Midwest Trivia
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97 free Midwest trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Midwest trivia questions with answers. Midwest trivia gets treated as filler. It should not be: this is the region that holds a fifth of the world's surface fresh water, feeds much of the country, gave rock and roll its name, and invented deep-dish pizza, Kool-Aid and a chilli that is served on spaghetti. These forty questions run through the geography and demographics, then the landmarks and the food. There are questions on the man who wanted Mount Rushmore to feature Sacagawea instead of presidents, the architect who drew the Gateway Arch in 1947, the four-lap qualifying rule at the Indy 500, and the myth about what is in Cincinnati chili. Every answer is written against a sourced account with the sentence that establishes it attached, and the difficulty runs from easy city-spotting to detail most residents would not know. Good for a regional quiz night, a road trip, or settling an argument about pizza.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which is the most populous city in the Midwest?
Chicago
Chicago, with about 2.7 million residents, is the Midwest's largest city by a wide margin; its metropolitan area spills into Indiana and Wisconsin.
Q 02Which Midwestern metropolitan area is the second largest in the region?
Detroit
Detroit's metro area, at roughly 4.3 million people, ranks second in the Midwest behind Chicago, ahead of Minneapolis-Saint Paul at about 3.7 million.
Q 03Which ancestry is most commonly reported in the Midwest?
German
German is the most common self-reported ancestry in the Midwest, claimed by roughly a fifth of residents, and in North Dakota by well over 30 percent.
Q 04Which Midwestern state is the most populous and racially diverse?
Illinois
It is also ranked the state most representative of overall US demographics on several measures.
Q 05What is the Midwest's nickname, thanks to its grain harvests?
The nation's breadbasket
The Midwest is called the nation's breadbasket because its deep prairie soils grow much of America's corn, soybeans, wheat and oats.
Q 06Which population movement transformed Midwestern cities in the early 20th century?
The Great Migration
The Great Migration brought some six million African Americans from the rural South to cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland between about 1916 and 1970.
Q 07Which Cleveland disc jockey popularised the term 'rock and roll' in 1951?
Alan Freed
Alan Freed, on Cleveland's WJW radio from 1951, used 'rock and roll' for the rhythm-and-blues records he played; he staged the Moondog Coronation Ball in 1952.
Q 08Which Midwestern state has Lansing as its capital?
Michigan
Lansing has been Michigan's capital since 1847, when legislators moved it inland from Detroit; the much larger Detroit remains the state's biggest city.
Q 09Which fact about presidential elections held true for Ohio through the 2024 election?
No Republican has won without it
No Republican has ever won the presidency without carrying Ohio, a streak intact through 2024; Ohio's bellwether reputation, by contrast, ended when it backed Trump while Biden won in 2020.
Q 10How many Great Lakes are there?
Five
The five Great Lakes are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, draining to the Atlantic through the St. Lawrence River.
Q 11Which two Great Lakes are hydrologically a single body of water?
Michigan and Huron
Lakes Michigan and Huron connect through the five-mile-wide Straits of Mackinac, so they sit at the same surface level and are counted by hydrologists as one lake, Michigan-Huron.
Q 12Where was deep-dish pizza invented?
Pizzeria Uno in Chicago
Deep-dish pizza was created at Pizzeria Uno, the restaurant Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo opened at Ohio and Wabash in Chicago; a thick, buttery crust holds cheese under the sauce.
Q 13In which year was deep-dish pizza invented?
1943
Pizzeria Uno served its first deep-dish pizza in 1943, in the middle of the Second World War; the style did not spread widely beyond Chicago until the 1970s.
Q 21In which year did work on Mount Rushmore begin?
1927
Carving began on October 4, 1927, after President Coolidge's dedication that August; the four faces were dedicated one by one between 1930 and 1939, Washington first.
Q 22What curve does the Gateway Arch follow?
A weighted catenary arch
The Gateway Arch is a weighted catenary, the curve of a hanging chain thickened toward its ends; at 630 feet it is the tallest arch in the world.
Q 23Which architect designed the Gateway Arch?
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen won the 1947-48 design competition for the arch; he died in 1961, before construction began in 1963, and the monument opened to the public in 1967.
Q 14Which two Chicago-area pizzerias were founded by sons of Pizzeria Uno's original pizza cook?
Lou Malnati's and Pizano's
Lou Malnati's (1971, Lincolnwood) and Pizano's (1991, Chicago) were founded by Lou and Rudy Malnati Jr., sons of Rudy Malnati Sr., who cooked at Pizzeria Uno in the 1940s.
Q 15Which Cincinnati chili chain did Greek immigrant Nicholas Lambrinides found in 1949?
Skyline Chili
Skyline Chili opened its first parlor in Price Hill in 1949, named for the view of downtown Cincinnati; founder Nicholas Lambrinides had cooked at Empress Chili.
Q 16From which region did the immigrant brothers who created Cincinnati chili come?
The Balkans
The Balkans: Tom and John Kiradjieff, Macedonian immigrants from Kastoria in present-day northern Greece, opened Empress Chili in Cincinnati in 1922.
Q 17In which state is Mount Rushmore?
South Dakota
Mount Rushmore stands in South Dakota's Black Hills, just outside the town of Keystone and about 23 miles southwest of Rapid City.
Q 18Who sculpted Mount Rushmore?
Gutzon Borglum
Gutzon Borglum, who had earlier begun the Confederate carving at Stone Mountain, led the work until his death in March 1941; his son Lincoln finished it that October.
Q 19Whose idea was the Mount Rushmore carving originally?
The state historian, Doane Robinson
Doane Robinson, South Dakota's state historian, proposed carving the Black Hills in 1923 to draw tourists, and recruited Gutzon Borglum for the job in 1924.
Q 20Which figures did Mount Rushmore's original proposer want carved instead of presidents?
Heroes of the American West
Heroes of the American West were the first plan: Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea, Red Cloud and Buffalo Bill Cody; Gutzon Borglum pushed for presidents to give the work national appeal.
Q 24In which Midwestern city does the Gateway Arch stand?
St. Louis
St. Louis's Gateway Arch, on the west bank of the Mississippi, commemorates the city's role as the gateway to the West after the Louisiana Purchase.
Q 25In which year was the Indianapolis 500 first run?
1911
The first Indianapolis 500 was run on May 30, 1911, and won by Ray Harroun in a Marmon Wasp; the race has skipped only the war years 1917-18 and 1942-45.
Q 26What does the winner of the Indianapolis 500 traditionally drink?
Milk
Milk: Louis Meyer drank buttermilk in Victory Lane after his 1936 win, and a dairy-industry sponsor turned it into a fixture from 1956 onward.
Q 27How many timed laps does Indy 500 qualifying require?
Four
Indy 500 qualifying is a four-lap, ten-mile run, with the average speed over all four laps counting; a bad fourth lap can wreck an otherwise fast attempt.
Q 28Which song's chorus is sung before the Indianapolis 500?
Back Home Again in Indiana
'Back Home Again in Indiana', a 1917 Tin Pan Alley song, has been sung before the command to start engines since 1946; Jim Nabors sang it from 1972 to 2014.
Q 29In which Nebraska town was Kool-Aid invented?
Hastings
Edwin Perkins created Kool-Aid in Hastings in 1927, working in his mother's kitchen; Nebraska named it the official state soft drink in 1998.
Q 30What was Kool-Aid's liquid predecessor called?
Fruit Smack
Fruit Smack was the bottled syrup Edwin Perkins sold by mail through his Perkins Products Company in Hastings before he reformulated it as a powder in 1927.