Donuts
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176 free Donuts trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free donut trivia questions with answers. Think you're a donut expert? Challenge yourself with our comprehensive 176-question donut trivia quiz covering everything from history and flavors to iconic brands and world records. Whether you're a casual donut lover or a true connoisseur, these questions will test your knowledge and teach you surprising facts about America's favorite treat.
30 of 176 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which day is National Donut Day, when US doughnut shops give away freebies, observed each year?
First Friday of June
First Friday of June: the day honours the Salvation Army women who fried doughnuts for American soldiers in World War I, and it began as a fundraiser during the Great Depression.
Q 02Which US president's line 'Ich bin ein Berliner' is often wrongly said to mean 'I am a jelly doughnut'?
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy: the tale is a legend that surfaced about twenty years after his 1963 West Berlin speech; his German was correct, and the crowd took the line as the pledge of solidarity he intended.
Q 03In data graphics, a 'doughnut chart' is a variation on which chart, with the centre cut out?
Pie chart
Pie chart: the doughnut version shows the same shares of a whole as a ring, and the blank centre earns its keep by leaving room for extra information, such as the total.
Q 04What sets apart The Donut Hole, a doughnut shop in La Puente, California?
Cars drive through giant doughnuts
Cars drive through giant doughnuts: customers enter one huge ring, order at the bakery in the middle and leave by the other, and by local tradition newlyweds make the drive too.
Q 05Which relief organisation still hears veterans' grumbles for briefly charging American soldiers for doughnuts in World War II?
The Red Cross
The Red Cross: it began charging in 1942 only because the US Secretary of War asked it to, after free snacks for Americans upset British troops who had to pay, and the grudge outlived the war.
Q 06In which sport do hitters warm up with a weighted ring called a 'doughnut' slipped onto the bat?
Baseball
Baseball: Yankees catcher Elston Howard is credited with inventing the weight, which makes the bat feel lighter at the plate and ended the old habit of swinging several bats at once on deck.
Q 07In American car slang, a 'donut' is a skinny, lightweight version of which part?
Spare tyre
Spare tyre: the slim 'donut' is carried to save space and weight, and it is built so lightly that drivers are told to stay below about 50 mph and swap it for a proper tyre soon.
Q 08Which gas, given off by fermenting yeast, puffs up a raised doughnut before it reaches the fryer?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide: yeast feeds on the sugars in the dough and gives off the gas, which is why raised doughnuts are left to rise, often twice, before they are fried.
Q 09Which mobile operating system named its 2009 version 1.6 'Donut'?
Android
Android: Google named its early releases after sweets in alphabetical order, so Donut came after Cupcake and was followed by Eclair.
Q 10In which Vietnam War film does a drill instructor find a jelly doughnut hidden in a recruit's footlocker?
Full Metal Jacket
Full Metal Jacket: rather than punish Private Pyle, the sergeant makes the rest of the platoon do push-ups while Pyle eats the doughnut, and the other recruits later take it out on him.
Q 11In Boston and Philadelphia, which sugary doughnut topping is traditionally called 'jimmies'?
Sprinkles
Sprinkles: 'jimmies' usually means the chocolate kind, and the candy maker Just Born claimed to have named them after an employee, though the word's real origin is uncertain.
Q 12Which ancient statesman, famed for demanding Carthage's destruction, recorded a recipe for globi, fried cheese-dough balls with honey?
Cato the Elder
Cato the Elder: his farming manual De agri cultura says to fry the cheese-and-spelt balls one or two at a time in hot lard, turning them with two rods, then spread them with honey and sprinkle on poppy seed.
Q 13In a classic German party prank, one jam doughnut in the batch is secretly filled with what?
Mustard
Q 21Which cartoon character's love of doughnuts is a running joke and the focus of several episodes?
Homer Simpson
Homer Simpson: 'Mmm... doughnuts' is one of his catchphrases, and in the 1993 'Treehouse of Horror IV' segment he sells his soul to the devil for a single doughnut.
Q 22In Zootopia, doughnut-loving police receptionist Benjamin Clawhauser is which kind of big cat?
Cheetah
Cheetah: the joke is that the fastest animal on land is the plump, cheerful one behind the front desk, devoted to doughnuts and the pop star Gazelle.
