Connecticut Trivia
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78 free Connecticut trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
74 free Connecticut trivia questions with answers. Connecticut is small enough to drive across in two hours and dense enough with history to fill a much longer quiz. This one covers the Fundamental Orders and the Charter Oak legend, the first English settlements, the Amistad case, the whaling and submarine towns of the shoreline, and the factories that made Hartford the world capital of revolvers and typewriters. It also gets into the fun stuff: the New Haven lunch wagon that claims the first hamburger, the pie company behind the Frisbee, Wiffle ball, PEZ, ESPN's Bristol studios, Lake Compounce, Foxwoods, the UConn women's 111-game streak, Yale's bulldog, and the state symbols from the sperm whale to the 2024 state candy. Easy questions suit family game night; the hard ones will test lifelong Nutmeggers. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the state, its towns and its people, and each question shows the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 78 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city is Connecticut's most populous?
Bridgeport
Hartford is only the state's fourth-largest city; Bridgeport, on Long Island Sound, has led the population table for decades.
Q 02The 'Constitution State' nickname refers to the Fundamental Orders, adopted by Connecticut in what year?
1639
The Fundamental Orders were adopted in 1639 by the Connecticut River towns, and some historians call them the first written constitution in Western history.
Q 03Which spice gives Connecticut its unofficial nickname?
Nutmeg
Connecticut is the Nutmeg State; one tongue-in-cheek origin story says its peddlers sold carved wooden nutmegs as the real spice to unsuspecting customers.
Q 04Which song is Connecticut's official state song?
Yankee Doodle
Connecticut adopted 'Yankee Doodle' as its official state song in 1978, embracing a Revolutionary-era tune sung by Continental Army troops.
Q 05The state's name comes from a Mohegan-Pequot word translated as what?
Long tidal river
The word refers to the river that roughly bisects the state and empties into Long Island Sound between Old Saybrook and Old Lyme.
Q 06Connecticut's high point sits on the slope of which peak, whose summit lies across the state line?
Mount Frissell
Connecticut's 2,380-foot high point lies on the south slope of Mount Frissell, whose 2,454-foot summit stands just across the state line to the north.
Q 07Which body of water, created behind a hydroelectric dam in the 1920s, is the largest in Connecticut?
Candlewood Lake
Candlewood Lake, Connecticut's largest lake at about 5,400 acres, was created when Connecticut Light & Power dammed the Rocky River and pumped Housatonic water into the valley from 1928.
Q 08Which of these states does not share a border with Connecticut?
Vermont
Vermont is separated from Connecticut by the full width of Massachusetts; Connecticut's land neighbors are New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, with Long Island Sound forming the fourth side.
Q 09Connecticut has no true oceanfront because Long Island Sound is what kind of water body?
An estuary
Long Island Sound is an estuary, where fresh water from the Connecticut, Housatonic and Thames rivers mixes with Atlantic salt water behind the shelter of Long Island.
Q 10Bear Mountain, the highest summit entirely within Connecticut, stands in which northwestern town?
Salisbury
Bear Mountain stands in Salisbury, in Connecticut's northwest corner; the 2,316-foot summit belongs to the southern Taconic range and carries the Appalachian Trail.
Q 11How many counties does Connecticut have?
8
Connecticut has 8 counties, but they are little more than lines on a map: county governments were abolished in 1960, leaving towns and cities to run local affairs.
Q 12When Connecticut ratified the US Constitution in January 1788, which number state did it become?
Fifth
Connecticut was the fifth state to ratify: its convention voted 128 to 40 on January 9, 1788, after four other states had already approved the Constitution.
Q 13Which Dutch navigator was the first European to explore Connecticut, in 1614?
Adriaen Block
Adriaen Block sailed up the Connecticut River in 1614; Block Island off Rhode Island also bears his name, and the Dutch later built the House of Hope trading post at present-day Hartford.
Q 21Which New Haven pizzeria is credited with inventing the white clam pie?
