70 free Acronym trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
61 free acronym trivia questions with answers. Half the words you use every day started life as capital letters. This acronym trivia quiz asks what they actually stand for: NASA, scuba, laser, radar and sonar; UNICEF, UNESCO, OPEC and NATO; GIF, JPEG, PDF, HTML, URL, USB and GPS; ZIP codes, PINs, SIM cards and CAPTCHAs; and the brands, from IKEA, BMW and 3M to GEICO, Alcoa, Nabisco, Haribo and M&M's. It also separates fact from folklore: why Wi-Fi is not really 'wireless fidelity', what Hormel will and won't say about Spam, the Tom Swift novel behind the Taser, why SOS was chosen, and the backronyms people invent for Adidas, wiki, Yahoo and pan-pan. Internet shorthand gets a round too: LOL, YOLO, TL;DR and SNAFU. About a third of the questions are gimmes, a third need a good memory, and the rest will surprise most people. Every answer is checked against a cited source shown under the question.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the 'A' in NASA stand for?
Aeronautics
National Aeronautics and Space Administration; it runs ten field centres from its Washington headquarters.
Q 02'Scuba' began as an acronym for what?
Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
It is now an 'anacronym', a word most people no longer recognise as an acronym.
Q 03The word 'laser' stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of what?
Radiation
Theodore Maiman built the first one in 1960 at Hughes Research Laboratories.
Q 04Which organisation coined the term RADAR in 1940?
The United States Navy
Radio detection and ranging; like scuba it has since become a plain lowercase noun.
Q 05What does the 'so' in 'sonar' stand for?
Sound
Sound navigation and ranging; passive sonar listens, active sonar pings.
Q 06UNICEF originally stood for the United Nations International Children's what?
Emergency Fund
It has been officially the United Nations Children's Fund since 1953 but kept the old letters.
Q 07What does the 'S' in UNESCO stand for?
Scientific
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; it has 194 member states.
Q 08OPEC was founded in 1960 in which city?
Baghdad
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries began with Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
Q 09GIF stands for Graphics Interchange what?
Format
CompuServe's Steve Wilhite released it in June 1987; he insisted it be pronounced with a soft g.
Q 10The letters JPEG come from the name of what?
A committee of experts
The Joint Photographic Experts Group; the format is a lossy compression method.
Q 11PDF stands for Portable Document what?
Format
Adobe developed it in 1993 on top of PostScript; it is now ISO 32000.
Q 12What does the 'M' in HTML stand for?
Markup
Hypertext Markup Language defines the content and structure of web pages.
Q 13URL stands for Uniform Resource what?
Locator
Colloquially a web address.
Q 14Who came up with the name Wi-Fi?
Q 21Why is the phrase 'PIN number' considered redundant?
The final letter already means that
Personal identification number; the N is 'number', so 'ATM machine' commits the same sin.
Q 22IKEA is an acronym built from Ingvar Kamprad's initials plus what?
His family farm and hometown
Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd; he founded the company at 17 in 1943 as a mail-order business.
Q 23The two Ms in M&M's stand for Forrest Mars and whom?
Bruce Murrie
Murrie was the son of the president of rival Hershey; the candy launched in 1941.
The brand consultancy Interbrand
It was picked from ten proposals as catchier than 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'; whether it means 'wireless fidelity' is disputed.
Q 15CAPTCHA is a contrived acronym for a Completely Automated Public what?
Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum and colleagues coined it in 2003.
Q 16ZIP in 'ZIP Code' stands for what?
Zone Improvement Plan
The name was chosen to suggest mail zipping along faster.
Q 17The name Taser is a loose acronym inspired by which children's book?
Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle
Inventor Jack Cover, a NASA researcher, named it in 1974 after his childhood hero.
Q 18CARE, of CARE Package fame, originally stood for the Cooperative for American Remittances to where?
Europe
The first CARE Package went out in 1946; the name now expands to Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere.
Q 19SIM in SIM card stands for what?
Subscriber Identity Module
It stores your IMSI number and its key to authenticate you on the network.
Q 20What does LED stand for?
Light-emitting diode
Electrons recombining with holes in a semiconductor release photons.
Q 24What did 3M originally stand for?
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing
It now makes more than 60,000 products from Post-its to respirators.
Q 25BMW is short for Bayerische Motoren Werke, meaning what?
Bavarian Motor Works
The name arrived in 1917 when Rapp Motorenwerke rebranded.
Q 26GEICO stands for what?
Government Employees Insurance Company
It is the third-largest U.S. auto insurer, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland.
Q 27What is the truth about the name Spam?
Hormel says only a few ex-executives know its meaning
Ken Daigneau won a naming contest in 1937; 'spiced ham' is the popular guess.
Q 28The name Yahoo was later reinterpreted as an acronym for what?
Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle
Jerry Yang and David Filo's site began as 'Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web' in 1994.
Q 29The name Lego comes from a Danish phrase meaning what?
Play well
Ole Kirk Christiansen adopted 'leg godt' in 1934, years before the plastic brick.
Q 30What does MASH stand for in M*A*S*H?
Mobile Army Surgical Hospital
Robert Altman's 1970 film is set at one during the Korean War.