Alcoholics Anonymous
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Alcoholics Anonymous trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Alcoholics Anonymous began in 1935 with one conversation between two men who had never managed to stay sober on their own. From that meeting grew a worldwide fellowship, a best-selling book and a set of steps that many other recovery programmes have borrowed. This quiz covers the history AA members love to swap stories about: the co-founders and the people who helped them, the writing of the Big Book, the wording of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and the sayings, magazines and films that grew up around the fellowship. It is written for sober game nights, anniversary parties, conventions and Big Book study breaks, and for anyone curious about how the programme came to be. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play it straight through or print it for a room.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Ohio city, nicknamed the Rubber Capital of the World, is where Bill W. and Dr. Bob began AA?
Akron
Akron surgeon Dr. Bob became Bill W.'s first success in 1935, and the city still hosts Founders' Day each June, when thousands of AA members tour its historic sites.
Q 02Which coded phrase do cruise ship schedules use to announce AA meetings without naming the fellowship?
Friends of Bill W.
Friends of Bill W. lets members spot a meeting on a public schedule, and asking a stranger 'Are you a friend of Bill W.?' is a discreet way to find a fellow member.
Q 03Which drug did Bill W. take in medically supervised experiments from 1956, believing it might help alcoholics?
LSD
LSD let Bill W. relive, he said, the 1934 spiritual experience that had ended his drinking. Most AA members strongly opposed the experiments, and he never publicly urged others to try it.
Q 04AA co-founders Bill W. and Dr. Bob first met in Ohio, but both men were born in which New England state?
Vermont
Vermont was home to both men: Bill W. was born in East Dorset in 1895 and Dr. Bob in St. Johnsbury in 1879, yet they did not meet until both had long since moved away.
Q 05Which short verse, adopted by AA in the early 1940s, asks for the 'courage to change the things I can'?
The Serenity Prayer
The Serenity Prayer is credited to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who composed a version in the early 1930s. It spread through the YWCA before AA took it up.
Q 06Which Swiss psychiatrist told alcoholic Rowland Hazard his only chance might be a spiritual conversion, inspiring AA?
Carl Jung
Carl Jung treated Hazard in Zurich from 1926 and doubted that medicine alone could help. Hazard later got sober through a religious fellowship, and the idea was passed along to Bill W.
Q 07Which word completes the first of AA's Twelve Steps: 'We admitted we were ___ over alcohol'?
Powerless
Powerless is the admission every later step builds on, and other fellowships kept the sentence: Overeaters Anonymous simply swaps alcohol for 'food'.
Q 08Which fellowship for the families of alcoholics did Lois W., the wife of AA's Bill W., co-found in 1951?
Al-Anon
Al-Anon was founded by Lois W. and her friend Anne B. at Stepping Stones, the Wilsons' home in New York State, 16 years after AA itself began.
Q 09AA's 1939 basic text was nicknamed the Big Book because its first edition was printed using what?
Unusually thick paper
Unusually thick paper made the 1939 first edition bulky, and the nickname outlived it: the book had sold about 30 million copies by 2009.
Q 10In the recovery acronym HALT, three letters stand for hungry, angry and lonely; what does the T stand for?
Tired
Tired completes HALT, a self-check taught in rehab programmes and twelve-step meetings: each of the four states is a stressor that can threaten a person's recovery.
Q 11What is the AA term for an experienced member who helps a newcomer understand and follow the Twelve Steps?
Sponsor
Sponsor is AA's word for this guide, who should ideally have worked all twelve steps and, AA's own pamphlet suggests, be the same sex as the newcomer.
Q 12Which principle does AA's Twelfth Tradition call 'the spiritual foundation of all our traditions'?
Anonymity
Anonymity shaped even Bill W.'s public life: he turned down an honorary degree and a Time magazine cover, and obituaries gave his full name only with his prior written consent.
Q 13According to AA's Third Tradition, what is the only requirement for membership of the fellowship?
A desire to stop drinking
Q 21Which Christian movement, founded by Frank Buchman, did both Bill W. and Dr. Bob join before starting AA?
Oxford Group
Oxford Group ideas such as public 'sharing', restitution and rigorous honesty fed straight into AA's steps. Dr. Bob had attended its meetings for two years without getting sober.
