This corn trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the whole plant and everything made from it: where maize was domesticated and from what, how a cob is built, why the world grows more of it than wheat or rice, and how the Maya's alkali trick kept them healthy while Europeans who copied the crop got sick. Then it moves to the fun stuff: how popcorn pops and what the unpopped kernels are called, why bourbon has to be at least half corn, who invented candy corn and corn flakes, the record corn maze, the Corn Palace and its mascot. The opening questions suit a classroom or a harvest-festival table; the back half will test a farmer or a food historian. Every answer comes with a short explanation. Every question has been checked against a primary source, mostly Wikipedia's maize, popcorn and food-history articles, and shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Outside North America, corn is usually known by what name?
Maize
Linnaeus took the word from the Spanish maíz, itself from the Taíno mahis.
Q 02Corn was first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in which present-day country?
Mexico
Its wild ancestor, teosinte, is a short bushy grass that looks nothing like a modern cornstalk.
Q 03What is the wild grass from which corn was domesticated?
Teosinte
Just two genes account for most of the difference between the bushy wild plant and the single tall stalk of maize.
Q 04Native Americans grew corn alongside beans and squash in a planting system known as what?
The Three Sisters
Cornstalks held up the beans, beans fixed nitrogen, and squash leaves shaded out weeds.
Q 05The male flowers at the top of a cornstalk are called what?
The tassel
Their pollen drifts on the wind to the silks lower down; each silk strand leads to one potential kernel.
Q 06Each strand of corn silk connects to what?
A single kernel
A cob can carry up to 1,200 kernels, so an ear needs a lot of silk to fill out.
Q 07Roughly how many kernels can a large cob of corn hold?
Up to 1,200
They grow in 8 to 32 rows, and the number of rows is always even.
Q 08Which pigments give yellow corn its colour?
Carotenoids
Red and blue varieties get their colour from anthocyanins and phlobaphenes instead.
Q 09Which grain is produced in greater weight worldwide each year than any other?
Corn
World output passed 1.1 billion tonnes in 2020, most of it going to animal feed and industry rather than dinner plates.
Q 10Which country grew the most corn in 2020, with about 31 percent of world output?
The USA
China was second with roughly 22 percent, and Brazil a distant third.
Q 11How many major types of corn are there, counting popcorn, sweet corn, dent, flint, flour and pod corn?
Six
Almost all commercial grain corn is dent; the sweet stuff you eat off the cob is a recessive mutant that fails to turn sugar into starch.
Q 12Sweet corn is picked while still immature, before its sugars turn to starch. What is that point called?
The milk stage
Field corn is left until the kernels are dry and dented; sweet corn must be eaten, canned or frozen fast.
Q 13Within a day of being picked, corn on the cob can lose up to what share of its sweetness?
25%
The sugar starts converting to starch the moment the ear leaves the stalk, which is why farm-stand corn tastes better.
Q 21Which of these US crops is a C4 plant, making it far more water-efficient than soybeans or alfalfa?
Corn
Its weakness is a shallow root system that leaves it vulnerable to drought right when the silks emerge.
Q 22By 1894, the labour needed to grow a bushel of US corn had fallen from four and a half hours to how long?
41 minutes
Mechanical pickers and binders arrived from the 1850s, but most corn was still husked by hand until 1940.
Q 23Roughly what share of US corn use goes to animal feed once silage and distillers' grains are counted?
About 64%
Straight grain feed is around 40 percent; add ethanol by-products and forage and it is closer to two-thirds.
Q 14Old American farm wisdom said a good crop was on track if the corn was 'knee-high' by when?
The Fourth of July
Modern hybrids blow past that benchmark; a healthy field is often shoulder-high by Independence Day.
Q 15Soaking corn in alkali water, a process the Maya used, is called what?
Nixtamalization
It frees the vitamin niacin; Europeans who adopted corn without it suffered epidemics of pellagra.
Q 16Which deficiency disease broke out wherever unprocessed corn became a staple food?
Pellagra
The niacin in corn is locked up unless the grain is treated with alkali, a trick Mesoamericans discovered thousands of years earlier.
Q 17The dough made from nixtamalized corn, the base of tortillas and tamales, is called what?
Masa
Atole is the drink made from it; polenta and grits are the Italian and Southern US porridges made from plain cornmeal.
Q 18Mămăligă, a thick cornmeal porridge, is a national dish of which country?
Romania
Its cousins include Italian polenta, Brazilian angu, South African mieliepap and East African ugali.
Q 19Who first brought corn to Africa, where it is now the most important staple crop?
The Portuguese
It arrived in the 16th century and spread because it grows in so many climates.
Q 20Early Spanish settlers refused to substitute corn flour for wheat in one particular food. Which?
Communion bread
Church doctrine held that only wheat could become the body of Christ, so wheat had to be shipped or grown at any cost.
Q 24Bourbon whiskey must legally be made from a mash of at least what proportion of corn?
51%
It must also be aged in new charred oak; Congress declared it a 'distinctive product of the United States' in 1964.
Q 25The 'HFCS 55' grade of high-fructose corn syrup is used mostly to sweeten what?
Soft drinks
HFCS 42, with less fructose, goes into processed foods and cereals.
Q 26Corn flakes were created in 1894 by Will Kellogg for patients at what kind of institution?
A sanitarium
His brother John ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium; the two later fought a legal battle over the patent.
Q 27Which former Battle Creek patient set up a rival breakfast cereal business to Kellogg's?
C. W. Post
Kellogg went on to launch Rice Krispies in 1928.
Q 28Popcorn kernels expand to roughly what multiple of their original size when they pop?
20 to 50 times
Steam pressure builds inside the hull to about 135 psi before it bursts.
Q 29At roughly what temperature does a popcorn kernel finally burst?
180 °C (356 °F)
The starch inside has gelatinised by then, so the escaping steam whips it into an airy foam that sets as it cools.
Q 30Kernels that fail to pop are known in the popcorn trade by what nickname?
Old maids
They usually lack enough moisture to build up steam; rehydrating them before popping fixes it.