Cigar Trivia
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50 free Cigar trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free Cigar trivia questions with answers. Cigars come with more lore than almost any other indulgence, and this quiz digs into it. Forty-five questions cover how a cigar is built from filler, binder and wrapper, what a ring gauge measures, why humidors are lined with cedar, and where the phrase 'close but no cigar' comes from. The brand questions take you through Cohiba's origins as Fidel Castro's private smoke, the novel that named Montecristo, the Shakespeare play behind Romeo y Julieta and the banker who founded H. Upmann. There is history too: the Taino people Columbus's scouts saw smoking in 1492, Ybor City's rise as the Cigar Capital of the World, the invention of the cigar band in the 1830s and the night before John F. Kennedy signed the Cuban embargo. Easy questions suit anyone who has ever been handed a cigar at a wedding; the hard ones are for aficionados who know their volado from their ligero. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on cigars, the major brands and the people behind them, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of the three components of a modern cigar is usually made from the highest-quality leaf?
The wrapper
The wrapper is the costliest and most flawless leaf in a cigar; its shade, from claro to oscuro, is often used to describe the whole cigar.
Q 02The word 'cigar' ultimately derives from a word in which language?
Mayan
The English word only came into general use in 1730, by way of the Spanish 'cigarro'.
Q 03European explorers first observed cigar smoking among which indigenous people in 1492?
The Taino of Cuba
The Taino of Cuba were seen by the 1492 expedition's scouts sucking smoke from dried herbs rolled in a leaf, which they called tabacos, as Bartolomé de las Casas recorded.
Q 04Which French ambassador to Portugal sent tobacco to the French court in 1560?
Jean Nicot
Jean Nicot, ambassador in Lisbon from 1559, sent tobacco to Catherine de' Medici as a remedy in 1560; the genus Nicotiana and nicotine carry his name.
Q 05Which Revolutionary War general is believed to have brought Havana cigars home from the Seven Years' War?
Israel Putnam
Israel Putnam, who served in the 1762 British capture of Havana, is said to have returned to Connecticut with a load of Havana cigars and Cuban tobacco seed.
Q 06In 1869 Vicente Martinez Ybor moved his cigar operations from Havana to which US city?
Key West
Key West, 90 miles from Cuba, received Ybor's El Príncipe de Gales factory in 1869 as he fled the Ten Years' War; other Havana makers followed him.
Q 07Ybor City, once nicknamed the 'Cigar Capital of the World', is a neighborhood of which Florida city?
Tampa
Tampa absorbed Ybor City, founded by Vicente Martinez Ybor in the 1880s; its cigar workers came mainly from Cuba, Spain and Italy, earning Tampa the nickname 'Cigar City'.
Q 08Roughly how many hand-rolled cigars did the Ybor City area produce in its 1929 peak year?
Over 500 million
Over 500 million hand-rolled cigars came out of the district's factories in the 1929 peak, before the Depression and machine-made cigars drove production into decline.
Q 09What is the name of the crescent-shaped knife a cigar roller uses to shape the leaves?
Chaveta
The chaveta, a flat crescent-shaped blade, trims leaves and shapes the bunch; a skilled roller can turn out a hundred or more cigars a day.
Q 10Historically, who was employed to entertain workers on a cigar factory floor?
A hired reader
A hired reader, known as the lector, read newspapers and novels aloud from a platform while the rollers worked, and the workers paid his wages themselves.
Q 11Which Dominican city in the Cibao valley is the centre of the country's cigar industry?
Santiago de los Caballeros
Santiago de los Caballeros, in the Cibao valley of the Dominican Republic, is ringed by tobacco farms and cigar factories and is often called the country's cigar capital.
Q 12In which year did Cigar Aficionado magazine launch?
1992
Cigar Aficionado's first issue appeared in September 1992 from Marvin Shanken, publisher of Wine Spectator, and the magazine helped spark that decade's cigar boom.
Q 13In cigar terminology, 'capa' is the Spanish word for which part of the cigar?
