Duct Tape
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40 free Duct Tape trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Duct tape is the rare product that everybody owns and almost nobody knows anything about. It began as an idea from a factory worker who would not take no for an answer, went to war, changed colour and name, and ended up riding into space as the fix of last resort. This quiz covers the whole story: who came up with it and why, what the roll is actually made of, the brands that fought over the name, and the times a strip of silver tape saved a mission, started an argument in the art world or turned up in a medical journal. There are questions on its nicknames around the world and its cameos on screen and on the radio. It is pitched for curious general players, with a handful of harder questions for DIY diehards. Good for a pub quiz round, a workshop break or a classroom warm-up.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which fruit did artist Maurizio Cattelan duct-tape to an art fair wall for his work Comedian?
A banana
A banana bought at a Miami grocery store for about 30 cents was all there was to see. Buyers really paid for a certificate and display instructions, so the fruit and the tape can be swapped whenever needed.
Q 02Apollo 13's crew used duct tape to rig a filter adapter that scrubbed which gas from the cabin air?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide was building up because the command module's square filters would not fit the lunar module's round sockets. Plastic covers torn from procedure manuals and duct tape bridged the gap.
Q 03Factory worker Vesta Stoudt pitched a waterproof cloth tape in a wartime letter to which US president?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt received the letter, complete with her diagrams, and passed the idea on to be made. Stoudt had gone to the top only after her own factory bosses ignored the suggestion.
Q 04A 2002 trial at a US military clinic found duct tape beat freezing for removing which skin growths?
Warts
Warts cleared up in 85% of the patients who wore duct tape over them, against 60% of those treated with liquid nitrogen. Later trials were less convincing, so the evidence is rated inconclusive.
Q 05Which Discovery Channel series built a working cannon, sailboat and trebuchet to test duct tape?
MythBusters
MythBusters came back to duct tape again and again, even hanging a car from it and spanning a dry dock with a bridge made of nothing else. The team also paddled a canoe built from it.
Q 06Consumer Reports said duct tape fixed the dropped-call antenna flaw on which Apple smartphone?
iPhone 4
iPhone 4 owners were losing calls, and Apple's own answer was close in spirit to the tape. Steve Jobs promised every owner a free case to cover the antenna.
Q 07Which 1980s TV hero keeps a flattened roll of duct tape in his pocket alongside a Swiss Army knife?
MacGyver
MacGyver refuses to carry a gun, so he improvises his way out of trouble with everyday items and a genius-level grasp of applied physics. The roll is flattened so that it fits the pocket.
Q 08Which US government department told households in 2003 to stock duct tape and plastic sheeting?
Homeland Security
Homeland Security listed the two items in a disaster supply kit, meant for sealing a room against chemical or biological agents. Press reports described a surge in demand for the tape.
Q 09Duck brand's long-running scholarship contest asks teenagers to wear which duct tape creations?
Prom outfits
Prom outfits made of Duck Tape are the whole point of the Stuck at Prom contest. It reached its 21st year in 2021, with nearly $25,000 in scholarships and prizes on offer.
Q 10Finns give duct tape, the cure-all of the toolbox, a slang name honouring which biblical figure?
Jesus
Jesus is the namesake of jeesusteippi, one of several Finnish slang names for the tape. Another is hopeateippi, which simply means silver tape.
Q 11Vesta Stoudt's wartime idea for a waterproof cloth tape was meant to seal which factory-packed items?
Ammunition boxes
Ammunition boxes were closed with thin paper tape whose pull tabs wore off, leaving soldiers struggling to open them under fire. Stoudt's answer was a tab made of strong cloth tape.
Q 12Which healthcare firm, already a maker of surgical tape, developed duct tape for the US military?
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson handed the job to its Revolite division, which had made cloth medical tapes since 1927. The team designed the new tape to be ripped by hand, not cut with scissors.
Q 13What colour was the duct tape issued to US troops in the 1940s, before silver became standard?
Olive drab
Q 21Which powdered metal, mixed into the plastic coating, gives duct tape its silvery-grey colour?
Aluminum
Aluminum powder is blended into the plastic film as a pigment. Other pigments in the same film give the tape its many other colours.
Q 22Which plastic, already coating the cotton cloth of the wartime original, waterproofs duct tape?