Q 23Which type of donut often features a distinctive rectangular shape, sometimes topped with maple frosting?
Long John
Mustard: the doctored Berliner looks just like the rest, so nobody knows who will bite into it; German accounts also mention onions and even sawdust as joke fillings.
Q 14Which country was reported in the 2000s to eat the most doughnuts per person?
Canada
Canada: the doughnut is often seen as an American icon, but CBC called it Canada's unofficial national snack and counted more doughnut shops per capita there than anywhere else.
Q 15Which hybrid pastry did chef Dominique Ansel launch at his New York bakery in 2013, drawing long morning queues?
Cronut
Cronut: Ansel spent two months perfecting the fried, filled croissant dough, and soon after the May 2013 launch desperate fans were begging for deliveries on Craigslist.
Q 16In which 1930s film does Clark Gable teach Claudette Colbert the proper way to dunk a doughnut?
It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night: Gable's reporter tells Colbert's runaway heiress that dunking is an art, a quick dip and straight into the mouth, because a doughnut left to soak goes soft and falls off.
Q 17Which twisted doughnut is, in its 'French' form, extruded from choux pastry?
Cruller
Cruller: the French cruller is piped or extruded from wet, egg-rich choux batter, which puffs up with steam in the fryer and so needs no yeast or baking powder.
Q 18Sufganiyot got their modern name after Polish Jewish immigrants brought the ponchik to which country?
Israel
Israel: Polish Jewish immigrants brought the jam-filled ponchik to Mandatory Palestine, where it was renamed sufganiyah and, fried in oil rather than lard, became the standard Hanukkah treat.
Q 19The Dutch olykoek, an ancestor of the doughnut, has a name that literally means what?
Oil cake
Oil cake: olykoek joins the Dutch words for oil and cake; settlers brought the balls of sweetened dough to New Amsterdam, where they were fried in hog's fat.
Q 20Culinary historian Linda Civitello says the doughnut's hole was invented for what reason?
So it cooked faster
So it cooked faster: Civitello's answer tackles the raw, doughy middle, while food writer Michael Krondl suspects the ring simply copied the jumble, a once-common ring-shaped cookie.
Long John: the oblong yeast doughnut is often sold as an 'éclair' when filled, after the French pastry it resembles, and becomes a maple bar under maple glaze.
Q 24With what shipboard object did Hanson Gregory claim to have punched the first doughnut hole in 1847?
A tin pepper box
A tin pepper box: Gregory said he cut out the raw, doughy middle with the lid of the ship's pepper box; a rival tale has him spiking a doughnut on a spoke of the ship's wheel in a storm.
Q 25Randy's Donuts, crowned by a giant rooftop doughnut, is a landmark of which US city's metropolitan area?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles: the shop itself stands in neighbouring Inglewood, and its giant doughnut is so striking that it has turned up in countless films, television shows and music videos.
Q 26Which style of doughnut needs no rising time because it is chemically leavened rather than raised with yeast?
Cake doughnut
Cake doughnut: baking powder or soda does the lifting, so the batter can be mixed, shaped and fried at once, giving a dense, crumbly ring made for dunking.
Q 27Which video-game hero nicknames small-town sheriff Tom Wachowski 'Donut Lord' in a 2020 film?
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog: the nickname stuck so well that James Marsden's sheriff shared the title of a tie-in comic, The Adventures of Sonic & Donut Lord.
Q 28Under which brand name does Dunkin' sell its bite-sized doughnut holes?
Munchkins
Munchkins: selling the punched-out centres as a novelty worked so well that chains now drop them from a special nozzle instead; Tim Hortons calls its version Timbits.
Q 29Besides lemon rind and cinnamon, which cargo spice did Elizabeth Gregory reportedly put in her early doughnuts?
Nutmeg
Nutmeg: Elizabeth Gregory is said to have used nutmeg and cinnamon from her son's spice cargo and to have put hazelnuts or walnuts in the middle, where the dough might not cook through.
Q 30Which Cambodian refugee built the California doughnut empire behind a 2020 documentary?
Ted Ngoy
Ted Ngoy: after learning the trade as a trainee manager at a doughnut chain, he leased shops to fellow Cambodian refugees across California, then lost his fortune at the gambling tables of Las Vegas.