Antigua and Barbuda Trivia
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48 free Antigua and Barbuda trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Antigua and Barbuda is two very different islands and a rock: Antigua with its 365 beaches, English Harbour and cricket, Barbuda with its lagoon, pink sand and the world's largest colony of magnificent frigatebirds, and uninhabited Redonda with its guano miners and its literary kings. This quiz covers the country from the Arawaks and Columbus's naming in 1493 through sugar, slavery and Prince Klaas's plot, the Codrington family's 200-year lease of Barbuda, Nelson's years in the dockyard, independence on 1 November 1981 and the four decades of the Bird family. The modern questions take in Gaston Browne, the Allen Stanford fraud, citizenship by investment, Hurricane Irma's evacuation of every Barbudan in 2017 and the fight over communal land. Sport and culture are here too: Viv Richards's 56-ball century, Curtly Ambrose's 7 for 1, Brian Lara's 400 at the Recreation Ground, Sailing Week, Carnival, fungee and pepperpot, the black pineapple and the flag with its rising sun. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its islands, sites and people, so the dates and figures will hold up.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Antigua and Barbuda's low-lying shape comes mainly from which kind of rock rather than volcanic activity?
Limestone
Limestone shaped both low-lying islands more than any volcano did, yet the country's highest point is the remnant of a volcanic crater among the hills of Antigua's southwest.
Q 02What is the capital and most populous city of Antigua and Barbuda?
St. John's
St. John's grew up around its harbour on Antigua's northwest coast, the islands' main port, which is why it remains by far the country's largest town, well ahead of runner-up All Saints.
Q 03Barbuda's sole settlement is named after which family, who leased the whole island in the 1680s?
The Codringtons
The Codringtons leased Barbuda from the English crown and ran it as a larder for their plantations on Antigua, raising livestock and provisions there.
Q 04The names Antigua and Barbuda are Spanish for what?
Ancient and bearded
Ancient and bearded: antigua is Spanish for 'ancient' or 'old' and barbuda for 'bearded', a name thought to point either to the beards of the island's men or to its bearded fig trees.
Q 05Which explorer sighted Antigua in 1493 and is credited with naming it after Santa María la Antigua in Seville?
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus named the island as he sailed past on his second voyage, yet it was 1632, almost 140 years later, before English colonists founded the first lasting European settlement there.
Q 06Arawak farmers who settled Antigua long before Europeans arrived are credited with introducing which prized fruit?
The black pineapple
The black pineapple came with Arawak farmers who also planted corn, sweet potatoes and cotton, and the unusually sweet variety is such a point of pride that a pineapple crowns the national coat of arms.
Q 07English settlers who founded Antigua's first lasting colony in 1632 sailed over from which nearby island?
St Kitts
St Kitts colonists crossed over in 1632, and apart from a brief French occupation that a 1667 treaty reversed, Antigua then stayed in British hands until independence in 1981.
Q 08Conservationists brought barren Redonda back to life from 2016 by removing which two invasive animals?
Rats and goats
Rats and goats had stripped the island to a moonscape, and once they were gone greenery and rare lizards surged back without anyone planting a thing, earning Redonda protected status in 2023.
Q 09Betty's Hope, now an open-air museum with twin windmill towers, was Antigua's first large plantation growing what?
Sugar
Sugar cane was crushed between rollers in the estate's two stone mills, which worked side by side to keep up with the harvest, and one has since been given new sails and restored to working order.
Q 10Which enslaved leader planned a 1736 revolt and had proposed making Antigua an independent kingdom?
Prince Klaas
Prince Klaas, also recorded as Court or Kwaku Takyi, planned the 1736 uprising; the plot was uncovered and he was broken on the wheel, and Antigua and Barbuda now honours him as a national hero.
Q 11Nelson's Dockyard in English Harbour, a restored Royal Navy yard that now hosts yacht regattas, dates from which era?
Georgian
Georgian: the navy built the yard in the 18th century and Nelson, posted there from 1784 to 1787, called it an 'infernal hole'; closed in 1889 and left to rot, it was restored from the 1950s.
Q 12From 1967 until independence in 1981, Britain still controlled Antigua's defence and which other area of government?
Foreign affairs
Foreign affairs and defence stayed with London while Antigua ran everything else, and in those years Barbuda grew a separatist movement of its own, pushing to break away before independence arrived.
Q 13Vere Bird, Antigua and Barbuda's first prime minister, rose to power as the leader of what?
Q 21Barbuda's great lagoon holds a huge nesting colony of which bird, whose courting males puff out a red throat pouch?
Magnificent frigatebird
Magnificent frigatebirds nest in the lagoon's mangroves in their thousands and bully other seabirds into giving up their catch, a pirate's habit to match their other name, the man-o'-war bird.
