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen's link to the Monaco outlived the watch itself. Dropped in the mid-1970s, it was reintroduced in 1998 on renewed interest in his legacy.
Q 12Which Casio watch line, launched in 1983, did engineer Kikuo Ibe design to survive a ten-metre fall?
G-Shock
G-Shock began after Ibe bumped into a pedestrian and the watch his father had given him shattered on the ground. His team built nearly 200 prototypes before the first model.
Q 13Which tech company's smartwatch, released in 2015, outsold the entire Swiss watch industry in 2020?
Apple
Apple put its first model on sale in April 2015, and it quickly became the world's best-selling wearable device.
Q 21Which lower-priced sister brand did Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf create for Rolex dealers to sell?
Tudor
Tudor has been run as its own company since 1946. Its early watches put third-party movements inside Rolex-quality cases and bracelets to keep the price down.
Q 22Which American brand hired newsman John Cameron Swayze to run live television torture tests on its watches?
Timex
Timex debuted as a brand in 1950, built on its president's belief that an inexpensive watch would sell if it was both accurate and durable.
Q 23Which watch brand aired what is called the first television advertisement, before a 1941 baseball game?
Bulova
Bulova ran the spot on 1 July 1941, the first day paid advertising was allowed on American television. Its Accutron of 1960 kept time with a tuning fork instead of a balance wheel.
Q 14Which conflict made the wristwatch standard kit for soldiers, in a style known as the trench watch?
First World War
The First World War made pocket watches impractical in combat. Until then wristwatches, known as wristlets, had been worn almost exclusively by women.
Q 15Which Rolex dive watch did Sean Connery wear as James Bond in his first four films?
Submariner
The Submariner went into production in 1953, rated to a depth of 100 metres. Bond kept wearing one as late as Licence to Kill in 1989.
Q 16Which small knob, usually on the right of a wristwatch case, winds the spring and sets the time?
Crown
The crown sits on the right so that a watch worn on the left wrist can be wound with the right hand. Before it arrived in the 19th century, watches were wound with a separate key.
Q 17Which ring around a dive watch's glass rotates so a diver can read off elapsed time underwater?
Bezel
The bezel on a dive watch is ratcheted to turn one way only, so an accidental knock can make a dive look longer but never shorter.
Q 18Which watch type, invented by Louis Moinet in 1816 for astronomy, has a built-in stopwatch?
Chronograph
A chronograph is started, stopped and reset to zero by pushers on the side of the case, while small sub-dials count off the minutes and hours.
Q 19Which word describes a watch that winds itself as you move, an idea dating back to the 1770s?
Automatic
Automatic watches carry a semicircular weight that pivots as the arm moves. The earliest credible example was a pocket watch by the Swiss maker Abraham-Louis Perrelet.
Q 20Which Paris jeweller made a 1904 wristwatch for aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont and later the Tank?
Cartier
Cartier built the first after Santos-Dumont complained that a pocket watch was impractical while flying. The Tank took its outline from the newly introduced armoured fighting vehicle.
Q 24Which Geneva firm, owned by the Stern family since 1932, made the first Swiss wristwatch in 1868?
Patek Philippe
Patek Philippe built that watch for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. The Stern brothers, who bought the firm during the Great Depression, had been its supplier of dials.
Q 25Which Swiss brand's Navitimer, launched in 1954 for pilots, carries a circular slide rule?
Breitling
Breitling first fitted the slide rule to its Chronomat in the 1940s. A version of the Navitimer carried the logo of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association on its dial.
Q 26Which Swiss brand's winged hourglass, registered in 1889, is the oldest unchanged trademark active at WIPO?
Longines
Longines had its name trademarked in 1880, nine years before the logo, after counterfeiters began passing off copies of its watches.
Q 27Which Florence-founded brand made dive watches for the Italian Navy and sold none to civilians until 1993?
Panerai
Panerai's early navy watches were made for it by Rolex, using pocket-watch movements from the Swiss firm Cortébert.
Q 28Which Swiss luxury brand, founded in 1980, is named after the French word for a ship's porthole?
Hublot
Hublot caused a stir at the 1980 Basel fair by pairing a precious-metal case with a natural rubber strap, and took more than $2 million in its first year.
Q 29Which brand's Museum Watch, designed by Nathan George Horwitt, has a bare dial with a single dot at 12?
Movado
Movado's lone dot stands for the sun at high noon. In 1960 the design became the first watch dial in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art.
Q 30Which tennis champion did Richard Mille, maker of featherweight watches, begin sponsoring in 2010?
Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal's RM 027 weighed 20 grams including its strap, with a movement made from titanium and a lithium alloy used in aeronautics.