Before and After
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50 free Before and After trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Before and After is the word game where two answers share a word in the middle. One clue points to a film, a person or a place; a second clue points to something that begins where the first one ends. Put them together and you get a single, usually ridiculous, phrase: the novel about Holden Caulfield plus a deli loaf gives you The Catcher in the Rye Bread. The format became famous as a television puzzle category, and it is now a favourite round at pub quizzes and trivia nights. This quiz has 50 before and after trivia questions with answers. Every question gives two clues and four possible mashups, so you can work your way in from either side: know the actor and you are halfway there, know the snack and you are home. The questions start easy, with household names and everyday objects, then climb to trickier pairings drawn from history, sport, literature, music and television. Each answer comes with a short explanation and a fact about one half of the pair. It suits quiz hosts who need a ready-made before and after round, families and classrooms who enjoy wordplay, and anyone who likes a good groan. Play the questions online, or print them with the answers for your next trivia night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which before-and-after joins the star of 1984's Footloose to a plate on a diner breakfast menu?
Kevin Bacon and Eggs
Kevin Bacon and Eggs owes its second half to publicity: Edward Bernays, hired to sell more bacon, helped convince Americans that this was the true all-American breakfast.
Q 02Which before-and-after joins Pat Sajak's long-time game show to a treat with a paper slip inside?
Wheel of Fortune Cookie
Wheel of Fortune Cookie ends on a staple of Chinese restaurants in the United States that most likely began with cookies made by Japanese immigrants.
Q 03Which before-and-after joins the Roman killed on the Ides of March to a romaine and crouton dish?
Julius Caesar Salad
Julius Caesar Salad honours the wrong Caesar: the dish is credited to Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant restaurateur, who created it in Tijuana, Mexico.
Q 04Which before-and-after joins the Louvre portrait stolen in 1911 to Springfield's young saxophonist?
Mona Lisa Simpson
Mona Lisa Simpson gives Springfield's young jazz fan a painting whose worldwide fame stems partly from that theft, carried out by Vincenzo Peruggia in the name of Italian patriotism.
Q 05Which before-and-after joins the singer of 'Superstition' to the Amazon with the Lasso of Truth?
Stevie Wonder Woman
Stevie Wonder Woman ends with a heroine built for honesty: her creator, psychologist William Moulton Marston, also devised the blood pressure test that became part of the modern polygraph.
Q 06Which before-and-after joins the star of Top Gun to the car feature invented by a blind engineer?
Tom Cruise Control
Tom Cruise Control owes its second half to a bumpy ride: family lore says inventor Ralph Teetor got the idea from his lawyer, who slowed while talking and sped up while listening.
Q 07Which before-and-after joins the rhyme's climber of the water spout to Marvel's Peter Parker?
Itsy Bitsy Spider-Man
Itsy Bitsy Spider-Man nearly lost its hero: Stan Lee recalled his publisher objecting that nobody likes spiders, then allowing a tryout in a comic's final issue.
Q 08Which before-and-after joins the monarch who married Prince Albert to an American lingerie chain?
Queen Victoria's Secret
Queen Victoria's Secret is no accident: the store was named in reference to the monarch, to borrow the refinement of her era, while the 'secret' was hidden under the clothes.
Q 09Which before-and-after joins the Muppet diva who pursues Kermit to a child's coin container?
Miss Piggy Bank
Miss Piggy Bank stars a diva performed for a quarter of a century by Frank Oz, the same puppeteer George Lucas hired to bring Yoda to life.
Q 10Which before-and-after joins Mendeleev's chart of the elements to the sport nicknamed ping-pong?
Periodic Table Tennis
Periodic Table Tennis starts with a chart that Mendeleev published with gaps in it, then used to predict the properties of elements nobody had yet found.
Q 11Which before-and-after joins the band behind Rumours to a comfort food Kraft sells in a blue box?
Fleetwood Mac and Cheese
Fleetwood Mac and Cheese salutes a band that recorded Rumours while its members were breaking up with one another, then saw the album sell over 40 million copies.
Q 12Which before-and-after joins a region no light can escape to a golfer's perfect tee shot?
Black Hole in One
Black Hole in One opens with a surprisingly young term, used in print by Life and Science News magazines in 1963 and soon after by science journalist Ann Ewing.
Q 13Which before-and-after joins France's gift in New York Harbor to Philadelphia's cracked icon?
Q 21Which before-and-after joins Ted Mosby's sitcom to the winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize?
