Knots Landing
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50 free Knots Landing trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Knots Landing began as a spin-off and ended up outlasting the show it came from. For fourteen seasons, from 1979 to 1993, viewers followed a handful of married couples on a quiet California cul-de-sac as their lives filled up with affairs, kidnappings, corporate plots and the occasional murder. It was the primetime soap about ordinary middle-class neighbours rather than oil barons, and that is a large part of why fans still talk about it. This quiz covers the whole run. There are questions on Gary and Valene Ewing, Karen, Mack, Abby and Greg Sumner, on the actors who played them and the famous faces who passed through early in their careers, on the storylines that kept people watching, on the crossovers with Dallas, and on how the series was created, filmed and remembered. It is written for anyone who watched the show the first time round, for soap fans catching up on it now, and for quiz hosts who want a round on classic 1980s television. The early questions are the gentlest, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Dallas character is the daughter of Gary and Valene Ewing, yet never moved to Knots Landing with them?
Lucy
Lucy was expected to join her parents on the cul-de-sac, but the network kept actress Charlene Tilton on the parent show to keep the two series separate. She made a single guest visit in the first season.
Q 02Which future film star played Joshua Rush, Valene's half-brother who becomes a televangelist on Knots Landing?
Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin played Joshua from 1984 to 1985, years before his film fame. The character turns violent toward his wife and dies in a fall from a rooftop.
Q 03Which future Best Actress Oscar winner played television producer Debbie Porter in season 13 of Knots Landing?
Halle Berry
Halle Berry's Debbie has a brief romance with widowed lawyer Frank Williams before he leaves town. Her Academy Award, for Monster's Ball, came about a decade later.
Q 04Dallas undid Bobby Ewing's death by revealing a whole season as what, a twist Knots Landing never acknowledged?
A dream
A dream explained everything away on the parent show, but Valene had already named her baby son after the late Bobby, so the spin-off simply never mentioned him again.
Q 05Marc Cherry described which hit series as a cross between Knots Landing, American Beauty and Twin Peaks?
Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives is not the only descendant of the show: Phil Redmond said his Liverpool cul-de-sac soap Brookside was partly influenced by it too.
Q 06On which night of the week did Knots Landing air for nearly its entire run, usually at 10 p.m.?
Thursday
Thursday at 10 p.m. was its home for almost all 14 seasons, with only brief moves to an hour earlier to make room for other dramas.
Q 07Which 1960s pop singer joined Knots Landing in 1987 as Anne Matheson, the scheming mother of Paige?
Michelle Phillips
Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas was still in the cast for the 1993 finale, though a planned affair between Anne and Mack was scrapped after Karen's actress objected.
Q 08Which future teen idol played Abby Cunningham's young son on Knots Landing for three seasons in the late 1980s?
Brian Austin Green
Brian Austin Green left in 1989, just before Beverly Hills, 90210 made him famous, and came back for the 1997 reunion miniseries.
Q 09Which singer-actress played both murdered rock singer Ciji Dunne and her look-alike Cathy Geary on Knots Landing?
Lisa Hartman
Lisa Hartman returned a season after Ciji's murder as Cathy, a double hired by Abby to keep Gary too distracted to notice her crooked business deals.
Q 10Which Dallas villain, the older brother of Gary, drove Valene out of Texas years before Knots Landing began?
J. R. Ewing
J. R. Ewing also handed Gary business deals designed to fail, and he turned up in five Knots Landing episodes to make trouble on the cul-de-sac.
Q 11Which actress played Paige Matheson, who arrives on Knots Landing claiming to be Mack MacKenzie's long-lost daughter?
Nicollette Sheridan
Nicollette Sheridan joined in 1986 and stayed to the end, with Paige surviving a faked death, a shooting and a long on-off romance with Greg Sumner.
Q 12Which actress played scheming Abby Cunningham, who returns in the Knots Landing finale to buy back her old house?
Donna Mills
Donna Mills won three Soap Opera Digest awards as a villainess, yet she talked the writers out of having Abby kidnap Valene's babies on purpose, fearing viewers would never forgive her.
Q 13Which star of Knots Landing was the only performer in all 344 episodes, playing Karen Fairgate MacKenzie?
Q 21Which lifelong struggle of Gary Ewing resurfaces in the first-season finale of Knots Landing, endangering his marriage?
Alcoholism
Alcoholism had driven Gary from his family in Texas years earlier, and the relapse brings fresh trouble, including an affair with the wife of a friend from his recovery group.
