Nails
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40 free Nails trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Nails are easy to ignore until one breaks, yet they carry a surprising amount of science, history and show business. The same small shields that protect your fingertips have been painted for thousands of years, studied by doctors for clues to illness and left uncut for decades by people chasing a place in the record books. This quiz covers the whole subject. There are questions on what nails are made of and how they form, on the conditions and habits that affect them, on the chemistry of polish and remover, and on the brands and inventors behind the modern salon. Others follow nails into pop culture, from Olympic sprinters and country singers to film characters who work with a file and a bottle of varnish. It suits nail technicians and beauty students, pub quiz writers and anyone curious about the facts at their own fingertips. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so each round leaves a few good facts to pass on.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Fingernails are made of which tough protein, also found in hair, hooves and rhino horns?
Keratin
Keratin makes up the whole nail plate, which contains no nerves, so cutting it is painless. The same protein builds claws, feathers and the outer layer of skin.
Q 02Which country star made the typewriter beat of her hit 9 to 5 by clicking her acrylic nails?
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton is listed in the song's credits for lead vocals and nails. She devised the clacking rhythm by running her acrylic fingernails back and forth against one another.
Q 03What do nails only appear to do after death, an illusion caused by the skin drying and shrinking?
Keep growing
Nails only seem to keep growing: the skin dehydrates and tightens, exposing more of each nail. The same shrinkage makes hair and stubble appear longer too.
Q 04Which nail look with white tips did Orly founder Jeff Pink create for Hollywood film actresses in the 1970s?
French manicure
The French manicure was devised so screen actresses need not repaint their nails at every costume change. Pink only renamed it on a flight home from the Paris catwalks.
Q 05Which Hitchcock actress helped Vietnamese refugees train as manicurists, seeding a nail salon boom?
Tippi Hedren
Tippi Hedren saw that women at a California refugee camp in 1975 admired her manicured nails, so she brought in her own nail technician to teach them. A beauty school then helped them find jobs.
Q 06Which sprinter won three 1988 Olympic golds with six-inch nails painted red, white, blue and gold?
Florence Griffith Joyner
Florence Griffith Joyner had styled hair and nails in her spare time while working at a bank. At the 1988 US trials her four-inch nails wore tiger stripes.
Q 07Nail polish giant OPI began as Odontorium Products, a small firm supplying which profession?
Dentists
Dentists were OPI's first customers. George Schaeffer bought the small supply firm in 1981 and, with Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, turned it towards acrylics and lacquers for nails.
Q 08Former record holder Lee Redmond lost nails she had grown for 30 years in which kind of accident?
A car crash
A car crash in Utah in 2009 broke the nails off when Redmond was thrown from the vehicle in a four-car pile-up. She said later that everyday tasks had become much easier without them.
Q 09In which country did nail polish begin 5,000 years ago, later mixed from beeswax and egg whites?
China
China's Zhou dynasty royal house preferred gold and silver nail colours around 600 BCE. Red and black later replaced the metallic shades as royal favourites.
Q 10Shridhar Chillal, who let five fingernails grow uncut from 1952 to 2018, comes from which country?
India
India's Shridhar Chillal reached a combined length of 909.6 centimetres, with a thumbnail of nearly two metres. A power tool cut the nails off in 2018 at a Ripley's museum in New York.
Q 11Which cosmetics giant was founded in 1932 with a single product, a new type of nail enamel?
Revlon
Revlon takes the L in its name from chemist Charles Lachman, who founded it with the brothers Charles and Joseph Revson. They launched in the middle of the Great Depression.
Q 12Which brand, founded by Northam Warren in 1911, sold one of the first liquid nail polishes before 1920?
Cutex
Cutex started with a remover for the excess skin at the base of the nail, then moved into nail tints and liquid polish. Its later polish remover, safe to use at home, helped liquid polish reach the mass market.
Q 13Nitrocellulose, the main ingredient of most nail polish, is also an explosive known by which name?
Guncotton
Q 21The small white nail spots called leukonychia are most often caused by which of these?
Minor injury
Minor injury to the base of the nail is the most common cause. The popular idea that the spots mean a lack of calcium is not backed by research.
