Color Trivia
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96 free Color trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Color trivia questions with answers. Color sits at the crossroads of physics, chemistry, biology and culture, which makes it unusually good trivia territory. This quiz covers the science (why the sky is blue, what the K in CMYK stands for, how many cone types you have and how many a mantis shrimp has), the history of pigments and dyes (Tyrian purple, mauveine, ultramarine, Indian yellow, cochineal, mummy brown), colors in art and branding (Yves Klein, Vantablack, Tiffany Blue, Pantone), flags, animals, and the strange history of color words in language, from Homer's wine-dark sea to Japanese blue traffic lights. Roughly a third of the questions are easy enough for a family round; the rest climb steadily to a handful of expert-level chemistry and history questions that will separate the pub-quiz regulars from everyone else. Every answer was checked against a primary source, mostly Wikipedia's science, art and history articles, and each question shows its citation, so you can settle any argument at the table.
30 of 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the mnemonic ROYGBIV for the colours of the rainbow, what does the I stand for?
Indigo
Indigo: Isaac Newton spelled it 'indico', and it was one of two colours he added to his original five.
Q 02Isaac Newton gave the rainbow seven colours rather than five to match what?
Seven notes of a major scale
Seven notes of a major scale: yet Newton admitted that his own eyes were not very good at telling colours apart.
Q 03Which astronomer discovered infrared radiation in 1800 by testing a spectrum's colours with thermometers?
William Herschel
William Herschel: the warmest reading of all came from just beyond the red end of the spectrum, where no light could be seen.
Q 04The daytime sky looks blue mainly because of which physical effect?
Rayleigh scattering
Rayleigh scattering: air scatters the short blue waves of sunlight far more than longer red ones, so blue light reaches our eyes from all over the sky.
Q 05In the CMYK printing model, what does the K stand for?
Key
Key: black can be mixed from cyan, magenta and yellow inks, but printers usually add black ink instead for crisper text and less ink.
Q 06How many types of colour-sensing cone cell does a typical human retina have?
Three
Three: matching those three kinds, screens can mix most of the colours we see from just red, green and blue light.
Q 07Which animal's eyes contain 12 to 16 types of photoreceptor cell and can detect circularly polarised light?
Mantis shrimp
Mantis shrimp: despite all those receptors, experiments show they are remarkably poor at telling similar colours apart.
Q 08Which is the most common form of colour blindness in humans?
Red–green
Red–green: it affects about 1 in 12 men of Northern European descent but only 1 in 200 women, because the genes sit on the X chromosome.
Q 09Which colour-blind chemist described the condition to a Manchester society?
John Dalton
John Dalton: he guessed that a tinted fluid inside his eyes was to blame, though the cause turned out to lie in the cones.
Q 10Which pigment, with brown-black and red-yellow forms, is the primary determinant of human skin colour?
Melanin
Melanin: red hair gets its colour from mostly the red-yellow form, pheomelanin, with only a little of the dark eumelanin.
Q 11Chlorophyll makes leaves green by absorbing light most strongly in which two colours?
Blue and red
Blue and red: it absorbs green only weakly, and that green light is scattered back out by leaf structures such as cell walls.
Q 12Tyrian purple, the imperial dye prized by Roman emperors, was extracted from what?
Sea snails
Sea snails: thousands of them yielded only about a gram of dye, which made purple cloth a mark of power and wealth.
Q 13In 1856, William Henry Perkin discovered the dye mauveine while trying to make what?
Quinine
Quinine: he was an 18-year-old working in his home laboratory over the Easter holidays, and his accidental dye founded a new chemical industry.
Q 21Which French artist registered his signature ultramarine paint in 1960?
Yves Klein
Yves Klein: he suspended the pigment in a synthetic resin instead of oil, which kept the ultramarine from dulling.
Q 22Vantablack, one of the darkest substances ever made, absorbs up to 99.965% of visible light using what?
Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes
Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes: the artist Anish Kapoor later struck a deal with the maker for exclusive rights to use it in art.
Q 23YInMn Blue is named for yttrium, indium and which third element?
Manganese
Manganese: its ions are what give the pigment its intense blue, and changing their share shifts the colour.
Q 14Renaissance ultramarine was ground from lapis lazuli mined mainly in which modern country?
Afghanistan
Afghanistan: its lapis mines had been sending stone to ancient Egypt thousands of years before Renaissance painters ground it into blue.
Q 15A yellow painters' pigment reportedly came from the urine of cows fed on what?
Mango leaves
Mango leaves: an 1883 investigation described the cows' urine being collected, dried and sold as balls of raw pigment.
Q 16The red dye carmine, still used in food and cosmetics, is made from which creature?
A cactus-dwelling scale insect
A cactus-dwelling scale insect: the bugs are so tiny they were long mistaken for something else, and about 70,000 dried ones make a pound of dye.
Q 17Which paint did Edward Burne-Jones bury once he learned what it was made from?
Mummy brown
Mummy brown: his wife recalled that he thought the name only described a shade, until he was assured it held real mummy.
Q 18Prussian blue, the first modern synthetic pigment, was made by accident around 1706 in which city?
Berlin
Taken orally, the same compound is a WHO essential medicine, used as an antidote to thallium and radioactive caesium poisoning.
Q 19Scheele's green, a popular Victorian pigment, was dangerous because it contained which element?
Arsenic
Arsenic: an 1808 attempt to improve the pigment produced emerald green, which proved just as poisonous.
Q 20The word for the dye that colours blue jeans comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Indian
The plant-based dye was largely replaced after BASF industrialised a synthetic version in 1897, building on Adolf von Baeyer's chemistry.
Q 24Picasso's Blue Period, from 1901 to 1904, was directly followed by which of his periods?
Rose
Rose: the warmer period began after he settled among poets and writers at the Bateau-Lavoir in Paris.
Q 25The name Crayola was coined by Alice Binney from 'ola', for oily, and 'craie', the French word for what?
Chalk
Chalk: the everyday word crayon grew from the same French root, craie, through a word that first meant a chalk pencil.
Q 26Which sky-blue shade was Pantone's very first Color of the Year, for 2000?
Cerulean
Cerulean: Pantone started the yearly pick to get designers and colour fans talking about colour.
Q 27Which warm brown shade did Pantone name its Color of the Year for 2025?
Mocha Mousse
Mocha Mousse: Pantone said its hint of chocolate and coffee answered a desire for comfort.
Q 28Since Mauritania's 2017 flag change, which is the only sovereign country whose flag has no red, white or blue?
Jamaica
Jamaica: its black first stood for hardships, until a 1996 review recast it as the people's strength and creativity.
Q 29Which country's national flag was plain green, with no emblem, from 1977 to 2011?
Libya
Libya: after Gaddafi's fall in 2011, the country brought back the tricolour it had flown before 1969.
Q 30The Pan-African colours of green, yellow and red were borrowed from which country's flag?
Ethiopia
Ethiopia: apart from a brief Italian occupation it kept its independence, so many African nations took up its colours on becoming independent.