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50 free Biscuit trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Britain takes its biscuits seriously enough to have argued in a tax tribunal over whether a Jaffa Cake is one, and to have handed a physicist an award for working out how to dunk. Every biscuit in the tin has a story, and most are stranger than you would guess. The 50 questions cover the big makers and where they started, the origins of the digestive, the custard cream, the Bourbon, the Jammie Dodger and the Wagon Wheel, the nicknames biscuits picked up along the way, the science of dunking, and a handful of favourites from Australia, New Zealand, India and the Continent. It suits a pub quiz, a tea break or a family round, with instant answers and a one-line explanation for each. Play on your phone or print it for the table.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Tunnock's treat did the RAF ban from V-bomber cockpits in 1965 after one burst on an instrument panel?
Teacake
The Teacake was a favourite ration of nuclear-deterrent crews until an unwrapped one expanded in the thin air and exploded; the RAF only lifted the ban in 2025 after altitude-chamber tests.
Q 02During the Second World War the major stones of the Crown Jewels were hidden in a tin that had held which biscuit?
Bath Oliver
A Bath Oliver tin was chosen so the gems could be grabbed and hidden fast if Germany invaded; the hard, dry biscuit itself was devised by physician William Oliver around 1750.
Q 03The Bourbon, the chocolate sandwich biscuit created by Peek Freans of Bermondsey, takes its name from what?
A dynasty of French kings
A dynasty of French kings, the House of Bourbon that also ruled Spain, lent the biscuit its name, not the American whiskey most people assume.
Q 04In the Armada year of 1588, a Royal Navy sailor's ration was a pound of ship's biscuit and a gallon of what?
Beer
Beer, a gallon a day, was safer than water on a long voyage, and the rock-hard biscuit was often softened by dunking it in whatever liquid was to hand.
Q 05Which currant-filled biscuit, launched by Peek Freans in 1861, is nicknamed the 'squashed fly' biscuit?
Garibaldi
The Garibaldi honours an Italian general who visited Tyneside in 1854; its flattened currants, pressed between two thin layers of dough, look enough like flies to earn the nickname.
Q 06Jammie Dodgers, the jam-filled shortcake biscuits baked in Llantarnam, are named after a character from which comic?
The Beano
The Beano's Roger the Dodger gave the biscuit its name; in 2009 it was Britain's top children's biscuit brand, yet adults ate 40% of them.
Q 07Wagon Wheels, the marshmallow sandwich biscuits of 1948, were named to cash in on which craze then filling the media?
The Wild West
The Wild West was everywhere in post-war films and comics, so Garry Weston's round biscuit became a 'Weston Wagon Wheel'; the recipe came from inventor William Peschardt, who sold him the patent.
Q 08Which oat biscuit did McVitie's launch in 1985, adding a chocolate-coated version two years later?
Hobnob
The Hobnob, a flapjack-digestive hybrid of rolled oats, sold so fast that the chocolate version followed in 1987; its ancestor was a Victorian bake called the Colchester Priory Biscuit.
Q 09The baroque swirls stamped on a custard cream are a Victorian-era depiction of which plant?
Ferns
Ferns were a Victorian obsession, and the ornate pattern has outlived the craze; a 2007 poll of 7,000 Britons put the custard cream top as the nation's favourite biscuit.
Q 10In 1876 Huntley & Palmers advertised digestive biscuits for sale alongside indigestion powder in which kind of shop?
Chemists
Chemists stocked them because the digestive was devised in 1839 by two Scottish doctors as a remedy; John Montgomerie of Scotland even won a US patent for one in 1890.
Q 11In 1996 United Biscuits took Asda to court over which own-label lookalike of its Penguin bar?
Puffin
Puffin bars were ruled in 1997 to be passing themselves off as Penguins, though the judge found Asda had not infringed the trademark; every Penguin wrapper still carries a joke and a penguin fact.
Q 12Which Berkshire town, home of Huntley & Palmers, was nicknamed 'biscuit town', with its football team the 'biscuit men'?
Reading
Reading owed the nickname to a works that employed over 5,000 people and was the world's largest biscuit firm by 1900; the Palmer family gave the town Palmer Park.
Q 13McVitie's traces its name to a biscuit maker established in 1830 on Rose Street in which city?
Edinburgh
Q 21The Empire biscuit, Scottish jam-filled shortbread under icing, shed which nationality from its name in the Great War?
German
German biscuit became an awkward name after 1914, so bakers rebranded it for the Empire; it descends from the Austrian Linzer Augen, which has cut-out 'eyes' in the top layer instead of icing.
Q 22New Zealand's Afghan biscuit, iced with chocolate and topped with half a walnut, gets its crunch from which cereal?