How I Met Your Mother Teresa
How I Met Your Mother Teresa ends with a laureate honoured for work 'in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress', then canonised in 2016 as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
Q 22Which before-and-after joins Rick Grimes's AMC drama to the film set at Welton Academy?
The Walking Dead Poets Society
The Walking Dead Poets Society closes with a film whose title club is a band of schoolboys who sneak off campus to a cave to read poetry.
Q 23Which before-and-after joins Marvel's shield-throwing soldier to Simon Cowell's NBC variety contest?
Statue of Liberty Bell
Statue of Liberty Bell ends on a bell that first cracked when it was rung after arriving in Philadelphia, so two local workmen had to recast it twice.
Q 14Which before-and-after joins the home of the Whopper to the ape atop the Empire State Building?
Burger King Kong
Burger King Kong starts with a chain that trades as Hungry Jack's in Australia, because a restaurant in Adelaide already held the Burger King name.
Q 15Which before-and-after joins the children's show that made Elmo a star to Capcom's arcade brawler?
Sesame Street Fighter
Sesame Street Fighter throws in a series whose second game was the best-selling arcade title since the golden age, bringing an arcade renaissance in the early 1990s.
Q 16Which before-and-after joins the icon of Paris's 1889 World's Fair to the home of the Crown Jewels?
Eiffel Tower of London
Eiffel Tower of London begins with a structure designed to be easily dismantled, which was spared demolition once it proved useful for radio telegraphy.
Q 17Which before-and-after joins Gotham City's Dynamic Duo to the outlaw archer of Sherwood Forest?
Batman and Robin Hood
Batman and Robin Hood is a family reunion: the sidekick's name and the medieval look of his first costume were inspired by the Sherwood outlaw.
Q 18Which before-and-after joins Minnie's big-eared Disney sweetheart to a chain-reaction board game?
Mickey Mouse Trap
Mickey Mouse Trap closes with a game in which players first cooperate to build a contraption in the style of a Rube Goldberg machine, then try to catch one another with it.
Q 19Which before-and-after joins a fairy tale's straw, stick and brick builders to sausages in pastry?
Three Little Pigs in a Blanket
Three Little Pigs in a Blanket recalls the Disney cartoon whose song 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?' became something of an anthem of the Great Depression.
Q 20Which before-and-after joins the singer of 'Rocket Man' to a maker of green and yellow tractors?
Elton John Deere
Elton John Deere hitches a singer born Reginald Dwight to a firm founded by a blacksmith, who invented the first commercially successful steel plow.
Captain America's Got Talent
Captain America's Got Talent starts with a hero shown punching Hitler on a comic cover, a real-life villain his creators chose because everyone in the free world hated him.
Q 24Which before-and-after joins the singer of 'Billie Jean' to an American pioneer of drip painting?
Michael Jackson Pollock
Michael Jackson Pollock ends with a painter who laid his canvases on the studio floor and poured household paint over them; Time magazine dubbed him 'Jack the Dripper'.
Q 25Which before-and-after joins Dickens's orphan who asks for more to an Isley Brothers hit the Beatles covered?
Oliver Twist and Shout
Oliver Twist and Shout finishes with a song the Beatles caught in one go: a second take was abandoned because Lennon's hoarse voice had nothing left.
Q 26Which before-and-after joins a Milan-born carmaker to Shakespeare's tale of Montagues and Capulets?
Alfa Romeo and Juliet
Alfa Romeo and Juliet starts with an acronym and a surname: ALFA stood for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, and Nicola Romeo took charge of the company in 1915.
Q 27Which before-and-after joins the monument on the US five-dollar bill to a late-May holiday?
Lincoln Memorial Day
Lincoln Memorial Day ends with a holiday that grew from the custom of decorating the graves of Civil War soldiers with flowers, and was long known as Decoration Day.
Q 28Which before-and-after joins Colonel Sanders's chain to a stop-motion film about escaping hens?
Kentucky Fried Chicken Run
Kentucky Fried Chicken Run opens with a founder whose title was an honour, not an army rank: the state's governor commissioned Harland Sanders as a Kentucky Colonel in 1935.
Q 29Which before-and-after joins the 'Folsom Prison Blues' singer to a saloon's anti-theft invention?
Johnny Cash Register
Johnny Cash Register rings up a machine born of suspicion: its Ohio inventor believed his bar staff were pocketing customers' money, and later sold a model called the Incorruptible Cashier.
Q 30Which before-and-after joins the Frosted Flakes mascot to the runaway winner of the 1997 Masters?
Tony the Tiger Woods
Tony the Tiger Woods ends with a golfer whose nickname honours his father's friend, a South Vietnamese colonel who was also known as Tiger.