New Haven Trivia
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57 free New Haven trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
New Haven, Connecticut punches far above its size in trivia. It was America's first planned city, laid out as nine squares around a Green in 1638. It claims the first hamburger, the first lollipop, the first telephone exchange, the Erector Set and the Frisbee. And it is the home of coal-fired apizza, white clam pies and a burger joint that will throw you out for asking for ketchup. This quiz covers the whole city, not just Yale. You'll get questions on the Puritan founders and the regicides hiding on West Rock, the Amistad trial, Eli Whitney and the arms makers, Wooster Square's cherry blossoms, East Rock, the Shubert Theatre's Broadway tryouts, the Yale Bowl, Toad's Place, and the presidents and inventors who passed through town. Questions range from easy to expert, so locals, Yalies and visitors who only know the pizza can all play. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and related reference pages, and each question shows the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01New Haven sits on the northern shore of which body of water?
Long Island Sound
Long Island Sound carried a British fleet from New York in July 1779, when troops under William Tryon landed on its shore and raided New Haven.
Q 02A civic drive to line New Haven's streets with shade trees earned the city which nickname?
The Elm City
The Elm City. Elms planted along New Haven's streets and Green formed leafy canopies until Dutch elm disease killed most of them in the 20th century, though many have since been replanted.
Q 03New Haven's original 17th-century street layout is known by what name?
The Nine Square Plan
The Nine Square Plan set the town out as a three-by-three grid of blocks and left the middle one open as common land, which survives today as the New Haven Green.
Q 04Which hurricane toppled the Lincoln Oak on New Haven's Green, exposing a skeleton in its roots?
Sandy
Hurricane Sandy felled the oak in October 2012; the bones dated from the years when the Green was the town's graveyard, and thousands of bodies still lie beneath it.
Q 05Which Native American people lived around New Haven Harbor before the English arrived?
The Quinnipiac
The Quinnipiac sold their land to the settlers in 1638 in return for a pledge of protection from Pequot and Mohawk raids, and the town was first called Quinnipiac before it was renamed in 1640.
Q 06Which two men led the Puritans who founded New Haven in 1638?
John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton
Minister John Davenport and merchant Theophilus Eaton led the group, seeking a stricter Puritan settlement than Massachusetts; Eaton served as the colony's governor until his death in 1658.
Q 07What became of the 'Great Shippe' New Haven sent to England?
It vanished and was never seen again
It vanished and was never seen again; townspeople later said a phantom of the ship appeared in the sky after a storm, a tale Cotton Mather recorded in 1702.
Q 08What is the West Rock formation where two of Charles I's regicides hid in 1661 called?
Judges' Cave
Judges' Cave sheltered Edward Whalley and William Goffe, who had signed Charles I's death warrant, from the agents of Charles II; every attempt to arrest them failed, and neither was ever returned to England for trial.
Q 09Why did Connecticut's legislature quit New Haven in the 1870s?
A statewide vote
A statewide vote in 1873 made Hartford the sole capital, ending an arrangement dating from 1701 under which the legislature alternated between the two cities; the idle State House was later demolished.
Q 10Yale moved to New Haven in 1716 from which Connecticut town?
Old Saybrook
Old Saybrook held a deed requiring the Collegiate School to stay, but in 1716 the trustees voted to move after New Haven outbid rival towns to host it, and Saybrook residents took to the streets in protest.
Q 11Elihu Yale, whose gift renamed the Collegiate School, was the East India Company's governor at which post on India's eastern coast?
Madras
Madras was where Yale ran the East India Company's fort until the company removed him over charges of self-dealing; years later Cotton Mather hinted the college could take his name in return for a gift.
Q 12Which New Haven merchant led the city's Foot Guard to demand the powder-house keys in 1775?
Benedict Arnold
Captain Benedict Arnold, five years before his treason, threatened to break into the powder house unless he got the keys, then marched his Foot Guard to Cambridge; the city has marked Powder House Day since 1904.
Q 13Which signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution became New Haven's first mayor in 1784?
Q 21Louis' Lunch has served its signature sandwich on what since 1900?
Two slices of toasted white bread
Two slices of toasted white bread were what Louis Lassen had at hand when a customer in a rush wanted lunch to go in 1900, and the family has refused to change the recipe since.
Q 22New Haven-style pizza is known locally by what name?
Apizza
Apizza, pronounced 'ah-BEETS', is baked in coal-fired brick ovens with a thin, charred crust; a 'plain' pizza comes with tomato sauce and grated pecorino but no mozzarella.