Polyethylene
Polyethylene is bonded to a thin fabric mesh, so the tape shrugs off water yet tears by hand. The sticky side is a separate layer of rubber-based adhesive.
Q 23Which matte film-set tape did cinematographer Ross Lowell create by reworking Permacel duct tape?
Gaffer
Gaffer tape, as Lowell's invention is known, comes away without leaving residue and has a dull finish that does not reflect the lights. He needed it to hold a lamp mount to a window.
Olive drab, the standard army shade, coloured the wartime tape. The silver look arrived in the 1950s, when builders wanted a tape that matched tin ductwork.
Q 14Apollo 17 astronauts used duct tape, spare maps and clamps to rebuild which part of their Moon rover?
A fender
A fender had been knocked off by a hammer, so the wheel sprayed the crew with Moon dust. The taped replacement held so well that an auto body association made the astronauts honorary members.
Q 15Which university has wrapped its bronze warrior statue in duct tape to foil pranksters from rival UCLA?
USC
USC covers the bronze warrior during rivalry week because UCLA fans used to paint him in their own blue and gold. Students also keep an all-night vigil around the statue.
Q 16Speed tape, a foil lookalike often mistaken for duct tape, makes quick repairs to which vehicles?
Aircraft
Aircraft can carry patches of speed tape because its adhesive holds at high speed, which is where the name comes from. Airlines try to keep it off parts that passengers can see, so as not to cause concern.
Q 17Gorilla Tape, a thicker duct tape launched in 2005, comes from a firm best known for which product?
Glue
Glue made the Gorilla name in the 1990s, after founder Mark Singer saw Indonesian furniture makers using a Danish polyurethane adhesive. The tape's sticky layer is twice as thick as ordinary duct tape's.
Q 18Which dinosaur names the tougher, weather-resistant duct tape sold by the makers of Duck Tape?
T-Rex
T-Rex Tape was introduced by Shurtape, the North Carolina firm that owns the Duck brand, and is pitched as stronger and more weather-resistant than the ordinary kind.
Q 19Which industrial giant released a clear duct tape in 2004?
3M
3M inventor Richard Drew came up with masking tape in the 1920s after watching car painters struggle with two-tone paint jobs. The clear duct tape of 2004 was strengthened with white fiberglass mesh.
Q 20US troops in Vietnam used duct tape, nicknamed 100-mph tape, to repair which helicopter parts?
Rotor blades
Rotor blades were patched or balanced with it in the field, one of the stories behind the nickname. The other is that the tape was supposed to hold in winds of that speed.
Q 24Which US state, home to the lab that found duct tape fails on heating ducts, banned it for that job?
California
California prohibits the tape on ducts, and a 1998 test at its Lawrence Berkeley lab showed why. Of every sealant the researchers tried, only duct tape failed.
Q 25Which Canadian comedy series about a handyman at Possum Lodge spawned the film Duct Tape Forever?
The Red Green Show
The Red Green Show ran for 300 episodes, with Steve Smith's title character forever singing the tape's praises. In the film, the lodge enters a duct tape sculpture contest with a giant goose.
Q 26Which Garrison Keillor radio show ran spoof commercials for the American Duct Tape Council?
A Prairie Home Companion
A Prairie Home Companion filled its variety hours with adverts for sponsors that never existed, the tape council among them. Another was a society of sound effects specialists.
Q 27Which Canadian band put a song called Duct Tape Heart on their pinball-themed 2015 album Silverball?
Barenaked Ladies
Barenaked Ladies gave the song a video filmed at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The album's cover shows a steel ball on a pinball table, a nod to singer Ed Robertson's collection of the machines.
Q 28German speakers call duct tape Panzerband, a nickname built on the word for which military vehicle?
Tank
Tank is the usual meaning of Panzer, though the word can also mean armour, so the nickname suggests toughness. German speakers also know the product as Universalklebeband, roughly all-purpose sticky tape.
Q 29Vesta Stoudt, the factory worker whose idea led to duct tape, had two sons in which US force?
The Navy
The Navy had two of her eight children in 1943, so she took a factory job to do her part for her sons and their fellow servicemen.
Q 30The 2003 US duct tape alert followed the national terror threat level rising to which colour?
Orange
Orange stood for a high risk of attack on a scale of five colour-coded levels. Officials cited recent intelligence reports when they raised it.