Karnataka Trivia
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50 free Karnataka trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Karnataka is where a boiled-bean supper named a tech capital, where iron-cased war missiles were fired at the British before Europe had them, and where an empire's ruined city still draws travellers to a riverbank of temples. It grows most of India's arabica, weaves the country's best-known zari saree and runs a ten-day royal festival that ends with a goddess riding through the streets. The 50 questions cover the kingdoms that ruled from the cave-temple capital, from Banavasi and from the Tungabhadra, the tiger-emblem sultan and the queen of Kittur, the poets who gave Kannada its first epics and its state anthem, the rivers, reserves and waterfalls of the Western Ghats, Dasara and the bitter-sweet new-year feast, the coast's all-night dance-drama, the dishes of the palace kitchens, and the engineers, scientists, cricketers and founders who made Bengaluru what it is. Each answer comes with a short explanation of why it matters. It works as a school or college general-knowledge round, a Rajyotsava quiz, a pub round or a warm-up before a trip to the Ghats. Play it on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for the table.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which folk meaning of Bengaluru's name comes from a tale of a 12th-century king lost while hunting?
Town of boiled beans
Town of boiled beans is the popular reading of 'Benda-Kaal-uru', said to honour an old woman who fed that king, yet an 890 CE inscription at Begur already names Bengaluru.
Q 02Which monument at the Vijayanagara ruins appears on India's ₹50 banknote?
Stone Chariot
Stone Chariot is not a chariot at all but a shrine built like one, and it once held an image of Garuda.
Q 03Which son of Hyder Ali was killed defending Srirangapatna against the British in 1799?
Tipu Sultan
Tipu Sultan owned a near life-size mechanical tiger mauling a European man, which the British seized in 1799 and carried off to London.
Q 04Which crop is said to have begun in India with seven seeds a Sufi saint smuggled into Karnataka's hills?
Coffee
Coffee, in the legend, came from Baba Budan, who hid the seven beans in his beard on the way home from Yemen, and those hills are now called Baba Budangiri.
Q 05Which Vijayapura tomb of Mohammad Adil Shah has a whispering gallery where the faintest sound carries across its dome?
Gol Gumbaz
Gol Gumbaz was still unfinished when Mohammad Adil Shah died, and after his death work on its decoration stopped.
Q 06Which Kannada screen legend was abducted from his Gajanur farmhouse by the bandit Veerappan in 2000, for 108 days?
Rajkumar
Rajkumar's abduction deepened tension between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, where Gajanur lies, until Veerappan freed him that November.
Q 07Which Karnataka mining town, electrified by cable in 1902, saw its mines shut in 2001?
Kolar Gold Fields
Kolar Gold Fields closed after years of losses, and its 1970s mines became the setting of KGF: Chapter 1, the first Kannada film to gross ₹200 crore.
Q 08Which Bengaluru-born shuttler became the first Indian to win the All England men's singles title, in 1980?
Prakash Padukone
Prakash Padukone, father of actor Deepika Padukone, later co-founded Olympic Gold Quest with Geet Sethi to support India's Olympic athletes.
Q 09Which Bengaluru online retailer, begun in 2007 by two ex-Amazon staff selling books, sold control to Walmart in 2018?
Flipkart
Flipkart's founders Sachin and Binny Bansal were IIT Delhi alumni, and Walmart beat Amazon itself in the bidding war for control of the company.
Q 10Which ruined city on the Tungabhadra was the Vijayanagara capital until 1565?
Hampi
Hampi's temples and palaces won travellers' admiration, but after the 1565 defeat a coalition of sultanates pillaged the city for six months and left it abandoned.
Q 11Which dynasty built the star-plan soapstone temples at Belur, Halebidu and Somanathapura, listed by UNESCO in 2023?
Hoysala
The Hoysala temples were raised in the 12th and 13th centuries from chloritic schist, a soft rock that let carvers work lace-like detail into every surface.
Q 12Which goddess is said to have slain the demon Mahishasura on the day Mysuru's Dasara celebrates?
Chamundeshwari
Chamundeshwari's Dasara outlived the monarchy that staged it: the State carries on its royal procession as the Nada Habba, the state festival.
Q 13Which Jain figure's 57-foot monolith at Shravanabelagola is anointed in a Mahamastakabhisheka held every twelve years?
Bahubali
Q 21Which Hassan-born Karnataka chief minister went from that post in 1996 to eleven months as India's Prime Minister?
