50 free Daylight Saving Time trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free Daylight Saving Time trivia questions with answers. Daylight savings time trivia (yes, it is properly 'saving', and that is question two) for the two nights a year everyone argues about it. The quiz covers where the idea came from - Franklin's joke, a bug-collecting New Zealander, a British builder on horseback - which countries went first, America's War Time and the failed 1974 experiment, why Arizona and Hawaii sit it out, the Navajo-Hopi doughnut, the EU's stalled vote, Russia's flip-flop, and the places with a 30-minute change or a Ramadan pause. It starts with the mnemonic everybody knows and works up to the dates, laws and percentages that only a time-zone nerd could love. Use it for a classroom, a spring-forward quiz night, or to win the annual office argument. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and carries its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two-word mnemonic tells you which way to move the clocks?
Spring forward, fall back
Clocks jump ahead an hour in spring and drop back in autumn; the phrase works only in countries that call autumn 'fall'.
Q 02Grammatically, which is the standard form of the term?
Daylight saving time
'Saving' is a participle describing the time, but the plural 'savings' is so common that many editors accept it.
Q 03Which countries were the first to adopt daylight saving nationally, on 30 April 1916?
Germany and Austria-Hungary
The aim was to conserve coal during the war; Britain followed on 21 May the same year.
Q 04Which cities are recorded as the first in the world to enact daylight saving time, in 1908?
Port Arthur and Fort William, Ontario
The two towns later merged into Thunder Bay; the idea reached national level in Europe eight years later.
Q 05Franklin is often credited with daylight saving. What did his satirical 1784 Journal de Paris letter actually propose?
Taxing shutters and firing cannons at dawn
He never suggested touching the clocks; the essay was a joke about Parisians sleeping through the morning sun.
Q 06What was the day job of George Hudson, the New Zealander who proposed a two-hour clock shift in 1895?
Entomologist
His shift work left him daylight hours for insect collecting, and he wanted more of them; he read his paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society.
Q 07British builder William Willett got the idea for daylight saving while doing what?
Riding early and seeing blinds still down
His 1907 pamphlet was called The Waste of Daylight; he proposed advancing clocks 80 minutes in four 20-minute steps.
Q 08How much did William Willett originally propose advancing the clocks each spring?
80 minutes, in 20-minute steps
He died of influenza in 1915, a year before Britain finally adopted the change; a sundial in Petts Wood set permanently to summer time commemorates him.
Q 09Which rock frontman is William Willett's great-great-grandson?
Chris Martin of Coldplay
Coldplay's 'Clocks' is presumably a coincidence.
Q 10The United States first adopted daylight saving time in which year?
1918
The Standard Time Act also confirmed the time zones; Congress repealed DST after the war, over President Wilson's veto.
Q 11What did Franklin D. Roosevelt call the year-round daylight saving he instituted in February 1942?
War Time
It ran until September 1945; the zones were literally called Eastern War Time, Central War Time and so on.
Q 12Which 1966 US law first standardised the start and end dates of daylight saving across the country?
The Uniform Time Act
Before it, states and even towns picked their own dates; states may still opt out entirely, which Arizona and Hawaii did.
Q 13What happened to public support for year-round daylight saving over the winter of the 1974 US trial?
It fell from 79% to 42%
Q 21As of 2023, roughly what proportion of the world's countries use daylight saving time?
About a third
They are concentrated in Europe and North America; near the Equator the day barely changes length, so shifting the clock gains nothing.
Q 22Since 1996, every EU country changes clocks on the same dates. When?
Last Sundays of March and October
And at the same instant - 01:00 UTC - so the whole bloc jumps together.
Q 23A 2018 EU public consultation on scrapping the clock change drew how many responses?
4.6 million
Dark winter mornings, and reports of children hit by cars on the way to school, ended the experiment early in October 1974.
Q 14Which US law, effective 2007, extended daylight saving to run from March to November?
The Energy Policy Act of 2005
It set DST from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November: 34 weeks, about 65 percent of the year, so 'standard' time is the minority.
Q 15For roughly what share of the year is the United States on daylight saving time?
About 65%
That is 34 weeks or 238 days; clocks change at 2:00 a.m. local time to minimise disruption.
Q 16Which two US states do not observe daylight saving time?
Arizona and Hawaii
Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Marianas and the US Virgin Islands also skip it.
Q 17Which territory inside Arizona does observe daylight saving time?
The Navajo Nation
The Hopi Reservation, entirely surrounded by the Navajo Nation, does not - creating a doughnut of clocks within a doughnut.
Q 18Why does Arizona stay on standard time all year?
Its heat makes evening sun unwelcome
The legislature opted out in March 1968; from March to November most of Arizona shares California's clock time.
Q 19Which US state did not observe daylight saving statewide until April 2006?
Indiana
Indiana straddles the Eastern and Central zones; several counties near Cincinnati and Louisville had quietly observed DST anyway.
Q 20How did the Sunshine Protection Act, making daylight saving permanent, pass the Senate in 2022?
By unanimous consent
Sponsored by Florida's Marco Rubio, it then stalled in the House of Representatives.
Most were German and most wanted it gone; the European Parliament voted to abolish it from 2021 but the Council of Ministers never signed off.
Q 24What happened to the European Parliament's March 2019 vote to end seasonal clock changes?
The Council never approved it
Member states could not agree on whether to stay on summer or winter time, and the file has sat unopened ever since.
Q 25Which of these European countries keeps the same clock all year, never springing forward?
Iceland
Belarus, Turkey and Russia are the other holdouts; Iceland sits on GMT all year despite being far enough west for UTC-1.
Q 26What did Russia do in 2011, then reverse in 2014?
Adopt permanent daylight saving time
Under President Medvedev the clocks went forward and never came back; in October 2014 they moved back an hour and stayed there.
Q 27Britain went two hours ahead of GMT during the summers of 1941 to 1945. What was this called?
British Double Summer Time
Britain then tried year-round GMT+1 from 1968 to 1971 as 'British Standard Time' and abandoned it.
Q 28Which Australian states do NOT observe daylight saving?
Queensland, NT and Western Australia
Queenslanders voted it down 54.5 to 45.5 in a 1992 referendum after a three-year trial.
Q 29In the Southern Hemisphere, when does daylight saving run in the states of Australia that use it?
First Sunday of October to first Sunday of April
Summer is at the other end of the calendar, so Australians spring forward while Europeans fall back.
Q 30Lord Howe Island, off Australia, is unusual for a daylight saving shift of how much?
30 minutes
Its clocks go from UTC+10:30 to UTC+11, making it one of the very few places with a half-hour change.