Q 22Mees' lines, white bands across the nails, are a classic clue to poisoning by which substance?
Arsenic
Arsenic leaves the white bands after an episode of poisoning, as can thallium. They carry the name of Dutch physician R. A. Mees, who described them in 1919, though an English doctor had reported them in 1901.
Q 23Clubbed nails, a sign of heart or lung disease, are also named after which ancient Greek physician?
Hippocrates
Guncotton was one of the compound's first major uses, as a replacement for gunpowder in firearms. In the 20th century the same material was adapted to automobile lacquer.
Q 14Which solvent is the main ingredient in many nail polish removers and is used to soak off gel nails?
Acetone
Acetone is also made by the human body, which produces and disposes of small amounts through normal metabolism. It breaks down ordinary polish, cured gel and acrylic alike.
Q 15Pearl essence, which gives some nail polish its shimmering lustre, comes from which natural source?
Fish scales
Fish scales yield crystals of guanine, whose transparent layers bounce light back to give a pearly lustre. The same crystals add shimmer to eye shadow and coat imitation pearls.
Q 16Ancient Egyptians stained their nails reddish brown with which plant dye, still used for body art?
Henna
Henna is made from the dried, powdered leaves of the shrub Lawsonia inermis. Even mummified pharaohs have been found with their nails painted with it.
Q 17The word manicure combines two Latin words meaning care of which part of the body?
The hands
The hands give manicure its first half, from Latin manus, joined to cura for care. Pedicure was built the same way from pes, the Latin for foot.
Q 18Which thin layer of dead skin at the base of a nail is pushed back or clipped during a manicure?
Cuticle
The cuticle is non-living tissue, but the fold of living skin that produces it, the eponychium, should be left alone. Cutting that risks pain, bleeding and infection.
Q 19Human fingernails grow an average of about 3.5 millimetres over which length of time?
A month
A month brings about 3.5 mm of fingernail but only around 1.6 mm of toenail. That is why a lost fingernail regrows in three to six months and a toenail can take a year or more.
Q 20Koilonychia, or spoon-shaped nails, can be a sign that the body is short of which mineral?
Iron
Iron shortage can show in the nails as a hollow dip, and koilonychia comes from the Greek koilos, meaning hollow. The condition is also linked to Plummer-Vinson syndrome.
Hippocrates' era already recognised clubbing as a sign of disease, hence the name Hippocratic fingers. Another nickname, watch-glass nails, describes their bulging shape.
Q 24Onychocryptosis, a painful problem that most often strikes the big toe, is better known as what?
Ingrown nail
An ingrown nail takes its medical name from Greek words for nail and hidden. Shoes are a main culprit, which is why toes suffer far more often than fingers.
Q 25Onychomycosis, which thickens and discolours nails in one adult in ten, is which kind of infection?
Fungal
Fungal nail infection, also called tinea unguium, is more common in toenails than fingernails. The nail can turn white, yellow, black or green and become brittle.
Q 26What is the pale crescent at the base of a fingernail called, best seen on the thumb?
Lunula
The lunula is the visible edge of the tissue that makes the nail, and its name is Latin for small moon. It looks white because of the way light reflects there.
Q 27Which hidden tissue under the skin at the base of a nail produces the cells that become the nail?
Matrix
The matrix decides how wide and thick a nail will be, while the shape of the fingertip bone decides whether it grows flat, arched or hooked.
Q 28Which informal name for the tender skin under a nail tip appears in a phrase about being cut to it?
The quick
The quick is properly called the hyponychium. The word is an old term for living flesh, which is why cutting someone to it means wounding them deeply.
Q 29Emery, the gritty rock on a classic nail file, once came mainly from which Greek island?
Naxos
Naxos used to be the main source of emery, a rock made largely of the hard mineral corundum. Emery boards are cheap enough to throw away, which makes them a sanitary alternative to metal files.
Q 30Gel nail polish does not air-dry and must be hardened under a lamp giving off which kind of light?
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet light hardens the gel into a durable coat that can last two to three weeks. Dip powder nails need no lamp, setting with a liquid activator instead.