Islands
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99 free Islands trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free islands trivia questions with answers. This island trivia quiz roams the whole map: the biggest islands (Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar) and the most crowded (Java, Honshu, Manhattan), the most remote (Tristan da Cunha, Bouvet, Pitcairn), prison islands from Alcatraz to Robben Island and Devil's Island, wildlife islands with lemurs, kiwi and Komodo dragons, and the strange ones: a lake island in a lake on an island, a Brazilian island of vipers, a Japanese island of rabbits, a Mexican island of dolls, and islands that appear, vanish or never existed at all. The first questions are classroom geography; the last will test people who collect obscure atlases. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the world's largest island?
Greenland
Greenland is the largest island because Australia, more than three times bigger, is classed as a continent.
Q 02According to the sagas, why did Erik the Red give the land he explored its pleasant-sounding name?
To lure settlers there
Erik the Red, banished from Iceland after a deadly feud, chose the pleasant name to lure settlers there.
Q 03About 80% of the world's largest island lies under ice; which country's kingdom is it part of?
Denmark
Denmark still runs the island's defence and foreign affairs, though the island has had self-rule since 2009.
Q 04What is the world's second-largest island?
New Guinea
New Guinea is split between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and has more plant species than any other island.
Q 05Borneo, the third-largest island, is shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and which small sultanate?
Brunei
Brunei is the only country lying entirely on Borneo, and it covers only about 1% of the island.
Q 06The world's fourth-largest island split from Africa roughly how many million years ago?
180
Estimates of the split run from about 135 to 180 million years ago, and that isolation is why about 90% of its wildlife lives nowhere else.
Q 07Which island is the world's most populous?
Java
Java holds more than half of all Indonesians, over 150 million people.
Q 08Which is the world's most remote inhabited island, a six-day boat trip from Cape Town?
Tristan da Cunha
Tristan da Cunha's one settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, is named for Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who visited in 1867.
Q 09What forced the evacuation of the entire population of the world's remotest inhabited island in 1961?
A volcanic eruption
A volcanic eruption forced all 264 islanders to leave, and most returned by 1963 once the settlement was found to have survived.
Q 10The people of Pitcairn Island are descended from the mutineers of which ship?
HMS Bounty
HMS Bounty's mutineers burned the ship soon after landing, leaving no means of escape, and Pitcairn had just 35 residents in 2023.
Q 11Easter Island was named for the day Dutch explorers arrived; what is its Polynesian name?
Rapa Nui
Rapa Nui is the Polynesian name, and Jacob Roggeveen's Dutch expedition arrived on Easter Sunday, 5 April 1722.
Q 12Which country has governed Easter Island since 1888?
Chile
Chile annexed Easter Island in 1888, when Policarpo Toro signed an act of cession with the island's leader, Atamu Tekena.
Q 13Which country owns the giant-tortoise islands Charles Darwin explored aboard HMS Beagle in 1835?
Ecuador
Ecuador annexed the islands in 1832, three years before Darwin arrived aboard HMS Beagle.
The Palm Jumeirah artificial islands are in which city?
Q 21Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 prison years on which island?
Robben Island
Robben Island's name comes from an old Dutch word for seals, and Mandela spent his last prison years at Pollsmoor and Victor Verster.
Q 22Devil's Island penal colony is best known for holding which wrongly convicted officer?
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer framed for spying, spent more than four years there and was cleared only in 1906.
Q 23Besides Komodo and Rinca, which larger Indonesian island has wild Komodo dragons?
Flores
Flores was also home to Homo floresiensis, the tiny extinct human nicknamed the 'hobbit'.
Dubai
Dubai's Palm Jumeirah is reclaimed land shaped into a trunk, fronds and an outer crescent that looks like a palm from above.
Q 15Which island's uncontacted inhabitants killed an American missionary who tried to land there in 2018?
North Sentinel
North Sentinel's islanders killed John Allen Chau with arrows, and visiting the island without government permission is illegal under Indian law.
Q 16Brazil's Ilha da Queimada Grande, closed to the public, is famous for what?
Golden lancehead vipers
Golden lancehead vipers were stranded when rising seas after the last ice age cut the island off, and only the Brazilian Navy and vetted researchers may land.
Q 17Socotra, famed for its dragon's blood trees, belongs to which country?
Yemen
Socotra is part of Yemen, and about a third of its plant life, including its dragon's blood trees, grows nowhere else.
Q 18The Global Seed Vault sits on which Norwegian Arctic archipelago?
Svalbard
Svalbard's 1920 treaty gave Norway sovereignty but let every signatory nation fish, hunt and mine there on equal terms.
Q 19Alcatraz federal prison, closed in 1963, was thought escape-proof mainly because of what?
Strong tides and cold water
Strong tides and cold water made escape seem hopeless, yet Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers vanished in 1962 and were never found.
Q 20From November 1969, Alcatraz was occupied for 19 months by which group?
Native American activists
Native American activists, calling themselves Indians of All Tribes, cited an 1868 treaty, and the protest helped push President Nixon to end the termination policy.
Q 24Lemurs are found in the wild only on which island?
Madagascar
Madagascar's lemurs take their name from the Latin lemures, meaning spirits or ghosts.
Q 25Which flightless bird lays an egg that can weigh up to 20% of the female's body weight?
Kiwi
The kiwi is the smallest living ratite, the flightless group that also includes the emu and rhea.
Q 26Great Britain, the world's ninth-largest island, is closest to mainland Europe across which strait?
Strait of Dover
The Strait of Dover is about 33 km wide at its narrowest, and the Channel Tunnel runs beneath it.
Q 27Which island's most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, one of the world's most active volcanoes?
Sicily
Sicily is separated from Calabria, on the Italian mainland, by the Strait of Messina.
Q 28Which of Japan's main islands is the world's seventh-largest and second-most populous?
Honshu
Honshu is home to about four-fifths of Japan's people, as well as Tokyo and Mount Fuji.
Q 29Bermuda's colony began with the 1609 wreck of which ship, bound for Jamestown?
Sea Venture
The Sea Venture wreck is widely thought to have inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest, and its survivors built two ships to reach Jamestown.
Q 30Zanzibar merged with which mainland territory in 1964?
Tanganyika
Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged in 1964, and the name Tanzania blends the first syllables of both.