Mardi Gras
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190 free Mardi Gras trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Mardi Gras trivia questions with answers. Laissez les bons temps rouler! Mardi Gras is more than just beads and Bourbon Street — it's a centuries-old tradition rooted in faith, culture, and the irresistible spirit of New Orleans. How much do you know?
30 of 190 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Disney animated film builds to a showdown at a Mardi Gras parade?
The Princess and the Frog
The Princess and the Frog: Tiana has until midnight on Mardi Gras to break a frog spell, which sends her racing to the parade, in the film that brought Disney back to hand-drawn animation.
Q 02What are the three traditional colors of Mardi Gras?
Purple, green, and gold
Purple, green, and gold were proclaimed by Rex, the King of Carnival, who asked New Orleans to drape its balconies in them for his first parade in 1872 and never said why he chose them.
Q 03What Christian season does Mardi Gras immediately precede?
Lent
Lent. Households once had to use up the rich, fatty foods they would give up for the fast, so the day before it became a feast, the 'fat' in the holiday's French name.
Q 04What small plastic figurine is traditionally hidden inside a king cake?
A baby
A baby: whoever finds the tiny plastic figure in their slice must buy the next king cake or host the next party, which keeps the cakes coming all season.
Q 05Where in Canada is the winter Carnival hosted by a snowman mascot called Bonhomme?
Quebec City
Quebec City held winter carnivals on and off from 1894, then relaunched the event in 1955 to bring in tourists; Bonhomme, its snowman mascot, made his first appearance that year.
Q 06Which New Orleans street is most famous for its Mardi Gras revelry?
Bourbon Street
Bourbon Street is where many visitors spend Carnival, yet the big krewes do not roll down it: their floats follow routes through Uptown and Mid-City.
Q 07What snack cake is the signature parade throw of Mobile, Alabama's Mardi Gras?
MoonPie
MoonPies, the marshmallow sandwich cookies baked in Chattanooga, Tennessee, are Mobile's signature throw; the city even lowers a giant electric MoonPie at its New Year's Eve countdown.
Q 08In which month does Mardi Gras most often fall?
February
February is the usual month. Mardi Gras comes 47 days before Easter, so only a late Easter, on April 17 or after, pushes it into March.
Q 09Which Cajun French phrase is the unofficial motto of Mardi Gras?
Laissez les bons temps rouler
Laissez les bons temps rouler is a word-for-word translation from English; Louisiana historians trace it to Louis Jordan's 1946 jump-blues record 'Let the Good Times Roll'.
Q 10Which French Riviera city hosts a Carnival known for its Flower Parades along the seafront?
Nice
Nice: the flower battle began in 1876 on the Promenade des Anglais as a simple exchange of bouquets; today costumed performers on flower-decked floats throw the blooms to the crowd.
Q 11Which scientist's theory did the Comus krewe mock in its 1873 parade?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin: Comus called the parade 'The Missing Links to Darwin's Origin of Species' and used its animal costumes to ridicule Louisiana's Reconstruction officials as well as evolution.
Q 12What deep-fried pastry covered in powdered sugar is a beloved New Orleans Mardi Gras treat?
Beignet
Beignet: French colonists brought the fritter to New Orleans in the 18th century, and the city's version is a hole-less square of fried dough buried in powdered sugar.
Q 13French explorers named a campsite Pointe du Mardi Gras in 1699 near the mouth of which river?
Mississippi
Q 21The Endymion parade ends its route by rolling into which New Orleans venue for its Extravaganza party?
The Superdome
The Superdome: Endymion's floats ride straight through the stadium at the end of the route, where tens of thousands of ticket-holders and top-name performers are waiting.
Q 22Which Southwest Louisiana genre blends Creole, Cajun, blues and R&B?
Zydeco
Zydeco gets its scraped rhythm from the frottoir, a wearable metal washboard that Clifton Chenier sketched in 1946 for a welder at the Texas oil refinery where he worked.
Q 23Which Italian city's Carnival is famous for its elaborate masks?
