70 free Cincinnati trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
64 free Cincinnati trivia questions with answers. This Cincinnati trivia quiz is for anyone who knows the difference between a three-way and a four-way and would like to prove it. It covers how the city got its name and its nicknames (Queen City, Porkopolis, the Paris of America), the German immigrants who built Over-the-Rhine, and the companies that started here: the soap makers who accidentally named a TV genre, the grocer with $372, the potato chip in a tube. Sports fans get the Red Stockings of 1869, the Big Red Machine, the Nasty Boys, Pete Rose's hit record, Paul Brown's Bengals and the Ickey Shuffle. There are questions on the zoo (Martha, Fiona, Harambe), Union Terminal and the Hall of Justice, the Roebling bridge, Music Hall's ghosts, Kings Island's Beast, WKRP, and natives from William Howard Taft to Steven Spielberg and Bootsy Collins. Use it for a bar quiz, a family game or a newcomer's crash course. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic or primary source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cincinnati sits on the Ohio River directly across from which state?
Kentucky
The city's airport, CVG, is actually in Hebron, Kentucky, and is one of the busiest cargo airports in the country.
Q 02Which of these is a nickname of Cincinnati?
The Queen City
Longfellow immortalised the name in his 1854 poem 'Catawba Wine'; the others belong to Dayton, Cleveland and Akron.
Q 03Cincinnati was nicknamed 'Porkopolis' in the 19th century because of which industry?
Pork packing
The city later embraced the joke with public 'Flying Pig' sculptures and the Flying Pig Marathon.
Q 04Cincinnati is named after a society honouring which Roman, who saved Rome and returned to his farm?
Cincinnatus
The Society of the Cincinnati was an order of Revolutionary War officers, and George Washington was its first president general.
Q 05What was Cincinnati's original name when it was settled in 1788?
Losantiville
Surveyor John Filson built the word from French and Latin syllables meaning 'town opposite the mouth of the Licking'.
Q 06Because of its grand 19th-century architecture, Cincinnati was once nicknamed the what of America?
Paris
Music Hall, the Cincinnatian Hotel and the Roebling bridge earned it the comparison.
Q 07Which immigrant group most shaped 19th-century Cincinnati, founding many of its institutions?
German
Their neighbourhood was Over-the-Rhine, named because workers crossed a canal nicknamed 'the Rhine' to reach it.
Q 08The Over-the-Rhine neighbourhood is named for a waterway immigrants crossed to reach it. Which one?
The Miami and Erie Canal
OTR is now among the largest and most intact urban historic districts in the United States.
Q 09Which Cincinnati company, founded in 1837 by a candlemaker and a soap maker, gave the radio serial genre its name?
Procter & Gamble
Sponsoring daytime dramas from 1932 onward is why they are called soap operas.
Q 10Which quality of Ivory soap, launched in 1879, became its first slogan?
It floats
The other famous slogan, '99 and 44/100 percent pure', came from an independent lab test Harley Procter commissioned.
Q 11Which supermarket giant was founded in Cincinnati in 1883 by a 23-year-old with $372 in savings?
Kroger
It is now the city's largest employer, with more than 20,000 local staff, and was the first grocery chain with its own bakery.
Q 12Which stackable potato chip has its origins with a Cincinnati consumer-goods giant?
Pringles
Grippo's chips are also a local brand, but the ones in the tube were invented by the soap company.
Q 13Cincinnati chili, the city's best-known dish, is traditionally served over what?
Spaghetti
It was developed in the 1920s by Macedonian immigrants and is spiced with cinnamon, allspice and clove.
Q 21How many World Series titles have the Cincinnati Reds won?
Five
They came in 1919, 1940, 1975, 1976 and 1990, the last a sweep of the heavily favoured Oakland A's.
Q 22The Reds' first World Series win, in 1919, was tainted because which opponents threw the series?
Chicago White Sox
The Black Sox scandal saw eight Chicago players banned for life.
Q 23Which Major League Baseball milestone happened at Cincinnati's ballpark in 1935?
The first night game
It was also the first baseball fireworks night, and Reds owner Powel Crosley made radios and refrigerators.
Q 14In Cincinnati chili parlour lingo, what does a 'three-way' add on top of a 'two-way'?
Cheese
A four-way adds onions or beans under the cheese, and a five-way piles on both.
Q 15The Kiradjieff brothers named their 1922 Cincinnati chili business after which neighbouring building?
A burlesque theatre called the Empress
Later chili parlours copied even the location strategy, opening next to theatres.
Q 16Skyline Chili, founded in 1949, was named for what?
The city view from the first restaurant
Founder Nicholas Lambrinides had cooked at the original Empress before opening in Price Hill.
Q 17Goetta, a Cincinnati breakfast staple, is a sausage-like mush of ground meat and which grain?
Steel-cut oats
It came from German settlers stretching meat over several meals, much like scrapple in Pennsylvania.
Q 18Cincinnati's Graeter's is known for which method that makes unusually dense ice cream?
The French pot process
Oprah Winfrey called it the best ice cream she had ever tasted in 2002.
Q 19Findlay, founded in 1852 in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine, is Ohio's oldest continuously operating what?
Public market
Its Opening Day parade for the Reds is an annual city tradition.
Q 20In what year did the Cincinnati Red Stockings become baseball's first all-professional club?
1869
The team also fixed red as the city's colour, and its players went on to found the Boston Red Stockings.
Q 24Which Reds pitcher is the only man in major league history to throw back-to-back no-hitters, in 1938?
Johnny Vander Meer
The second of them came in the first night game ever played at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field.
Q 25What nickname was given to the dominant Reds teams of the mid-1970s?
The Big Red Machine
The line-up included Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Pérez and Pete Rose, and won back-to-back titles in 1975 and 1976.
Q 26Cincinnati native Pete Rose holds the MLB career record for hits with how many?
4,256
He was banned from baseball in 1989 over betting on games, including his own team's.
Q 27Which relief trio helped the Reds sweep the 1990 World Series and were nicknamed 'the Nasty Boys'?
Dibble, Charlton and Myers
That 1990 team led the NL West wire to wire, the only National League team ever to do so.
Q 28Great American Ball Park replaced which venue the Reds shared with the Bengals?
Riverfront Stadium
The old venue had been renamed Cinergy Field, and the Reds shared it with the Bengals for 30 years.
Q 29Which legendary coach founded the Cincinnati Bengals in 1967 after leaving the Cleveland Browns?
Paul Brown
He even chose the exact shade of orange used by his old team, possibly as a jab at Browns owner Art Modell.
Q 30Which team beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl in both 1982 and 1989?
San Francisco 49ers
The third loss came in 2022 to the Rams, 23-20, in Joe Burrow's second season.