Hardware Stores
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40 free Hardware Stores trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every town has one: the shop with the creaky floor, the wall of tiny drawers and the person behind the counter who knows exactly which washer you need. Hardware stores, from corner shops to warehouse-sized chains, have a history full of surprises, and so do the everyday products stacked in their aisles. This quiz covers the big retailers on both sides of the Atlantic and in Australia, the stories of how they started and the brands they made famous. It also digs into the things they sell: fasteners, hand and power tools, sprays and coatings, plus a few moments when the trade turned up on screen and in sport. It suits anyone who has worked a shop floor, staff teams looking for a break-room game, weekend DIYers and trivia-night hosts. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you pick up a good story whether or not you knew the answer.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The spray lubricant WD-40 was perfected on its 40th formula, so what do the letters WD stand for?
Water Displacement
Water Displacement was the goal: the spray was first made in 1953 to protect the outer skin of the Atlas missile from corrosion. The formula was never patented, to keep its ingredients secret.
Q 02Which tool sold in hardware stores began in the 1780s as a hand-worked surgical aid for difficult childbirth?
Chainsaw
Chainsaw ancestors were fine serrated chains pulled between two wooden handles by Scottish doctors. A German bone-cutting version, cranked by a handle, followed around 1830.
Q 03Which hardware store essential was created in World War II to keep moisture out of ammunition boxes?
Duct tape
Duct tape reached the army after ordnance worker Vesta Stoudt wrote to President Roosevelt in 1943 with her idea for a cloth tape. It was designed to be ripped by hand, not cut with scissors.
Q 04Which adhesive was found in 1942 by a team seeking clear plastic for gun sights, then rejected as too sticky?
Super glue
Super glue stuck to everything it touched, so Harry Coover's team set it aside. He rediscovered the formula in 1951 while working at Eastman Kodak, and a patent followed.
Q 05Which actor's Oscar for The Philadelphia Story went on display in his father's small-town hardware store?
James Stewart
James Stewart grew up in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where his father hoped he would take over the shop after Princeton. The statuette sat there beside family awards and military medals.
Q 06Which Halloween yard decoration did The Home Depot release in 2020 in a version standing 12 feet tall?
Skeleton
Skeleton fans nicknamed the giant Skelly. Its designers thought 10 feet was not grand enough, so they stretched it to 12.
Q 07Which grill brand grew from a kettle George Stephen built in 1951 from two half-spheres meant for buoys?
Weber
Weber Brothers was the Chicago sheet metal shop where Stephen worked. He sold his invention as George's Barbecue Kettle and later bought the factory outright.
Q 08Ace Hardware, formed in Chicago in 1924, was named in honor of which group of First World War heroes?
Fighter pilots
Fighter pilots, the flying aces who beat the odds, inspired the founders. When the longtime president retired in 1973, the business was sold to its own retailers.
Q 09A carpenter's spirit level traditionally holds its bubble in which liquid, the reason behind the tool's name?
Alcohol
Alcohol, once called spirit, was preferred because it will not freeze and lets the bubble glide with less friction, which keeps the reading accurate.
Q 10Which garden machine did Edwin Budding invent in 1830 after watching a bladed cylinder trim cloth in a mill?
Lawn mower
Lawn mower design borrowed the mill's cutting reel, which trimmed the nap of woolen cloth. Two of the earliest machines went to London's zoological gardens and the Oxford colleges.
Q 11Staff at The Home Depot wear aprons in which bright color, also used on the retailer's signs and equipment?
Orange
Orange is the company color across the business. Homer, the cartoon mascot, first appeared in the retailer's advertising in 1981.
Q 12Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank started The Home Depot after being fired in 1978 by which rival chain?
Handy Dan
Handy Dan pushed both men out during a corporate power struggle, although Marcus had been its chief executive. Their first two stores opened the following year.
Q 13Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank bought which NFL team in 2002 from the son of the club's founder?
Atlanta Falcons
Q 21Which UK DIY chain did Australian group Wesfarmers sell for just one pound in 2018, two years after buying it?
Homebase
Homebase went to a restructuring firm for £1 after a botched attempt to convert its stores to a new format. Supermarket Sainsbury's had co-founded the chain in 1981.