Venice
Venice has policed its maskers since the 13th century, when the Great Council made it a crime for them to throw scented eggs, perfume-filled shells that young men tossed at women they admired.
The Mississippi: the Le Moyne brothers' expedition camped about 60 miles downriver from the future New Orleans as the holiday arrived in March 1699, and named the spot in its honour.
Q 14Which oak-lined New Orleans thoroughfare is the main route for most Uptown Mardi Gras parades?
St. Charles Avenue
St. Charles Avenue: its huge live oaks stretch over the route 'as if to catch beads', and strands snagged in the branches are a familiar sight after the floats have passed.
Q 15In Spain, Carnival traditionally ends with a mock funeral procession for which fish?
A sardine
A sardine: the 'Burial of the Sardine' parodies a funeral procession and ends with an effigy of the fish going up in flames, a scene that Goya painted.
Q 16Which Polish filled doughnuts draw queues at Detroit-area bakeries every Fat Tuesday?
Pączki
Pączki were a way to use up the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit forbidden during the coming fast; Poland eats them on Fat Thursday, but Polish America moved the feast to Tuesday and calls it Pączki Day.
Q 17Which South American city hosts the world's largest Carnival celebration?
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro draws about two million people a day, and the Sambadrome contest is only the televised showpiece: most of the party is free, at hundreds of street bands and blocos across the city.
Q 18What musical genre, born in New Orleans, is closely associated with Mardi Gras celebrations?
Jazz
Jazz: cornetist Buddy Bolden, who led a New Orleans band from 1895 to 1906 and has been called the music's father, is said to have recorded a cylinder, but no copy is known to survive.
Q 19What does gold stand for among Mardi Gras colours?
Power
Power: the meanings arrived twenty years after the colours did, when Rex's 1892 parade, 'Symbolism of Colors', gave each of the three a virtue.
Q 20New Orleans's 'tit Rəx microkrewe answers the super krewes by building its floats out of what?
Shoeboxes
Shoeboxes: the founders took the shoebox floats that New Orleans children build as school projects and sent them down the street as a reply to super krewes forever setting records for size.
Q 24Mardi Gras Indians say their tradition honours Native Americans who did what for their ancestors?
Sheltered those escaping slavery
Sheltered those escaping slavery: local tribes often took runaways into their own communities, and Black New Orleanians shut out of the krewes named their parading gangs in thanks.
Q 25Which 1969 road movie follows two bikers riding from Los Angeles to New Orleans for Mardi Gras?
Easy Rider
Easy Rider: the New Orleans scenes were shot first, on grainy 16mm amid the real Mardi Gras of 1968, before the rest of the film's budget had been raised.
Q 26Which singer and actor co-founded the Krewe of Orpheus in 1993?
Harry Connick Jr.
Harry Connick Jr. started Orpheus with his father, the city's former district attorney, and opened its floats to men and women alike at a time when the big parading krewes were single-sex.
Q 27What Louisiana stew, made with dark roux, okra and sausage or shellfish, is a classic Mardi Gras dish?
Gumbo
Gumbo is three kitchens in one pot: the roux is French, the okra came from West Africa, and cooks who skip okra thicken it with filé, the ground sassafras leaves the Choctaw used.
Q 28Which Caribbean nation's Carnival is built on steelpan, calypso and 'mas' costumes?
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago gave Carnival the steelpan: street percussion bands that once beat bamboo tubes switched in the 1930s to biscuit tins, dustbin lids and finally oil drums.
Q 29What do crowds traditionally shout at float riders in New Orleans, begging for beads and doubloons?
Throw me something, mister!
'Throw me something, mister!' is the plea; the custom it feeds began in the early 1870s, when a parader dressed as Santa Claus handed gifts to the crowd as he passed.
Q 30What does New Orleans's Royal Sonesta hotel smear on its balcony poles before Mardi Gras weekend to stop climbers?
Petroleum jelly
Petroleum jelly: the hotel began greasing its poles to stop revellers shinning up to the balconies, and the chore grew into the Greasing of the Poles, a judged contest that opens Mardi Gras weekend in the French Quarter.