H. D. Deve Gowda
H. D. Deve Gowda headed a United Front coalition from June 1996 to April 1997, and in 1999 he split the Janata Dal to lead its Secular wing.
Q 22Which wood gives the Kannada film industry of Gandhi Nagar, Bengaluru its nickname?
Sandalwood
Sandalwood's first talkie, Sati Sulochana, was shot not in Karnataka but at Chhatrapati Studio in Kolhapur, and released in 1934.
Q 23Which Bengaluru legislature, finished in 1956, was redesigned after visiting Russians asked if the city had no architecture of its own?
Vidhana Soudha
Bahubali, in Jain tradition, beat his brother Bharata in a contest for their father's empire, then renounced the world instead of ruling.
Q 14Which Karnataka bowler took all ten Pakistani wickets in a Test innings at Delhi in 1999, as Jim Laker once had?
Anil Kumble
Anil Kumble later bowled in Antigua in 2002 with his fractured jaw bandaged, and he took the wicket of Brian Lara.
Q 15Which Bengaluru-raised batsman lifted the T20 World Cup in 2024 on his last day as India's head coach?
Rahul Dravid
Rahul Dravid, nicknamed The Wall, had already lost World Cup finals as a player in 2003 and as coach in 2023 before that win.
Q 16Which IT company, started in Pune in 1981 by seven engineers with $250 of capital, is now headquartered in Bengaluru?
Infosys
Infosys's seed money came from Sudha Murty, who gave N. R. Narayana Murthy her rainy-day savings.
Q 17Which Bengaluru-based agency made India the first nation to land a craft near the Moon's south pole in 2023?
ISRO
ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 touched down four years after Chandrayaan-2's lander crashed, and India declared 23 August, the landing day, National Space Day.
Q 18Which physicist, founder of his own Bengaluru research institute in 1948, won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics?
C. V. Raman
C. V. Raman argued that the sea looks blue because water itself scatters light, not simply because it reflects the sky, as most people assumed.
Q 19Which Karnataka temple town, site of Madhvacharya's 13th-century Krishna shrine, names a style of vegetarian restaurant?
Udupi
Udupi's Krishna idol is said to have turned west for the devoted poet Kanakadasa, and pilgrims still view it through a window named Kanakana Kindi.
Q 20Which queen of Kittur took up arms against the British East India Company decades before the 1857 uprising?
Rani Chennamma
Rani Chennamma fought after the Company refused to accept her adopted son as heir, and her samadhi now stands at Bailhongal.
Vidhana Soudha answered with a granite Neo-Dravidian design, and the chief minister behind it called the result a 'people's palace'.
Q 24Which Bengaluru garden, commissioned by Hyder Ali in 1760, has a Glass House modelled on London's Crystal Palace?
Lalbagh
Lalbagh was completed by Hyder Ali's son, who stocked it with trees and plants brought from as far as Persia and Afghanistan.
Q 25Which Rashtrakavi wrote 'Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate', the poem Karnataka adopted as its state anthem?
Kuvempu
Kuvempu is the pen name of Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa, who as vice-chancellor of Mysore University started teaching in Kannada.
Q 26Under which chief minister did Mysore State officially take the name Karnataka?
Devaraj Urs
Devaraj Urs's government gave up the name Mysore, inherited from the old princely state, after campaigners long pressed for Karnataka instead.
Q 27Which Karnataka district, birthplace of Field Marshal Cariappa and General Thimayya, is administered from Madikeri?
Kodagu
Kodagu came under direct British rule in 1834, when the East India Company annexed it from its last ruler, Chikka Virarajendra.
Q 28Which dusk-to-dawn dance-drama of coastal Karnataka, led by a singing bhagavata, stages the epics in towering headgear?
Yakshagana
Yakshagana's dialogue is improvised on stage around the bhagavata's songs, so the same episode can play differently from one night to the next.
Q 29Which festival, kept in Karnataka on the first day of Chaitra, opens with bevu bella, neem mixed with jaggery?
Ugadi
Ugadi's bevu bella pairs bitter neem with sweet jaggery as a reminder that the new year will bring both sorrow and joy.
Q 30Which fibre does the Mysuru factory founded by the maharaja in 1912 weave into sarees with gold zari?
Silk
Silk sarees from that factory carry zari of 65 percent silver with a trace of gold, so each is stamped with a unique code and hologram against fakes.