Cigarette Trivia
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49 free Cigarette trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cigarettes have shaped wars, advertising, law and language for two centuries, which makes them a surprisingly rich trivia topic. This cigarette trivia quiz covers the history (Maya smoking tubes, Crimean War soldiers rolling tobacco in newspaper, James Bonsack's rolling machine, cigarettes in military rations), the brands (Marlboro's start as a women's cigarette, Camel's circus mascot, Lucky Strike's toasting slogan, Kent's asbestos filter, Winston sponsoring The Flintstones), and the backlash: the 1964 Surgeon General's report, the TV advertising ban, Joe Camel, the 1998 Master Settlement, Ireland's workplace ban, Bhutan's total prohibition and Australia's plain packaging. These are smoking trivia questions about history and culture, not a how-to; the answers make clear how the industry marketed a product that kills, and how governments eventually fought back. It works well for a pub quiz round, a public-health class, or anyone who likes 20th-century business and advertising history. Every answer was checked against encyclopedia entries on the brands, the laws and the people involved, and each question links to its source.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word "cigarette" entered English from which language?
French
French speakers coined cigarette, a diminutive of cigare meaning 'little cigar', as Spain's paper-rolled smokes spread north, and English borrowed the word whole.
Q 02British soldiers picked up the cigarette habit from Ottoman comrades during which war?
The Crimean War
The Crimean War sent British troops home rolling tobacco in paper as their Turkish allies did, and veteran Robert Gloag opened Britain's first cigarette factory in 1856.
Q 03Which civilisation carved a cigar-smoking god on a temple doorway at Palenque more than a thousand years ago?
The Maya
The Maya carved the aged deity scholars call God L puffing a large cigar; conquistadors later took rolled tobacco home to Spain, where paper wrappers followed.
Q 04By what grim nickname were cigarettes already known in the late 19th century?
Coffin nails
Coffin nails was in print by the 1880s, some seventy years before the 1950 studies that first drew wide attention to smoking and lung cancer.
Q 05What spurred James Bonsack to build his cigarette-rolling machine around 1880?
A prize offer
A prize offer from the Richmond firm Allen & Ginter set him to work, yet the firm held back from using his machine and lost out to rival James Buchanan Duke, who embraced it.
Q 06Which trust, formed by James Buchanan Duke in 1890, came to dominate almost the entire US cigarette trade?
American Tobacco
American Tobacco grew so dominant that antitrust action broke it up in 1911, creating rivals such as Liggett & Myers and Lorillard.
Q 07Which US general said his army needed "tobacco as much as bullets"?
Pershing
Pershing made the plea as America's commander in World War I and got his wish: cigarettes went into soldiers' rations and stayed there until 1975.
Q 08In 2004, which Asian kingdom became the first country in the world to ban the sale of tobacco?
Bhutan
Bhutan gave up the ban in 2021, when its parliament legalised sales again to stop smugglers crossing a border closed against the coronavirus.
Q 09Marlboro's early red "beauty tip" was designed to hide what?
Lipstick stains
Lipstick stains vanished against the red tip of a brand first sold to women as "Mild as May"; it was only recast as a man's smoke in the 1950s.
Q 10Marlboro takes its name from Great Marlborough Street, site of Philip Morris's original factory, in which city?
London
London tobacconist Philip Morris kept a shop on Bond Street, so the brand that came to stand for the American West began as a British name.
Q 11Which Western's theme became the music of Marlboro's 1960s television ads?
The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven lent the brand Elmer Bernstein's galloping theme, and years of commercials made the film music a trademark of the Old West.
Q 12Which Chicago adman conceived the Marlboro Man in 1954?
Leo Burnett
Leo Burnett's campaign turned a minor cigarette with a feminine image into a major brand with a rugged male one.
Q 13What grim nickname do smokers give Marlboro Reds, the cigarette of the Marlboro Man?
Cowboy killers
Cowboy killers is said to have stuck as models from the ads died of smoking-related disease; one, Wayne McLaren, spent his last two years campaigning against cigarettes, even at Philip Morris's 1992 shareholder meeting.
