Caribbean Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
This Caribbean trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and covers the whole region, not just the beach brochure version. You will meet the largest island and the smallest nation, the volcano that buried a capital, the sea's deepest trench, the country founded by a slave revolt, and the tiny island that two European powers have shared since 1648. The questions run from easy (which island is home to Kingston and Blue Mountain coffee?) to genuinely hard (which 1968 single named an entire genre?), so it works for a pub quiz round, a classroom geography unit or a pre-cruise warm-up. Music, food, sport, politics and natural history all get a turn. Every answer was checked against a primary reference page and each question carries the sentence that supports it, so you can trust the answer key when someone at the table argues.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cuba, Hispaniola and Jamaica belong to which group of Caribbean islands?
Greater Antilles
Greater Antilles. The name sets the big islands apart from the Lesser Antilles, the arc of small islands that curves from Puerto Rico down towards the coast of Venezuela.
Q 02What is the capital city of Jamaica?
Kingston
Kingston. It was settled by survivors of the 1692 earthquake that wrecked Port Royal across the harbour, and it took over from Spanish Town as the capital in 1872.
Q 03The island of Hispaniola is shared by Haiti and which other country?
Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic. French settlers took over the island's western end, which Spain gave up to France in 1697, so the west became Haiti while the larger east stayed Spanish-speaking.
Q 04Which music genre originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s?
Reggae
Reggae grew out of ska and rocksteady in Jamaica around 1968, slowing the tempo and pushing the bass forward; Bob Marley and the Wailers carried it worldwide in the 1970s.
Q 05Rum is distilled from the juice or molasses of which plant?
Sugarcane
Sugarcane. Molasses is the syrup left behind when sugar is crystallised out of cane juice, so Caribbean sugar plantations could turn a by-product into rum.
Q 06What name did Columbus give the island where he first landed in the Americas in October 1492?
San Salvador
San Salvador. The Lucayans living there called it Guanahani, and scholars are divided over which island it was; the one on the map as San Salvador was Watling's Island until the 1920s.
Q 07Which Caribbean country won its independence in 1804 after a successful revolt by enslaved people?
Haiti
Haiti. The rising that began in 1791 defeated an army sent by Napoleon, yet the United States did not officially recognise the new country until 1862.
Q 08What is the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago?
Steelpan
Steelpan. It was first hammered out of oil drums in the poor districts around Port of Spain in the 1930s, and in 2024 the government moved to put it on the coat of arms in place of Columbus's three ships.
Q 09Which Caribbean country's flag shows a nutmeg?
Grenada
Grenada. The nutmeg in the hoist stands for its name as the Isle of Spice: sugar was once the island's main crop, but nutmeg and other spices took over as the sugar estates declined.
Q 10Which island became a republic on 30 November 2021, replacing the monarchy with a ceremonial president?
Barbados
Barbados. Sandra Mason, until then the Queen's governor-general, was sworn in as president at a midnight ceremony in Bridgetown watched by the then Prince Charles, and Rihanna was declared a national hero.
Q 11The deepest point of the Caribbean Sea, more than 7,000 metres down, lies in which undersea feature?
Cayman Trough
Cayman Trough. It runs between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, and in 2010 a British expedition found the world's deepest known volcanic vents on its floor, about 5 km down.
Q 12Trinidad is home to the world's largest natural deposit of which substance?
Asphalt
Asphalt from Pitch Lake, near La Brea in southwest Trinidad, has been dug commercially since the 19th century; Sir Walter Raleigh used it to caulk his ships in 1595.
Q 13Which island group's capital is Nassau, on New Providence?
The Bahamas
The Bahamas. Pirates such as Blackbeard used the islands as a base until Woodes Rogers, the first royal governor and a former privateer himself, drove them out in 1718.
Q 21Saint Lucia changed hands 14 times between Britain and France, earning a nickname taken from which figure of Greek myth?
Helen of Troy
Helen of Troy. Like the woman the Greeks and Trojans went to war over, the 'Helen of the West Indies' was fought for again and again until the British took permanent possession in 1814.
Q 22Which Saint Lucian poet won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature?
Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott. His 1990 epic Omeros moves the heroes of Homer's Iliad to the Caribbean, and he shares both a birthday, 23 January, and a birthplace, Castries, with the island's other Nobel winner, the economist Arthur Lewis.
Q 23Nelson's Dockyard, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2016, is on which island?
Antigua
Q 14The West Indies won the first two World Cups, in 1975 and 1979, in which sport?
Cricket
Cricket. Captain Clive Lloyd's hundred won the 1975 final and Viv Richards's unbeaten 138 the next, both at Lord's, but India upset them there in a third straight final in 1983.
Q 15Pico Duarte, the Caribbean's highest peak, rises in which mountain range?
Cordillera Central
Cordillera Central. It lifts Pico Duarte above 3,000 metres, yet the same country also holds the lowest point in the Caribbean, the salt lake Enriquillo, some 46 metres below sea level.
Q 16Which Jamaican mountain range gives its name to a world-famous coffee?
Blue Mountains
Blue Mountains. Most of the crop is exported to Japan, and the range also holds Jamaica's highest point, Blue Mountain Peak, at 2,256 metres.
Q 17The 1902 eruption of Mont Pelée destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre on which French island?
Martinique
Martinique. The blast killed nearly all of Saint-Pierre's 30,000 or so people within minutes; one of the very few survivors was a prisoner in an underground cell, and Fort-de-France took over as the chief town.
Q 18The Soufrière Hills volcano destroyed Plymouth, the capital of which British territory?
Montserrat
Montserrat. The volcano woke in 1995 after centuries of quiet and buried Plymouth in 1997; more than half the islanders left, many for Britain, and the government moved north to Brades.
Q 19Boiling Lake, the world's second-largest hot lake, is on which Caribbean island?
Dominica
Dominica. The lake is a flooded fumarole, a volcanic vent that keeps the water near 90C at its edges, and reaching it takes a hike of about three hours each way through the Valley of Desolation.
Q 20Which is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere by both area and population?
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Kitts and Nevis. It covers just 261 square kilometres and nearly shrank further: in 1998 about 62% of Nevis voters backed leaving the federation, short of the two-thirds required.
Antigua's English Harbour shelters the Georgian naval yard, named for Horatio Nelson, who was stationed there from 1784 to 1787 enforcing the Navigation Acts against American traders.
Q 24What is the national dish of Jamaica?
Ackee and saltfish
Ackee and saltfish pairs the boiled yellow arils of the ackee fruit with salted cod; unripe ackee is poisonous, so only fruit that has opened naturally is cooked.
Q 25Blue Curaçao, the cocktail liqueur, gets its flavour from the dried peel of what kind of fruit?
Bitter orange
Bitter orange. The island's laraha descends from oranges the Spanish planted in 1527; the arid climate left the fruit too bitter to eat, but planters later found that its sun-dried peel was wonderfully fragrant.
Q 26Willemstad is the capital of which Dutch Caribbean island?
Curaçao
Curaçao. The Dutch West India Company courted Jewish settlers from Brazil in the 1650s to populate the island, and the synagogue their community consecrated in Willemstad in 1732 is the oldest in continuous use in the Americas.
Q 27Legend says Saint Martin's French-Dutch border was settled by what kind of contest?
A walking race
A walking race. A Frenchman and a Dutchman supposedly set off around the coast in opposite directions, and tellings that blame the Dutchman's gin or rum explain why the French side came out larger.
Q 28Philipsburg is the capital of which part of the Dutch Caribbean?
Sint Maarten
Sint Maarten. It became a country within the Dutch kingdom on 10 October 2010, when the Netherlands Antilles were dissolved, and jets landing at its airport pass so low over Maho Beach that plane-watching is a tourist draw.
Q 29Which island left the Netherlands Antilles in 1986 to become a separate country within the Dutch kingdom?
Aruba
Aruba. The deal pencilled in full independence for 1996, but the plan was shelved at Aruba's own request in 1990, leaving it an autonomous country under the Dutch crown.
Q 30Under the 1903 lease for Guantánamo Bay, the US agreed to pay Cuba how much rent a year?
$2,000
$2,000. The rent was payable in US gold coin, and a 1934 treaty keeps the lease running until both governments agree to end it or the navy abandons the base, so Cuba cannot cancel it alone.