The outermost leaf
Capa is the outermost leaf of the cigar, while the binder beneath it is the capote; the finest capa leaf is grown under gauze canopies for a smooth, thinly veined surface.
Q 21The traditional way to light a cigar uses a splinter of cedar known as what?
A spill
A spill is a thin strip of cedar lit from a candle or match; some cigars come in cedar sleeves that can be split and used the same way.
Q 22At roughly what relative humidity are most cigars best stored?
65-70%
Around 65-70% relative humidity keeps cigars supple; dry cigars turn fragile and burn fast, while damp ones burn unevenly and pick up an acidic taste.
Q 23Which wood is the classic lining for a humidor?
Spanish cedar
Spanish cedar, in fact a tropical relative of mahogany, lines humidors because it holds moisture, repels tobacco beetles and lends a pleasant aroma.
Q 14Which filler leaf, from the sun-drenched top of the tobacco plant, is the strongest and spiciest?
Ligero
Ligero comes from the top primings, where the most sun makes the leaf thickest and strongest; because it burns slowly it is folded into the middle of the filler bunch.
Q 15A cigar made entirely from tobacco grown in a single country is known in the trade by what name?
Puro
Puro is Spanish for 'pure'; a puro's filler, binder and wrapper all come from one country, as with most Cuban cigars.
Q 16A cigar's ring gauge measures its diameter in what unit?
Sixty-fourths of an inch
Ring gauge counts sixty-fourths of an inch, so a 7 by 47 cigar is seven inches long and 47/64 of an inch across.
Q 17What is the collective term for a cigar's size and shape?
Vitola
Vitola covers a cigar's length, ring gauge and shape; Cuban factories separate the factory vitola from the commercial name, so one size can carry several brand names.
Q 18Straight-sided cigars with a rounded cap, the benchmark for other formats, are called what?
Parejos
Parejos are the straight-sided standard shapes such as coronas and robustos, typically with a rounded cap; irregular shapes like torpedoes and pyramids are figurados.
Q 19Which Cuban brand's range consists only of figurado shapes?
Cuaba
Cuaba, launched by Habanos in 1996, makes only figurados such as the Salomones and Divinos, reviving shapes that had all but vanished by the 1930s.
Q 20Which of these is a standard type of cigar cutter?
Guillotine
The guillotine, a straight single- or double-bladed cutter, is the most common style; punch and V-cut are the other standard ways to open the cap.
Q 24The tobacco beetle, one of the two most damaging pests to the cigar industry, has what scientific name?
Lasioderma serricorne
Lasioderma serricorne, the cigarette or tobacco beetle, bores pinholes through stored cigars; Ephestia elutella, the tobacco moth, is the other great enemy of stored leaf.
Q 25The expression 'close but no cigar' comes from cigars being given away as prizes where?
Fairground games
Fairground games in early-20th-century America handed out cigars as prizes, so a near miss at the strongman hammer or ring toss was 'close but no cigar'.
Q 26In which year did US cigar consumption peak at 13.8 billion?
2012
In 2012 Americans consumed 13.8 billion cigars, up from 6.2 billion in 2000; consumption then slid to 11.4 billion by 2015.
Q 27Cuban Cohiba was established in 1966 as a private brand supplied exclusively to whom?
Fidel Castro and top officials
Cohiba began in 1966 as a private brand for Fidel Castro and top officials, also serving as diplomatic gifts; it was not sold publicly until 1982.
Q 28Which historical figure does Cohiba's Siglo series of cigars commemorate?
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus is honoured by the Línea 1492, launched on the 500th anniversary of his landing; each Siglo size marks one century since, with Siglo VI added in 2002.
Q 29Cohiba tobacco comes from the Vuelta Abajo region of which Cuban province?
Pinar del Río
Pinar del Río, Cuba's westernmost province, holds the Vuelta Abajo, whose San Juan y Martínez and San Luis districts supply the few select fields chosen for Cohiba.
Q 30The Montecristo brand takes its name from a novel by which author?
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo was a favourite of the factory readers; the Edmundo size, added in 2004, is named for its hero Edmond Dantès.