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60 free Wool trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This wool trivia quiz covers the animal fibre that dressed Europe long before cotton or silk arrived. The easy questions handle the basics: which animals give us cashmere, mohair, angora and qiviut, what lanolin is, and why wool felts when you agitate it. From there it moves into the trade that built medieval England, Flanders and Florence, the Spanish Merino monopoly that carried the death penalty, and the seat in the House of Lords that is still a sack of wool. The harder end is for spinners, knitters and pub-quiz regulars: micron counts and the Super S system, the Woolmark logo's mysterious designer, why Harris Tweed's Orb mark went to every island in the Outer Hebrides, and the runaway sheep whose fleeces set world records. There are also questions on felting history, the Golden Fleece myth, the Aran jumper's invented folklore and the fastest shearing competitions on earth. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on wool, the major fibre types and the events and people involved before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our sheep, fashion and Scotland quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Wool consists mainly of which structural protein, also found in human hair and nails?
Keratin
Wool's keratin is richer in sulfur than silk's fibroin because it contains a lot of cystine, whose disulfide bonds can be reshaped by heat or chemicals.
Q 02Roughly what fraction of its own weight in water can wool absorb?
One-third
Despite that thirst, wool fibres are not hollow; the moisture is held inside the fibre structure, which is why damp wool still feels warm.
Q 03Fleece straight off the sheep, still full of grease and dirt, is known in the trade as what?
Raw wool
It is also called greasy wool or wool in the grease, and it must be scoured before it can be used commercially.
Q 04Which property is the single most important factor in determining a fleece's quality and price?
Fibre diameter
Diameter is measured in microns; the finest Australasian Merino bales, 16.9 microns and finer, earn the elite 1PP mark.
Q 05What does the 'Super S' number on a fine wool suit fabric actually describe?
Maximum mean fibre diameter
Super 100 means fibres of 18.75 micrometres or finer on average, and every step of ten in the S number lowers that limit by half a micrometre.
Q 06Which anthrax illness spread by raw fleece took its common name from a textile-trade job?
Woolsorters' disease
Cuts from sorting or baling contaminated fleece let Bacillus anthracis enter the skin, a hazard tamed by modern disinfection.
Q 07Which type of wool yarn is strong, long-staple and combed, giving a smooth hard surface used in suiting?
Worsted
Woolen yarn, by contrast, is soft, short-staple and carded, and traditional weavers combined woolen weft with worsted warp.
Q 08Recycled wool made by tearing apart existing fabric and respinning it is traditionally called what?
Shoddy
The process was invented in the Heavy Woollen District of West Yorkshire, where it sustained a whole local microeconomy.
Q 09The presiding officer of the House of Lords sits on a wool-stuffed seat known as what?
The Woolsack
Edward III ordered his Lord Chancellor to sit on a wool bale to symbolise how central the wool trade was to England's medieval economy.
Q 10In 1938 the Lord Chancellor's wool-trade seat in the Lords was found stuffed with what?
Horsehair
It was remade with wool from Britain and 15 Commonwealth countries, supplied by the International Wool Secretariat as a symbol of trade routes.
Q 11Smuggling wool out of England, once punishable by cutting off a hand, was known by what name?
Owling
Various British laws also required the use of wool even in burials, to prop up the domestic trade.
Q 12Which wool guild oversaw the Florentine textile industry behind Medici banking wealth?
Arte della Lana
The guild sent imported English wool to the San Martino convent for processing while Spanish merino went to the Garbo workshops.
Q 13Pliny the Elder wrote that the finest wool of the Roman world came from which city?
Tarentum
Selective breeding there produced sheep with superior fleeces, though Pliny noted they needed special care.
Q 21The Merino breed originated in which region, where exporting the sheep was for centuries a crime?
Iberian Peninsula
Spain guarded its monopoly so fiercely that would-be exporters risked capital punishment; the first big consignments only left in the 18th century.
Q 22Merinos sent to France in the 18th century developed into which breed, named after a royal farm?
Rambouillet
Louis XVI received 366 sheep in 1786, and a Rambouillet ram named Emperor later shaped the Australian Merino after his 1860 import.
Q 23Which figure introduced Merinos to Australia in 1788, bringing them from the Cape?
John MacArthur
Q 14The oldest known European wool textile, from around 1500 BC, was preserved in a bog in which country?
Denmark
Before shears were invented, probably in the Iron Age, wool was plucked out by hand or with bronze combs.
Q 15Which English city became the heart of industrialised woollens, fed by Australian wool by 1845?
Bradford
Australia's colonial economy came to depend on sheep, and its wool trade overtook Germany's by that year.
Q 16Superwash, or machine-washable, wool technology first appeared in which decade?
1970s
It works either by stripping the scales from the fibre in an acid bath or by coating the fibre with a polymer so the scales cannot lock together and shrink.
Q 17A 2007 wool suit developed with Australian merino and sold in Japan could be cleaned in what unusual way?
In the shower
It dried ready to wear within hours with no ironing, extending shower-cleaning to woven suits, trousers and skirts.
Q 18Blending wool with which synthetic fibre made body armour lighter, cheaper and better wet?
Kevlar
Kevlar alone loses about a fifth of its effectiveness when wet; wool added friction so 28 to 30 layers matched 36 layers of pure Kevlar.
Q 19The UN proclaimed which year the International Year of Natural Fibres to raise wool's profile?
2009
The General Assembly made the proclamation in December 2006, covering wool alongside cotton, silk, jute and other natural fibres.
Q 20The finest wool bale ever auctioned, in June 2008, measured how many microns?
11.6
Produced by the Hillcreston Pinehill Partnership, it fetched AU$2,690 per kilo and was exported to India.
Two years earlier the King of Spain had gifted Escurial Merinos to the Dutch government, and they thrived at the Cape Colony.
Q 24Sir Joseph Banks bought 40 Negretti Merinos in 1792 to found George III's royal flock where?
Kew
Banks had already procured two rams and four ewes via Portugal in 1787, quietly working around the Spanish export ban.
Q 25The word 'cashmere' is an anglicisation of the name of which region?
Kashmir
The Kashmir shawl reached Europe in the 19th century, and the fibre took the shawl's name with it.
Q 26Which country is the world's largest producer of raw cashmere?
China
Its output was estimated at 19,200 metric tons of hair a year in 2016, more than double second-placed Mongolia.
Q 27Cashmere comes from the fine winter undercoat of a goat; what is the coarse outer coat called?
Guard hair
The soft down is kept for textiles while the guard hair goes into brushes and other non-apparel uses.
Q 28Mohair is made from the hair of which animal?
Angora goat
Angora rabbits produce angora wool, a different fibre; the confusing shared name comes from Ankara in Turkey.
Q 29Which country supplied about 56% of the world's mohair in 2024?
South Africa
Mohair was produced exclusively in Turkey until the mid-19th century, and raw fibre first reached England around 1820.
Q 30The word 'mohair' entered English from which language, where it meant a type of haircloth?
Arabic
The original word mukhayyar literally meant 'choice', and it was adopted into English some time before 1570.