Massachusetts Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
109 free Massachusetts trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
47 free Massachusetts trivia questions with answers. Massachusetts packed an outsized share of American history into a small state: the Pilgrims, the Salem witch trials, the Tea Party and Bunker Hill, the first public school and the first subway. This quiz covers all of that plus the modern Bay State — Fenway's Green Monster, eighteen Celtics banners, the Boston Marathon, Cape Cod and the islands, Harvard and MIT, and the surprising number of everyday things invented here, from basketball and volleyball to the chocolate chip cookie and the smiley face. The easy questions ask what the capital is and where the Pilgrims landed. The hard ones want the height of Mount Greylock, the town where Dunkin' started, the number of chests dumped in the harbour and which sport was first called mintonette. It suits a Patriots' Day gathering, a classroom or a New England pub quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the state, its cities and its landmarks, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Massachusetts' official name uses which word instead of 'State'?
Commonwealth
Commonwealth: Massachusetts is formally the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, so even its criminal charges are brought in the name of the Commonwealth.
Q 02Which state nickname belongs to Massachusetts?
The Bay State
The Bay State: the nickname runs so deep that state law makes 'Bay Staters' the official name for its citizens.
Q 03Massachusetts takes its name from an Indigenous people whose name is often translated as what?
Near the great hill
Near the great hill is one of several renderings, pointing to Great Blue Hill near Boston; an epidemic around 1617 had devastated the Massachusett before the Puritans arrived.
Q 04Before stepping ashore in 1620, the Pilgrims signed which agreement to govern themselves?
The Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact: they had landed outside the Virginia territory they were bound for, and some passengers argued that no one had power to command them.
Q 05Which Wampanoag chief made a peace treaty with Plymouth Colony in 1621?
Massasoit
Massasoit: he kept that alliance, yet his son Metacom, known to the English as King Philip, later led a war against the colonists.
Q 06Boston was founded in 1630 on which peninsula?
Shawmut
Shawmut: the Puritans camped at Charlestown moved there after the lone settler William Blackstone invited them to share its natural spring.
Q 07Which accused man in the 1692 Salem witch trials was pressed to death with stones for refusing to stand trial?
Giles Corey
Giles Corey: slowly crushed under stones, he is said to have answered his torturers with 'More weight.'
Q 08Which enslaved woman in minister Samuel Parris's household was one of the first accused at Salem in 1692?
Tituba
Tituba: though she was never tried, Parris refused to pay her jail fees, so she was sold to cover them.
Q 09Which laws did Parliament pass to punish Boston after its Tea Party?
The Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts: one shut Boston's port until the tea was paid for, and colonists answered by convening the First Continental Congress.
Q 10Some of the men who dumped tea into Boston Harbor in 1773 disguised themselves as what?
Mohawk warriors
Mohawk warriors: the choice was symbolic, and apart from the tea, the only property they damaged was a padlock.
Q 11Which 1775 battles fought in Massachusetts began the Revolutionary War?
Lexington and Concord
Lexington and Concord: British troops marched from Boston to seize military supplies stored at Concord, and the first shots came on Lexington's green.
Q 12Massachusetts ratified the Constitution while recommending amendments, a compromise that paved the way for what?
The Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights: James Madison, who had at first opposed a bill of rights, went on to introduce the amendments in Congress.
Q 13Which 1786-87 Massachusetts uprising tried to seize the federal armory at Springfield?
Shays' Rebellion
Q 21In January 1919, a wave of what killed 21 people in Boston's North End?
Molasses
Molasses: the victims' class-action lawsuit against the tank's owner became a milestone on the road to modern corporate regulation.
Q 22Boston's Back Bay neighbourhood was created how?
By filling in tidal marshland
By filling in tidal marshland: a mill dam had cut the basin off from the tides, and the trapped water became a health hazard.
Q 23What is the nickname of Boston's Central Artery/Tunnel Project?
The Big Dig
The Big Dig: it moved the elevated Central Artery into tunnels, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway park now fills the space the highway left.
Shays' Rebellion: the revolt of indebted farmers fed the push for a stronger national government at the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
Q 14Which state was part of Massachusetts until it separated in 1820?
Maine
Maine: Congress admitted it as a free state alongside slave-state Missouri, so the Missouri Compromise kept free and slave states in balance.
Q 15Which Black Massachusetts regiment of the Civil War was depicted in the 1989 film Glory?
The 54th Infantry
The 54th Infantry: one of the first Black regiments in the Union army, it led the July 1863 assault on Fort Wagner, where its commander Robert Gould Shaw was killed.
Q 16In 2004 Massachusetts became the first US state to do what?
Legalize same-sex marriage
Legalize same-sex marriage: seven couples who had been refused licenses sued, and after the state's highest court sided with them, weddings began May 17, 2004.
Q 17Which two US presidents named Adams were born in Massachusetts?
John and John Quincy
John and John Quincy: after losing the White House, John Quincy went back to Congress and served in the House for Massachusetts until his death.
Q 18What is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States?
Harvard
Harvard: John Harvard didn't found it; the Puritan clergyman left the college money and his library, and it was named for him.
Q 19Boston Latin, founded in 1635, holds what national distinction?
Oldest public school
Oldest public school: five signers of the Declaration of Independence studied there, but Benjamin Franklin left without graduating.
Q 20Boston's Tremont Street line, opened in 1897, was the first what in the nation?
Subway
Subway: it was dug so streetcars could leave Tremont Street's traffic-clogged surface and run underground instead.
Q 24Which sport was invented at a YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891?
Basketball
Basketball: James Naismith needed an indoor game to keep students busy through the long New England winter, so he hung up two peach baskets as goals.
Q 25Volleyball was invented in 1895 in which Massachusetts city?
Holyoke
William G. Morgan, director of the Holyoke YMCA, devised the game in 1895 as a gentler indoor game for older members and first called it 'mintonette'.
Q 26The Celtics' 2024 title broke a tie for the most NBA championships with which rival?
Los Angeles Lakers
Los Angeles Lakers: when Boston beat them in the 1969 Finals, the Lakers' Jerry West was named the series MVP anyway.
Q 27Which Celtics star became the NBA's first Black head coach while still playing?
Bill Russell
Bill Russell: Tom Heinsohn had turned the job down, then took it himself once Russell retired.
Q 28What is the name of the famous left-field wall at Fenway Park?
The Green Monster
The Green Monster: its scoreboard is worked by hand, with operators inside the wall sliding the number plates into place.
Q 29The lone red seat in Fenway's right-field bleachers marks what?
The longest home run ever hit there
Ted Williams hit it in 1946.
Q 30New England's NFL team began in 1959 as a charter member of which league?
The American Football League
The American Football League: the team joined the NFL only when the two rival leagues merged.