Cornflakes
Cornflakes in a butter-rich, low-sugar cocoa dough provide the crunch; an identical 'Chocolate Cornflakes' recipe ran in the Timaru Herald a year before the name Afghan appeared in 1934.
Q 23In the United States the word 'biscuit' means a fluffy quick bread closest to which British bake?
A scone
Edinburgh's Rose Street shop grew into McVitie & Price, whose Gorgie works ran until 1969, when production moved to England.
Q 14The Jacob's biscuit factory in Dublin was among the buildings seized by rebels during which event of 1916?
The Easter Rising
The Easter Rising garrison held the biscuit works, one of several prominent buildings occupied; the firm had begun as a small bread and sea-biscuit bakery and first made cream crackers around 1885.
Q 15Which Jacob's bar ran the 1970s jingle 'If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our…'?
Club
Club started out as the Club Milk in Dublin just before the First World War, advertised with playing-card clubs, each bar wrapped in foil and then paper.
Q 16Bristol physicist Len Fisher's work on the best way to dunk a biscuit earned him which tongue-in-cheek award in 1999?
Ig Nobel Prize
The Ig Nobel Prize for Physics went to Fisher, who was taken aback by the media frenzy and put journalists' interest in Washburn's equation down to a 'hunger for accessible science'.
Q 17Speculaas, the spiced Low Countries biscuit, is traditionally eaten around whose early-December feast day?
Saint Nicholas
Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas in Dutch, gives the season its name, and a speculaas 'suitor's doll' was once handed over as a declaration of love during the festivities.
Q 18Which Indian biscuit did a 2011 Nielsen survey rank the world's best-selling biscuit brand?
Parle-G
Parle-G came out of the Mumbai suburb of Vile Parle, where Parle Products started baking biscuits in 1939; the G stood for glucose until a later slogan recast it as 'Genius'.
Q 19The Malted Milk biscuit, first baked by Elkes of Uttoxeter in 1924, usually carries an embossed picture of which animal?
A cow
A cow, often flanked by two milk churns, advertises the milk in the recipe; the biscuit also comes chocolate-coated and as a vanilla cream sandwich.
Q 20The rows of tiny holes punched into a Bourbon biscuit are there to do what while it bakes?
Let steam escape
The holes let steam escape so the thin chocolate biscuit does not crack or break in the oven; the biscuit was created by Peek Freans of Bermondsey.
A scone is the nearest British match, which is why Americans say 'cookie' and 'cracker' for what Britain calls biscuits; Canadians sometimes call the bread a 'tea biscuit' to tell them apart.
Q 24Carr's of Carlisle lost which honour for its water biscuits in 2012, put down to 'changing tastes' at the palace?
Its royal warrant
Its royal warrant had been on the packaging since Jonathan Dodgson Carr won one in 1841, so the firm promptly swapped the royal arms for the coat of arms of Carlisle.
Q 25Which rival, sued by McVitie's in 1991 over lemon-and-lime Jaffa Cakes, then lent experts to McVitie's VAT tribunal?
Burton's
Burton's won the packaging case, since the only distinctive element was the McVitie's logo it had not copied, then months later helped prove to the taxman that Jaffa Cakes are cakes.
Q 26In 2017 McVitie's shrank a standard pack of Jaffa Cakes from 12 to how many?
10
Ten per pack became the standard, with 20, 30 and 40 sizes alongside; each cake is three layers, a Genoise sponge base, orange jam and a chocolate top, about 54 mm across.
Q 27Roughly how many packets of McVitie's chocolate digestives are eaten in the UK each year, by the company's own count?
71 million
Over 71 million packets a year works out at 52 biscuits every second; the chocolate version dates from 1925, when it launched as the Chocolate Homewheat Digestive.
Q 28Fox's Biscuits, maker of Party Rings and Rocky bars, began in 1853 in a terraced house in which Yorkshire town?
Batley
Batley baker Michael Spedding sold 'eatables' at northern feasts and fairs from 17 Whitaker Street; the firm that grew from his bakehouse was bought by Ferrero for £246 million in 2020.
Q 29Arnott's, the Australian firm behind Tim Tams, opened its original bakery in 1865 in which New South Wales city?
Newcastle
Newcastle's 1865 bakery grew into a company that still bakes almost everything in Australia; Pepperidge Farm began importing Tim Tams to the US in 2008 under the slogan 'Australia's Favorite Cookie'.
Q 30In Spain, which plain biscuit is traditionally laid on top of a bowl of natillas custard?
Marie
A Marie biscuit, round and embossed with its own name, is also eaten in South Africa sandwiched with Marmite or condensed milk, a habit dating from Bakers Biscuits taking it up in 1898.