Chile Trivia
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60 free Chile trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
58 free Chile trivia questions with answers. Chile is 4,300 km long and rarely more than a couple of hours' drive wide, and it packs the driest desert on Earth, the biggest earthquake ever measured, a Polynesian island of stone giants and two Nobel-winning poets into that strip. This Chile trivia quiz covers all of it. Fifty-eight questions move from geography (the Atacama, Ojos del Salado, the Juan Fernández islands, the Antarctic claim) through the Mapuche, Pedro de Valdivia and the founding of Santiago, the road to independence with O'Higgins and San Martín, the War of the Pacific, the 1973 coup, the 1988 plebiscite that ended Pinochet, and the twenty-first century of Bachelet, Boric, the 33 miners and the constitutional votes. Then it turns to copper and Codelco, wine and salmon, Neruda, Mistral and Isabel Allende, the cueca, Colo-Colo, Marcelo Ríos and the two Copa América titles. About a third of the questions are ones any traveller or geography fan will get; the rest reward people who know the country well. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia and reference pages before it went in.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Chile's northernmost city, Arica, lies just south of the border with which country?
Peru
Peru. Chile seized Arica from Peru in the War of the Pacific, and a 1929 treaty between the two countries fixed the land border just north of the city.
Q 02Which South American desert is the world's driest non-polar desert?
Atacama
Atacama. Its soils are so dry and nearly lifeless that scientists use the desert as a testing ground for Mars mission instruments.
Q 03Which peak is both the world's highest volcano and Chile's highest point?
Nevado Ojos del Salado
Nevado Ojos del Salado. The air around it is so dry that, despite the peak's great height, snow covers it mainly in winter.
Q 04Chile's Antarctic claim overlaps those of Argentina and which other country?
Britain
Britain. All three claims overlap on the Antarctic Peninsula, and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty froze them rather than choosing between them.
Q 05Which sailor, marooned on Chile's Juan Fernández Islands for four years, is thought to have inspired Robinson Crusoe?
Alexander Selkirk
Alexander Selkirk. He asked to be put ashore because he feared his ship was unseaworthy, and that ship later sank.
Q 06What is Chile's national flower?
The copihue
The copihue. Overpicking left it in grave danger of extinction, so in 1971 Chile banned cutting, uprooting and selling wild copihues.
Q 07The pudu, found in Chile's southern forests, is a small kind of what animal?
Deer
Deer. Pumas are its main natural predator, and domestic dogs also kill pudus and pass parasites on to them.
Q 08Which ocean current makes Chile's coastal waters so rich in fish?
Humboldt
Humboldt. Its cold upwelling supports about a fifth of the world's marine fish catch, though El Niño years can disrupt it.
Q 09Which Bordeaux grape, thought extinct after phylloxera, survived in Chile mistaken for Merlot?
Carménère
Carménère. When Bordeaux's vineyards were replanted after phylloxera, growers passed it over for grapes that were easier to grow.
Q 10One theory derives the name 'Chile' from the Mapuche word chilli, meaning what?
Where the land ends
Where the land ends. The Spanish first used the name only for one valley before it spread to the whole country.
Q 11Pedro de Valdivia, who founded Chile's capital, had served as a lieutenant to which conquistador?
Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro. Valdivia fought for him against Almagro's faction at Las Salinas in 1538, and was later killed after the Mapuche rose up at Tucapel.
Q 12Chile's capital was founded in 1541 beside which river?
Mapocho
Mapocho. Within months of the founding, Indigenous warriors destroyed the young settlement, and the Spanish had to rebuild it.
Q 13Chile's ancient Chinchorro people made which of these some two thousand years before the ancient Egyptians did?
Mummies
Mummies. Rather than saving the treatment for elites, they took apart and rebuilt the bodies of ordinary men, women and children with sticks and clay.
Q 21Which late-19th-century Chilean military campaign ended Mapuche autonomy?
Occupation of Araucanía
Occupation of Araucanía. The state confined the Mapuche to lands it marked out and auctioned much of the rest, leaving many communities in lasting poverty.
Q 22Chile's popular completo is a loaded-up version of which fast food?
Hot dog
Hot dog. Its most popular version, the italiano, is topped with tomato, avocado and mayonnaise to echo the colours of the Italian flag.
Q 23The nearly 1,000 moai of Rapa Nui were carved from tuff quarried at which volcanic crater?
Rano Raraku
Rano Raraku. The largest moai ever carved, over 21 metres long, was never freed from the rock and lies unfinished in the quarry.
Q 14Chile's Fiestas Patrias on 18 September mark the 1810 creation of what?
The first government junta
The first government junta. It ruled in the name of the captive Spanish king Ferdinand VII, so the day Chile celebrates began as a show of loyalty.
Q 15Which patriot led the early independence movement alongside his siblings Javiera and Luis?
José Miguel Carrera
José Miguel Carrera. After clashing with O'Higgins he kept fighting from exile, until he was betrayed, captured and executed in Mendoza in 1821.
Q 16Which Argentine general crossed the Andes with O'Higgins to defeat the royalists in Chile?
José de San Martín
José de San Martín. After freeing Chile he sailed north with a liberating expedition and became Protector of Peru in 1821.
Q 17Which April 1818 battle near Santiago sealed Chile's independence from Spain?
Maipú
Maipú. Only about two weeks earlier, royalist troops had surprised and routed the same patriot army at Cancha Rayada.
Q 18Which minister shaped the conservative Constitution of 1833 that stabilised the young republic?
Diego Portales
Diego Portales. He never became president, yet ran the government from behind the scenes until mutinous soldiers killed him in 1837.
Q 19Which country lost its entire Pacific coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879–83)?
Bolivia
Bolivia. It later took Chile to the World Court seeking talks on a sea outlet, but in 2018 the court ruled that Chile had no duty to negotiate.
Q 20Which British naval officer, dismissed from the Royal Navy over a Stock Exchange fraud, went on to command Chile's navy?
Thomas Cochrane
Thomas Cochrane. After Chile he led Brazil's navy too, and he was eventually pardoned and restored to the Royal Navy as an admiral.
Q 24Jacob Roggeveen reached Rapa Nui in 1722 on which holiday, giving it its English name?
Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday. The Dutch explorer had been searching for Terra Australis, a legendary southern continent, and came upon this uncharted island instead.
Q 25Which organisation runs the Very Large Telescope on Chile's Cerro Paranal?
European Southern Observatory
European Southern Observatory. Reinhard Genzel's team used the VLT to track stars orbiting the Milky Way's central black hole, work that won him a share of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Q 26The 1960 Valdivia earthquake's tsunami killed over 100 people in which country across the Pacific?
Japan
Japan. On its way across the ocean, the same tsunami had already devastated Hilo in Hawaii, killing dozens of people there.
Q 27Strong aftershocks from Chile's 2010 earthquake shook Valparaíso during which event?
Presidential inauguration
Presidential inauguration. Sebastián Piñera took office as planned, and the Congress building was evacuated soon after the ceremony.
Q 28How many miners were trapped at the San José mine near Copiapó in August 2010?
33
33. They went 17 days with no word from the surface, and after 69 days underground every one of them was winched up alive.
Q 29The capsule that lifted Chile's trapped San José miners to safety in 2010 was named after which mythical creature?
Phoenix
Phoenix. A rescuer rode it down to the trapped men first, and the last miner it brought up was their shift supervisor.
Q 30In 1970, which senator became president after winning a plurality in a three-way race?
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende. Without a majority he needed Congress to confirm him, and his government went on to nationalise the big copper mines.