Watermelon
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49 free Watermelon trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free watermelon trivia questions with answers. The watermelon is technically a berry, botanically a pepo, and 91 per cent water. It was domesticated in Sudan, painted on an Egyptian tomb wall four thousand years ago, carried to Spain by the Moors and to Florida by Spanish settlers, and today two thirds of the world's crop is grown in China. This quiz covers the fruit from every angle: the plant family and its cousins, the wild seeds in a Libyan cave, the bitter white-fleshed originals, how seedless melons are bred and why they need extra beehives, the Carolina Cross that set a 159 kg world record, Japan's ornamental cube melons, Hope, Arkansas and its giant-melon champions, the Luling Watermelon Thump, lycopene and citrulline, watermelon snow, the stereotype and its history, plus watermelons in music from Herbie Hancock to Harry Styles and Gallagher's Sledge-O-Matic. Easy openers for a summer picnic, harder ones for the fruit obsessives. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Botanically, the fruit of the watermelon is classed as which type of fruit?
A berry
A berry: botanists call this hard-shelled kind a pepo, while strawberries and raspberries, despite their names, are not true berries at all.
Q 02After water, what mainly makes up watermelon flesh?
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates, mostly sugars, make up about 7.5% of the flesh; with water at over 90%, a 100 g serving has only about 30 calories.
Q 03Genetic studies name the Kordofan melon of which country as the closest relative and possible ancestor of the watermelon?
Sudan
Sudan: its Kordofan melon has pale but non-bitter flesh, and a 2021 genome study found it to be the closest living relative of the fruit farmers went on to sweeten.
Q 04In which 1987 film does Baby blurt out 'I carried a watermelon' after gate-crashing a staff party?
Dirty Dancing
Dirty Dancing: Baby (Jennifer Grey) gets into the staff party by helping carry melons, says the line to dance instructor Johnny, then cringes at what she just said.
Q 05An image at least 4,000 years old of a large striped fruit on a tray, apparently a watermelon, comes from which civilisation?
Egypt
Egypt: the tomb painting shows a big striped oblong fruit served on a tray, which a 2021 study reads as a sign it may already have been eaten as a dessert, though other research dates sweet watermelons some 2,000 years later.
Q 06Which American author wrote that anyone who has tasted a watermelon 'knows what the angels eat'?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain put the line in Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, adding that Eve cannot have eaten a Southern watermelon, because she repented.
Q 07Which people are credited with introducing the watermelon to the Iberian Peninsula?
The Moors
The Moors are credited with bringing it to Iberia, which is why Spanish calls the fruit sandía, from an Arabic word meaning 'from Sindh'.
Q 08Native Americans were already growing watermelons by the mid-1600s in which future US state, then a Spanish colony?
Florida
Florida: European colonists carried the fruit across the Atlantic, and it was growing in Massachusetts by 1629 and far inland along the Mississippi within a few decades.
Q 09Which explorer is credited with introducing watermelons to Hawaii and other Pacific islands?
James Cook
James Cook left melon seeds on the Hawaiian island of Niʻihau in 1778, as he had on island after island, and Pacific growers took to the new fruit quickly.
Q 10Which country grows about 60% of the world's watermelons?
China
China harvested about 64 million tonnes of watermelon in 2023, roughly 60% of the world total, while the United States ranked only seventh.
Q 11Which US state made the watermelon its official state vegetable in 2007?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma declared the watermelon its official state vegetable in 2007, reasoning that it belongs to the cucumber and gourd family; Rush Springs hosts the state's annual watermelon festival.
Q 12Seedless watermelons are not genetically engineered but bred by crossing parent plants that differ in what?
Chromosome number
Chromosome number: crossing a normal two-set plant with a doubled four-set one gives a three-set hybrid that, like a mule, is sterile and cannot fill its seeds.
Q 13Because seedless watermelon vines cannot fertilise their own flowers, growers must plant what alongside them?
A seeded variety
Q 21The red pigment in watermelon flesh, also responsible for the colour of tomatoes, is which carotenoid?
Lycopene
Lycopene: ripe red watermelon holds as much of it as raw tomatoes or more, weight for weight, though the pigment is named after an old genus name for the tomato.