Q 22Sid Fairgate, first husband of Karen on Knots Landing, owned what kind of business, where Gary took a sales job?
A car dealership
A car dealership it was: Knots Landing Motors sold Fords and Mercurys, and after Sid's death Karen took over as its head and promptly fired Abby.
Q 23Valene Ewing of Knots Landing publishes which novel, a thinly veiled exposé of her oil-rich in-laws from Dallas?
Capricorn Crude
Michele Lee
Michele Lee was the one regular who still appeared every week in the cost-cutting final season, when only 19 episodes were made.
Q 14Which actress first played Valene Ewing on Dallas, then led Knots Landing for thirteen of its fourteen seasons?
Joan Van Ark
Joan Van Ark left in 1992 but came back for the last two episodes, in which the supposedly dead Valene turns up alive.
Q 15Which actor took over as Gary Ewing when David Ackroyd, who first played him on Dallas, could not join Knots Landing?
Ted Shackelford
Ted Shackelford went on to play Gary for all 14 seasons, and he and his screen wife pitched the love triangle of Gary, Valene and Abby to the producers themselves.
Q 16Which actor joined Knots Landing in 1982 as Mack MacKenzie, the crusading lawyer who marries the widowed Karen?
Kevin Dobson
Kevin Dobson was already familiar as Detective Bobby Crocker, the protege of Telly Savalas on Kojak, and he stayed with the soap until it ended in 1993.
Q 17Which actor spent ten years on Knots Landing as Greg Sumner, the ambitious politician turned corporate titan?
William Devane
William Devane rewrote most of his own dialogue as Greg, to the point where a co-star said most people on the set were probably frightened of him.
Q 18Which Broadway legend, winner of five Tony Awards, played Valene's mother Lilimae Clements on Knots Landing?
Julie Harris
Julie Harris had known her screen daughter for decades: she once advised her, then a 15-year-old student reporter, to apply to drama school at Yale.
Q 19Which Oscar-nominated co-star of Marilyn Monroe played Sid Fairgate in the first two seasons of Knots Landing?
Don Murray
Don Murray earned his nomination for Bus Stop in 1956. Sid was written out when the brakes of his car were sabotaged and it plunged off a cliff.
Q 20Which writer created both Dallas and Knots Landing, having pitched the cul-de-sac drama to the network first?
David Jacobs
David Jacobs saw his suburban idea turned down in 1977 as not saga-like enough, so he wrote Dallas instead, then reworked the earlier pitch as its spin-off.
Capricorn Crude makes Valene a published author just as her marriage collapses, and Abby mails chapters of it to one of Gary's brothers in Texas to stir up trouble.
Q 24Who is revealed on Knots Landing as the killer of singer Ciji Dunne, after Gary Ewing is jailed for the crime?
Chip Roberts
Chip Roberts, the publicist who had got Ciji pregnant, was really a fugitive named Tony Fenice. He dies falling onto a pitchfork after glimpsing her double.
Q 25Told her twins were stillborn, Valene flees Knots Landing for which state, working as a waitress under another name?
Tennessee
Tennessee is where Valene lives as Verna Ellers, a character from one of her own books, and she even gets engaged there before Gary tracks her down.
Q 26Which lover of Gary Ewing forces Valene at gunpoint to swallow sleeping pills in a Knots Landing season finale?
Jill Bennett
Jill Bennett later tries to frame Gary by tying herself up in the trunk of his car, a scheme that goes fatally wrong when she dies inside it.
Q 27Abby leaves Knots Landing in 1989 to take a trade envoy post in which country, a job Greg Sumner wanted?
Japan
Japan kept Abby off screen for four years, and when she returns in the finale Greg halts her takeover bid by threatening to expose her dealings there.
Q 28Laura Avery Sumner leaves Knots Landing to die alone of which illness, after network cost cuts ended the role?
A brain tumor
A brain tumor took Laura off screen in 1987, leaving Greg with a baby daughter, Meg, whom the grieving father asks Karen and Mack to adopt.
Q 29Knots Landing newcomers Frank and Pat Williams are hiding which secret, revealed after Karen and Mack grow suspicious?
Witness protection
Witness protection had given the family a new surname, and Mack later uses a dead family's dental records to convince an extortionist that they have died.
Q 30Gary Ewing fled which Texas ranch, the family home on Dallas, years before settling in Knots Landing?
Southfork
Southfork was left behind for good after Gary and Valene's second wedding, when his mother bought the couple a newly built house in California as a wedding present.