Q 21Kent's Micronite filter, promoted in the 1950s as the safer way to smoke, was made with what?
Blue asbestos
Blue asbestos, the type known as crocidolite, went into some 13 billion Kents before Lorillard changed the filter; mesothelioma lawsuits followed decades later.
Q 22Indonesia's kretek cigarettes get their crackle and their scent from tobacco blended with which spice?
Cloves
Cloves crackle as they burn; the story goes that a man in the Indonesian town of Kudus first added them to his tobacco to ease his asthma.
Q 23Which cigarette brand sponsored The Flintstones from 1960 to 1962, with Fred lighting up for Wilma?
Winston
Winston had Fred sing its jingle, "tastes good like a cigarette should", a line that set off a long public row with purists who insisted on "as a cigarette should".
Q 14Which picture magazine's 1949 portrait of a weathered Texas cowboy inspired the Marlboro Man?
Life
Life ran its portrait of ranch foreman Clarence Hailey Long in 1949, and the ads it inspired turned a minor cigarette into a major brand.
Q 15Which slogan did Lucky Strike coin to promote the way its tobacco was processed?
It's Toasted
It's Toasted boasted that the tobacco was heat-dried rather than sun-dried, and rival Camel hit back with ads promising cigarettes "never parched or toasted".
Q 16Which tobacco baron launched Camel in 1913?
R. J. Reynolds
R. J. Reynolds brought it out two years after the break-up of the industry's monopoly set his firm free, and Camel became the country's most popular cigarette.
Q 17The camel on the original Camel pack was photographed at which travelling show?
Barnum & Bailey Circus
Barnum & Bailey Circus supplied the model in 1913: its dromedary, Old Joe, was photographed for the pack, and the cartoon mascot of the 1980s was called Old Joe too.
Q 18In 1946, Camel ads began claiming that more members of which profession smoked the brand than any other cigarette?
Doctors
Doctors were polled by the ad agency's own staff, often moments after being handed free Camels, so the survey behind the slogan was stacked from the start.
Q 19A 1991 study found six-year-olds recognised Joe Camel about as readily as which cartoon star's logo?
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse's Disney Channel logo was the yardstick: 91 percent of the six-year-olds matched Joe Camel to cigarettes, and his maker retired him the year federal regulators charged that he targeted children.
Q 20Which 1999 film tells how tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand blew the whistle on his industry on 60 Minutes?
The Insider
The Insider casts Russell Crowe as Wigand, who went from research chief at Brown & Williamson to teaching science at a Louisville high school.
Q 24The last cigarette commercial on US television, on January 1, 1971, was for which brand?
Virginia Slims
Virginia Slims took the final slot, one minute before midnight on The Tonight Show, its "You've come a long way, baby" pitch running out the clock on televised tobacco ads.
Q 25Which US president signed the act that banned cigarette advertising on American radio and television?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon signed it on April 1, 1970, and the same law hardened the warning on every pack from "may be hazardous" to "is dangerous to your health".
Q 26Why was the US Surgeon General's landmark 1964 smoking report released on a Saturday?
Markets were closed
Markets were closed, so Luther Terry's report could not jolt share prices that day; it still hit the country, he recalled, "like a bombshell" and was front-page news.
Q 27What did Ohio's Lloyd "Spud" Hughes add to tobacco in the 1920s to create a new kind of cigarette?
Menthol
Menthol cigarettes began with his Spud brand, which was pitched like a cold remedy: "When your throat is irritated, change to Spuds."
Q 28Which animal, later named Willie, was the mascot of Kool cigarettes from the 1930s?
Penguin
Penguin was the brand's first name: when it gave way to Kool, the bird stayed on as mascot.
Q 29The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with US tobacco firms funded which youth anti-smoking campaign?
Truth
Truth went national in 2000 under a foundation the settlement set up, and researchers credited it with about a fifth of the fall in teenage smoking by 2002.
Q 30Jean Nicot, the diplomat behind the word nicotine, sent tobacco home to France in 1560 from which port city?
Lisbon
Lisbon was where Nicot, France's ambassador, was shown the plant; he sent it to the royal court praising its healing powers, and snuff became a court fashion.