Q 22Which philanthropist hosted a 1940 dinner for AA but refused it large donations, warning that money would spoil things?
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. dashed Bill W.'s dream of millions for paid missionaries and treatment centres. Bill W. later credited him with the idea of keeping AA non-professional.
Q 23Which magazine's 1941 feature by Jack Alexander helped quadruple AA's membership by the end of that year?
A desire to stop drinking is all it takes: the tradition's long form adds that any two or three alcoholics gathered for sobriety may call themselves an AA group.
Q 14AA's Step Four asks members to make a 'searching and fearless' what of themselves?
Moral inventory
Moral inventory is not a one-off: Step Ten asks members to keep taking personal inventory and, when they are wrong, to admit it promptly.
Q 15AA's Step Two says members came to believe a power greater than themselves could restore them to what?
Sanity
Sanity is what Step Two holds out, and the 'power' is left for each member to define: the very next step speaks of 'God as we understood Him'.
Q 16In AA's Step Nine, what do members make directly to people they have harmed, wherever that is possible?
Amends
Amends are prepared in Step Eight, where members list everyone they have harmed. Step Nine carries one exception: not when doing so 'would injure them or others'.
Q 17AA's Step Eleven seeks to improve 'conscious contact with God' through prayer and which other practice?
Meditation
Meditation is paired with a narrow kind of prayer: the step has members pray 'only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out'.
Q 18AA's Step Twelve opens 'Having had a spiritual ___ as the result of these steps'; which word fills the gap?
Awakening
Awakening rarely means a sudden flash: in twelve-step fellowships it usually comes slowly over time, though some members, like Bill W. in 1934, report a sudden one.
Q 19In AA's Step Five, members admit the exact nature of their wrongs to God, to themselves and to whom?
Another human being
Another human being is usually the member's guide in the programme, and US courts have not given these talks the legal privilege that protects a confession to clergy.
Q 20Which word completes the AA phrase for what members share at meetings: 'experience, strength and ___'?
Hope
Hope completes the phrase, which AA also used as the title of a 2003 book collecting personal stories that had been dropped from earlier editions of the Big Book.
Saturday Evening Post
Saturday Evening Post readers deluged AA with pleas for help after the article appeared: membership went from about 2,000 in March 1941 to 8,000 by the close of the year.
Q 24The Big Book traces AA to a 1935 talk between an Ohio physician and a New York man of which profession?
Stockbroker
Stockbroker Bill W. was in Ohio on a business venture that had collapsed, leaving him afraid he would drink again, so he went looking for another alcoholic to help.
Q 25Before co-founding AA, Dr. Bob ran his own Ohio medical practice, specialising in which field?
Colorectal surgery
Colorectal surgery was Dr. Bob's speciality, but another caseload dwarfed it: with the help of a nun, Sister Ignatia, he guided some 5,000 fellow alcoholics to recovery.
Q 26What did Bill W. give Dr. Bob on the morning of 10 June 1935, the last alcohol Dr. Bob ever drank?
A bottle of beer
A bottle of beer steadied Dr. Bob for an operation he had to perform that day. AA counts the date as its founding, since neither man drank again.
Q 27At which Ivy League college, where he graduated in 1902, did AA co-founder Dr. Bob begin drinking?
Dartmouth
Dartmouth is where, in AA's own account, drinking 'became a major activity' for Dr. Bob. As a premed student in Michigan, he later left university for a time because of it.
Q 28In AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which numbered maxim reads 'Don't take yourself too damn seriously'?
Rule 62
Rule 62 was the punchline of a group that drew up 61 rules for an over-ambitious recovery centre, watched the project collapse, then printed one more rule on a small card.
Q 29Which chapter of AA's Big Book lists the Twelve Steps and opens 'Rarely have we seen a person fail'?
How It Works
How It Works is the fifth chapter, and it admits the authors first looked for a shortcut: 'We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not.'
Q 30Lois W. was left angry and hurt when Bill W. insisted on writing which Big Book chapter himself?
To Wives
To Wives is chapter eight, and despite its voice it was written by Bill W. The only chapter he did not write was the one for employers, by his colleague Hank Parkhurst.