Frank Pepe's
Frank Pepe's, founded on Wooster Street in 1925, is credited with creating the white clam pie, topped with fresh clams, garlic, oregano and grated cheese instead of tomato.
Q 22In 2021 Connecticut named which dish its official state food?
Pizza
Pizza became Connecticut's official state food in June 2021, a nod to New Haven's coal-fired apizza; Meriden's steamed cheeseburger was passed over.
Q 23PEZ candy's US factory and visitor center are in which Connecticut town?
Orange
PEZ Candy has made its US product in Orange since 1973, and the Austrian-founded company opened a 4,000-square-foot visitor center beside the factory in 2011.
Q 14Thomas Hooker led his followers from which colony to found the Connecticut Colony?
Massachusetts Bay
Thomas Hooker left the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 and led about a hundred followers overland to found Hartford, the heart of the new Connecticut Colony.
Q 15By legend, colonists hid Connecticut's 1662 charter in the Charter Oak in 1687 to keep it from which official?
Sir Edmund Andros
Sir Edmund Andros, governor of the Dominion of New England, demanded the charter in October 1687; legend says the candles went out and Captain Joseph Wadsworth slipped away with it.
Q 16The Charter Oak was commemorated on Connecticut's coin in the 50 State Quarters program in what year?
1999
Connecticut's quarter was released in 1999, early in the state quarters series, showing the Charter Oak, which was toppled by a storm in August 1856.
Q 17What species of tree was the Charter Oak, Connecticut's official state tree since 1947?
White oak
The Charter Oak was a white oak (Quercus alba), and Connecticut named the white oak its state tree in 1947, nearly a century after the original fell in 1856.
Q 18The world's first telephone directory, issued in New Haven in February 1878, listed how many subscribers?
50
The New Haven District Telephone Company's directory of February 21, 1878, listed 50 subscribers on a single sheet of cardboard, not in a book.
Q 19How does New Haven's Louis' Lunch, claimed birthplace of the hamburger, serve its burgers?
On toasted white bread
Louis' Lunch serves its burgers on toasted white bread, cooked on vertical cast-iron gas broilers dating from 1898, and the house rule is no ketchup.
Q 20Louis' Lunch, the New Haven restaurant that claims to have invented the hamburger, opened in what year?
1895
Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant, opened Louis' Lunch as a lunch wagon in 1895; the family says the first hamburger sandwich followed in 1900.
Q 24Wiffle ball was invented in 1953 in which Connecticut town?
Fairfield
David N. Mullany invented the Wiffle ball in his Fairfield backyard in 1953, perforating a plastic ball so his 12-year-old son could throw curves without straining his arm.
Q 25ESPN broadcasts from studios in which Connecticut town?
Bristol
ESPN has been headquartered in Bristol since its founding; Getty Oil bankrolled the fledgling network, and its campus there grew from a single building into a sprawling studio complex.
Q 26In what year did ESPN launch from Connecticut with the first telecast of SportsCenter?
1979
ESPN went on the air on September 7, 1979, opening with the first SportsCenter, which reached about 1.4 million cable households.
Q 27Lake Compounce, opened in 1846, is the oldest continuously operating what in the United States?
Amusement park
Lake Compounce opened in 1846 and is the oldest continuously operating amusement park in the United States; its wooden coaster Boulder Dash runs along the side of a mountain.
Q 28Foxwoods, once the largest casino in the Western Hemisphere, sits on the reservation of which tribe?
Mashantucket Pequot
Foxwoods sits on the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in Ledyard; the tribe opened the casino in 1992, and rival Mohegan Sun followed in 1996.
Q 29Who became head coach of the UConn women's basketball team in 1985?
Geno Auriemma
Geno Auriemma took over the UConn women in 1985 and built the program into a dynasty, winning his first national title in 1995 with an undefeated 35-0 team.
Q 30How many consecutive games did the UConn women win in the record streak that ended in the 2017 Final Four?
111
UConn's 111-game winning streak ended in the 2017 Final Four on Morgan William's overtime buzzer-beater for Mississippi State; the previous record was UConn's own 90-game run.