Q 23Which seafood tops the signature 'white pie' of Wooster Street's pizzerias?
Clams
Roger Sherman
Roger Sherman was elected in 1784 and three years later brokered the Connecticut Compromise, the deal between large and small states that gave Congress its two differently apportioned chambers.
Q 14Which Yale graduate, who earned little from his famous invention, turned to making muskets near New Haven in the 1790s?
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney won a federal contract for 10,000 muskets to be delivered in two years, then took more than a decade to finish them at his armory in what is now the Whitneyville section of Hamden.
Q 15Whose statue beside New Haven's City Hall commemorates the Amistad captives jailed in the city?
Joseph Cinqué
Joseph Cinqué led the 1839 revolt aboard the Amistad; the memorial stands where the captives were jailed before the Supreme Court freed them in 1841, with former president John Quincy Adams arguing their case.
Q 16Which gunmaker produced firearms in New Haven until 2006?
Winchester Repeating Arms
Winchester Repeating Arms grew out of a struggling gun company bought by Oliver Winchester, who had come to New Haven to manufacture dress shirts; its rifles were made in the city until the plant closed in 2006.
Q 17Which Catholic fraternal organization was founded at St. Mary's Church in New Haven in 1882?
The Knights of Columbus
The Knights of Columbus began as a mutual-benefit society: Father Michael McGivney, a priest at St. Mary's, wanted working-class Catholic families insured so that a breadwinner's death would not leave them destitute.
Q 18In 1878, the District Telephone Company of New Haven opened the world's first commercial what?
Switchboard exchange
Switchboard exchange: George Coy built the board from carriage bolts, teapot-lid handles and wire, and from January 1878 it connected the company's 21 subscribers through a central operator.
Q 19Louis' Lunch on Crown Street is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing what in 1900?
The hamburger
Louis Lassen served a hurried customer a ground-steak patty as a sandwich in 1900, and the Library of Congress credits Louis' Lunch with inventing the hamburger.
Q 20Louis' Lunch is famous for refusing customers which condiment?
Ketchup
Ketchup is off the menu at Louis' Lunch, along with every other condiment: the Lassen family says nothing should mask the taste of the meat, so cheese, tomato and onion are the only garnishes allowed.
Clams, shucked fresh each day, top Pepe's white pie over garlic, olive oil and grated cheese; the original 1925 menu had nothing like it, offering only a tomato pie with or without anchovies.
Q 24Frank Pepe left Maiori, on which stretch of Italian shoreline, for New Haven?
Amalfi Coast
The Amalfi Coast town of Maiori was Pepe's birthplace; he reached New Haven as a teenager, went back to fight for Italy in the First World War, then returned and sold his pizzas from a cart before opening his pizzeria in 1925.
Q 25Salvatore 'Sally' Consiglio, whose Wooster Street pizzeria became Pepe's great rival, was what relation to Frank Pepe?
His nephew
His nephew: Sally learned the trade from his uncle, and in 1938 his mother, Pepe's sister Filomena, bought a building with a bread oven on the same street for him to run as a pizzeria.
Q 26Unlike its Wooster Street rivals, Modern, the third of New Haven's famous pizzerias, opened in 1934 on which street?
State Street
State Street put Modern in the East Rock neighborhood, away from Wooster Square, and its ovens differ too: Modern's brick ovens burn oil, where Pepe's and Sally's burn coal.
Q 27The Frisbee takes its name from which product's tins, tossed by Yale students?
Pies
Pies from Bridgeport's Frisbie bakery came in tins that students at Yale and other colleges flung for sport; Wham-O renamed its Pluto Platter the Frisbee in 1957 after hearing them call a flying disc a 'Frisbie'.
Q 28Which construction toy was invented in New Haven by A. C. Gilbert in 1911?
The Erector Set
Gilbert's Erector Set, sold from 1913, came to him on a train to New York as he watched workmen rivet steel girders beside the track; he was also a magician and a 1908 Olympic pole-vault gold medalist.
Q 29Which US president was born in New Haven while his father was a Yale student?
George W. Bush
George W. Bush was born in New Haven on July 6, 1946, while his father was a Yale undergraduate, but he grew up in Midland and Houston and made his political career as a Texan, serving as that state's governor.
Q 30Whose 1970 trial drew thousands of protesters to New Haven's Green?
Bobby Seale and other Black Panthers
Bobby Seale and other Black Panthers were charged over the 1969 killing of fellow Panther Alex Rackley; Seale's jury deadlocked, and the judge, widely expected to order a retrial, dismissed the charges instead.