Q 22Which amino acid takes its name from the watermelon, the fruit it was first isolated from?
Citrulline
Citrulline is named after Citrullus, the Latin genus of the watermelon, yet your own liver makes it constantly as a step in turning waste ammonia into urea.
Q 23Watermelon belongs to the plant family Cucurbitaceae along with which of these?
Pumpkin
Pumpkin: the gourd family also takes in squash and cucumbers, and the cantaloupe turns out to be closer kin to the cucumber than to the watermelon.
A seeded variety supplies the pollen, because a seedless vine still needs pollinating before its fruit will swell, even though no seeds will form.
Q 14Roughly how many watermelon cultivars are grown around the world?
About 1,200
About 1,200 are grown worldwide, and not all are red inside: yellow- and orange-fleshed kinds lack the pigment that colours the usual sort.
Q 15The 'Densuke' watermelon, with its round fruit and near-black rind, is grown where?
Hokkaido, Japan
Hokkaido, Japan: the melons come only from the town of Tōma on the country's cool northern island, and the first of each season are auctioned for hundreds of thousands of yen.
Q 16Japanese growers say cube-shaped watermelons were first developed to fit neatly inside what?
A refrigerator
A refrigerator: the flat sides were also meant to stop the fruit rolling as it was cut, but at around 10,000 yen apiece the cubes became showpiece gifts instead.
Q 17Why are Japanese cube watermelons generally inedible?
They must be harvested before they ripen
They must be harvested before they ripen to hold the cube shape, so they serve as decoration; in 2001 they sold for about 10,000 yen, two to three times the price of ordinary melons.
Q 18Hope, Arkansas, birthplace of Bill Clinton, is also famous for what watermelon-related feat?
Growing record-breaking giant melons
Growing record-breaking giant melons is a Hope tradition going back to the 1920s; the town's last world record, set in 2005, has since been beaten by a Tennessee grower.
Q 19The Watermelon Thump and its seed-spitting contest are held each June in Luling, an oil town in which state?
Texas
Texas: oil dominated Luling, but by the 1950s its farmers were growing so many melons that the town launched the Thump, still held on the last full weekend of June.
Q 20Viva la Vida, a still life of cut watermelons finished in 1954, was among the last paintings of which Mexican artist?
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo painted it in 1954, the year she died after a life of illness and surgery, and its title means 'long live life'.
Q 24Which naturalist gave the watermelon its first formal scientific description?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus described it in 1753, but the species name used today was first given to a different South African melon, a mix-up exposed when DNA from the 1773 type specimen was tested.
Q 25The wild tsamma melon long supplied water to San hunter-gatherers and travellers in which desert?
The Kalahari
The Kalahari: David Livingstone wrote that in rainy years vast tracts of the desert were 'literally covered' with the melons, which people and animals alike relied on for water.
Q 26Which gemstone has a prized 'watermelon' variety, pink in the centre and green around the outside?
Tourmaline
Tourmaline: crystals of the watermelon variety are pink at the core and green at the rim, so cutters slice them crosswise, like the fruit, to show both colours.
Q 27'Watermelon snow', the pink-tinged snow of high mountains and polar regions, is caused by what?
Red-pigmented algae
Red-pigmented algae: Chlamydomonas nivalis makes the pigment as a sunscreen, and the darkened snow soaks up more sunlight and so melts faster.
Q 28The 2020 hit 'Watermelon Sugar' borrows its title from a 1968 novel by which author of Trout Fishing in America?
Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar was lying around when the song was written, and its singer simply liked the sound of the title as a hook.
Q 29Which singer scored his first US number one in 2020, and a Grammy the next year, with 'Watermelon Sugar'?
Harry Styles
Harry Styles opened the 2021 Grammy ceremony by performing the song, then collected Best Pop Solo Performance for it the same night.
Q 30The jazz standard 'Watermelon Man' was written in 1962 by which pianist for his debut album Takin' Off?
Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock wrote the tune to help sell his first album, but it was Mongo Santamaría's cover that reached the US top ten; Hancock later remade it as funk on Head Hunters.