Q 22What does the sun on Antigua and Barbuda's flag symbolise?
A new era
The dawn of a new era was the message because the flag first flew on 27 February 1967, the day Antigua became self-governing; the design had beaten some 600 rival entries in a public contest.
Q 23On Antigua and Barbuda's flag, the yellow, blue and white together stand for the sun, the sea and what?
Sand
A trade union
A trade union made him: he became president of the Antigua Trades and Labour Union in 1943, and the Labour Party it set up in 1946 kept him and then his son Lester in office for most of the years to 2004.
Q 14Vere Bird Jr. lost his cabinet post in 1990 after guns shipped to Antigua from which country reached Colombian traffickers?
Israel
Israel sold the guns to Antigua, a public inquiry under a British lawyer traced them on to Colombia's drug barons, and the prime minister dropped his eldest son from the cabinet while still insisting he was innocent.
Q 15Who became prime minister after leading the Labour Party to victory in 2014?
Gaston Browne
Gaston Browne ousted Baldwin Spencer's United Progressive Party in 2014, won again in 2018 and 2023, and in 2022 announced plans for a referendum on turning the country into a republic.
Q 16Which Texan financier's Antigua-based bank collapsed in 2009 amid US charges of a multibillion-dollar fraud?
Allen Stanford
Allen Stanford bankrolled Caribbean cricket, but in 2012 a US court found he had run a $7 billion Ponzi scheme through the bank and jailed him for 110 years.
Q 17Which 2017 hurricane wrecked Barbuda so badly that every resident was evacuated to Antigua?
Irma
Irma hit Barbuda at Category 5 strength in September 2017 and damaged about 95% of its buildings, so with another storm on the way the whole population of roughly 1,800 was shipped to Antigua.
Q 18After a 2017 hurricane emptied Barbuda, the government moved to end the island's long-standing system of what?
Communal land ownership
Communal land ownership, written into law in 2007, holds all of Barbuda in common for its people; the prime minister proposed letting residents buy their plots outright, which opponents called a land grab.
Q 19Boggy Peak, Antigua's highest point, was officially renamed what for several years before the old name returned?
Mount Obama
Mount Obama was unveiled on the US president's birthday in 2009 as a symbol of black achievement, but the next government's Cabinet restored the name Boggy Peak in 2016.
Q 20Redonda, Antigua and Barbuda's uninhabited third island, was once mined for what?
Guano
Guano: seabird droppings were dug from Redonda and shipped off as fertiliser through the late 19th century, until the outbreak of the First World War ended the digging and the workers left.
Sand completes the trio of sun, sea and sand, a nod to the beaches that draw the islands' tourists, while the flag's black stands for the soil and African heritage and its blue for hope.
Q 24Antigua and Barbuda's Eastern Caribbean dollar has been pegged since 1976 to which currency?
US dollar
The US dollar has anchored it since July 1976 at a fixed EC$2.70; before that the currency was tied to the pound sterling, at EC$4.80 to the pound.
Q 25Which pairing is widely described as the national dish of Antigua and Barbuda?
Fungee and pepperpot
Fungee and pepperpot share a plate: fungee, cornmeal and okra stirred stiff like polenta, probably owes its name to Angola, where a similar mash is called funge.
Q 26Which beer, launched as Antigua's own lager, shares its name with a local nickname for the island itself?
Wadadli
Wadadli is what Antiguans call their island, though the older Carib name was Waladli; the altered spelling is said to have caught on through a calypso by the singer Short Shirt, and the brewery took it for its flagship.
Q 27Sir Viv Richards scored a 56-ball Test century in Antigua in 1986 against which team?
England
England arrived already 4-0 down, and Richards, playing on his home island, reached 100 in 56 balls, then the fastest Test century ever, as West Indies completed a 5-0 sweep known as the 'blackwash'.
Q 28Antiguan batting great Viv Richards was known by which nickname?
Master Blaster
Master Blaster suited a batsman who faced the fastest bowlers of his era without ever wearing a helmet, yet made 8,540 Test runs with 24 centuries.
Q 29Antiguan fast bowler Curtly Ambrose tore through which side with a spell of seven wickets for one run in 1993?
Australia
Australia's first innings fell apart at Perth as Ambrose took seven wickets for one run in 32 balls, a burst that won the deciding Test and with it the series.
Q 30Brian Lara made Test cricket's first score of 400 at which Antiguan venue in 2004?
The Recreation Ground
The Recreation Ground in the capital was already Lara's stage: he made a then-record 375 there in 1994, lost the record to Matthew Hayden's 380 in 2003, and won it back on the same ground months later.