New Mexico Trivia
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8correct to beat the crowd
This New Mexico trivia quiz has 70 free questions with answers and covers the Land of Enchantment from the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the Santa Fe Trail to statehood in 1912, the Trinity test and the Roswell balloon that launched a thousand UFO theories. It takes in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the Balloon Fiesta, Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, Chaco-era pueblos and the Long Walk, plus the state symbols that make New Mexico odd in the best way: an official question (red or green?), a state cookie, a state aroma and a female-only state reptile. Easy questions open it (what is the capital, which show was filmed in Albuquerque?) and the later ones will stretch people who grew up here (who designed the flag, which spa town renamed itself for a radio show?), so it suits a classroom, a road trip down I-25, a family night or a bar quiz anywhere in the state. Every answer was checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry or the New Mexico Secretary of State's official symbols pages, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What are the strings of chile pods hung up to dry on New Mexico porches and fences called?
Ristras
Ristras. Most are hung simply to dry the chile for later cooking, but they double as decoration and are said to bring good health and good luck.
Q 02Which president signed New Mexico into the Union as the 47th state?
Taft
Taft. He signed New Mexico's statehood on January 6, 1912, ending six decades as a territory, and the lower 48 were complete the next month, when the state next door joined too.
Q 03New Mexico's official state question is what?
Red or green?
The legislature adopted it in 1996 to honor the chile industry; ordering both colors is called 'Christmas'.
Q 04Which bird is New Mexico's official state bird?
Greater roadrunner
Greater roadrunner. Adopted in 1949, this ground-dwelling cuckoo can fly but would rather run, chasing down lizards and other prey on foot.
Q 05Which TV drama was set and filmed in Albuquerque?
Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad. The pilot script was set in Riverside, California; Sony moved the shoot for the state's production rebate, and Vince Gilligan rewrote the setting rather than hide the mountains east of town.
Q 06Which New Mexico town became a UFO byword after debris was found nearby in 1947?
Roswell
Roswell. The local air base announced that it had recovered a 'flying disc', then took it back within a day and called the wreckage a weather balloon.
Q 07What is New Mexico's official state nickname?
The Land of Enchantment
The Land of Enchantment began as the title of Lilian Whiting's 1906 book and was stamped on New Mexico license plates from 1941, decades before lawmakers made it the official nickname.
Q 08Albuquerque's famous October festival fills the sky with what?
Hot air balloons
Hot air balloons. The Balloon Fiesta began in 1972 as a radio station's birthday party, with 13 balloons in a shopping-mall parking lot, and now launches more than 500.
Q 09The Big Room, a vast limestone chamber, lies in the caverns named for which New Mexico city?
Carlsbad
Carlsbad. The caverns were dissolved by sulfuric acid, which formed when hydrogen sulfide rising from below met oxygen in the groundwater.
Q 10The dunes of White Sands National Park are made of which mineral?
Gypsum
Gypsum. Rain dissolves it out of the nearby mountains, but the Tularosa Basin has no outlet to the sea, so the mineral stays behind as the world's largest dunefield of its kind.
Q 11Which Native people's sun symbol sits at the center of New Mexico's state flag?
Zia
Zia. Physician Harry Mera took the sun from a 19th-century Zia Pueblo water jar for a 1920s flag contest, and his wife Reba sewed the winning design.
Q 12Which cartoon rabbit keeps taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque?
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny first made the excuse in the 1945 short Herr Meets Hare, after tunneling toward Las Vegas and surfacing in Germany's Black Forest.
Q 13At the Four Corners, New Mexico touches Colorado, Utah and which other state?
Arizona
Arizona. Four Corners is the only spot where four states meet, and though surveyors found its marker about 1,800 feet from the intended point, the marker itself is the legal corner.
Q 21Which historic trade route carried wagon freight from Missouri to New Mexico between 1821 and 1880?
Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail. William Becknell opened it in 1821, when newly independent Mexico welcomed the American trade that Spain had turned away; the railroad ended it in 1880.
Q 22Hot Springs, New Mexico, renamed itself in 1950 after which radio quiz show?
Truth or Consequences
Truth or Consequences. Host Ralph Edwards promised to air the show's 10th-anniversary broadcast from the first town to take its name, and Hot Springs voted to do it.
Q 23Which fictional Simpsons team gave Albuquerque's minor-league baseball club its name?
Isotopes
Q 14Which historic highway follows Central Avenue through the heart of Albuquerque?
Route 66
Route 66 first crossed Albuquerque north to south on Fourth Street; a 1937 realignment moved it onto Central Avenue, so the old and new routes cross downtown.
Q 15Which laboratory town was built for the Manhattan Project?
Los Alamos
Los Alamos was so secret that the whole town shared one mailing address, P.O. Box 1663 in Santa Fe, which even went on the birth certificates of babies born there during the war.
Q 16What was the code name of the world's first nuclear test, set off in the New Mexico desert in 1945?
Trinity
Trinity. The blast fused the desert sand into a green, mildly radioactive glass that was named trinitite.
Q 17Which cookie is New Mexico's official state cookie, the first in the nation?
Biscochito
Biscochito. Lawmakers chose the anise-flavored cookie, brought by early Spanish settlers, to help keep traditional home baking alive.
Q 18Which flower is New Mexico's official state flower?
Yucca
Yucca. Schoolchildren chose it in a statewide survey before lawmakers adopted it in 1927; settlers once crushed its roots into a substitute for soap.
Q 19Which tree is the official state tree of New Mexico?
Piñon pine
Piñon pine. Its nuts have been gathered for centuries, and piñon jays help plant new trees by burying stores of the seeds.
Q 20Along with chile, which food is one of New Mexico's two official state vegetables?
Frijoles
Frijoles, or pinto beans, were adopted together with chile in 1965 after lawmakers argued that the two were inseparable.
Isotopes. In a 2001 episode Homer goes on hunger strike to stop the Springfield Isotopes moving to Albuquerque; two years later a real team arrived from Calgary and took the name.
Q 24Which painter, called the Mother of American modernism, lived at Ghost Ranch and Abiquiú?
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe made New Mexico her permanent home in 1949 and explored its back country alone in a Ford Model A she had bought and learned to drive in 1929.
Q 25Which uprising in 1680 drove the Spanish out of New Mexico for twelve years?
Pueblo Revolt
Pueblo Revolt. Leader Po'pay is said to have sent runners to each village with knotted cords, one knot to be untied each day until it was time to rise.
Q 26Which billionaire founder was born in Albuquerque in 1964?
Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos was born Jeffrey Jorgensen to a teenage mother in Albuquerque, and took his surname at four when his Cuban-born stepfather, Mike Bezos, adopted him.
Q 27Which 1970s country-folk star was born in New Mexico, the son of an Army Air Forces pilot?
John Denver
John Denver was born Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. while his father, an Army Air Forces pilot, was stationed in New Mexico; decades later, Colorado and West Virginia each made one of his songs a state song.
Q 28Which Albuquerque-born actor grew up in Ruidoso and starred in How I Met Your Mother?
Neil Patrick Harris
Neil Patrick Harris finished Albuquerque's La Cueva High School with high honors in 1991 while starring as TV's teenage doctor Doogie Howser, tutored on set for half of each school year.
Q 29What is the popular nickname of New Mexico's state capitol building, dedicated in 1966?
The Roundhouse
The Roundhouse. Seen from above, the round building and its four entrance wings form the sun symbol from the state flag.
Q 30Which village calls itself the Chile Capital of the World?
Hatch
Hatch. Its chile festival began in 1971 as a small gathering of local farmers and now draws more than 30,000 visitors to the village each Labor Day weekend.