Q 22Building supplies chain 84 Lumber, founded by Joseph Hardy near Pittsburgh, takes the number 84 from what?
Its hometown's name
Its hometown's name is the source: the business grew up in the rural village of Eighty Four, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Q 23In England, which traditional job title describes a shopkeeper selling hardware such as nails, tools and locks?
Ironmonger
Atlanta Falcons ownership passed to Blank in February 2002. He later launched a Major League Soccer club that shares the same stadium.
Q 14Lowe's began in 1921 as a single hardware store opened by Lucius Smith Lowe in which state?
North Carolina
North Carolina's small town of North Wilkesboro was home to the first shop, and the firm later traded for years as Lowe's North Wilkesboro Hardware.
Q 15Lowe's was the main sponsor of the number 48 Chevrolet driven by which seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion?
Jimmie Johnson
Jimmie Johnson carried the retailer's colors for Hendrick Motorsports until 2018, the last year he drove for Lowe's.
Q 16Which Super Bowl-winning coach and broadcaster starred in Ace Hardware commercials from 1987 to 2010?
John Madden
John Madden followed two actresses into the role. Connie Stevens fronted the chain's television ads in the 1970s, then Suzanne Somers until 1982.
Q 17Menards, the Midwestern chain founded as Menard Cashway Lumber, has its headquarters in Eau Claire in which state?
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is where its founder went to college. After graduating in Eau Claire in 1962, he bought land in the city and built his first office and shop.
Q 18Which discount tool chain began in 1977 as a California mail-order business selling returned merchandise?
Harbor Freight
Harbor Freight was started by Eric Smidt and his father. Its first walk-in shop opened in Kentucky in 1982 to sell goods sent back by mail-order buyers.
Q 19Which Australian hardware chain is known for the fundraising sausage sizzles held outside its stores?
Bunnings
Bunnings lets community groups run the weekend barbecues for their causes. The business dates from 1886, when two brothers emigrated from England to Western Australia.
Q 20DIY chain B&Q, named after founders Richard Block and David Quayle, opened in 1969 in which English port city?
Southampton
Southampton's suburb of Portswood housed the first shop, set up in a former furniture warehouse. Delivery notes were already shortening Block & Quayle to initials.
Ironmonger first covered both the making of iron goods and the shops that sold them for home use. The term has largely faded from everyday speech.
Q 24Which tool line did Lowe's launch in 1998 as a house brand to rival the tool labels of other retailers?
Kobalt
Kobalt covers hand tools, power tools and tool storage. Lowe's later added a cheaper line positioned below it, Blue Hawk, introduced in 2009.
Q 25Which brand of hand tools did Sears register as a trademark in 1927 and sell through its catalog and stores?
Craftsman
Craftsman tools were never made by Sears itself but by other firms under contract. The retailer sold the brand to a toolmaker in 2017.
Q 26Which paint brand, sold exclusively at The Home Depot, began in 1947 from the back of a station wagon?
Behr
Behr began when Otho Behr Jr. sold linseed oil wood stains to paint stores from his car. By 1988 it offered computer color matching from fabric samples.
Q 27On the sitcom Home Improvement, which fictional tool company sponsors Tim Taylor's show-within-a-show, Tool Time?
Binford
Binford backs Tool Time, which the writers conceived as a parody of the PBS renovation program This Old House.
Q 28Which original host of This Old House signed with Sears in 1990 to pitch the retailer's line of tools?
Bob Vila
Bob Vila hosted the program from 1979 to 1989. He got the job after winning an award for restoring a Victorian house in Massachusetts.
Q 29Which square-socket screw sped up Model T production before Henry Ford was refused a license for the design?
Robertson
Robertson screws became commonplace in Canada, where P. L. Robertson patented the design in 1907 and Ford went on using them at his local division.
Q 30The hex key is best known by which name, trademarked around 1910 by a manufacturer in Hartford, Connecticut?
Allen
Allen keys are named after the Allen Manufacturing Company, which advertised its safety set screws from 1910 and patented a way of cold-forming screw heads around a hexagonal die.