Palau Trivia
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49 free Palau trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Forty-two questions on the Republic of Palau, the 340-island nation at the western edge of Micronesia. The geography round covers Koror, the near-empty capital at Ngerulmud, Babeldaob, the mushroom-shaped Rock Islands, Jellyfish Lake and the marine reserve the size of France that made Palau the world's first shark sanctuary. History takes in the Jesuit map drawn from pebbles, Prince Lee Boo's journey to Georgian London, Spanish, German and Japanese rule, the brutal Battle of Peleliu and the Japanese soldiers who kept fighting there until 1947, then the nuclear-free constitution, the Compact of Free Association and the 1996 bridge collapse that shut off Koror's water and power. There are also questions on the flag, the matrilineal clan system, fruit-bat soup, baseball and the first Palauan in Major League Baseball. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its islands, battles and people, and the sentence that establishes it is quoted under each explanation. Suits a pub quiz, a geography classroom or a diver planning a trip.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which American reality show filmed two of its seasons in Palau, first aired in 2005 and 2008?
Survivor
Survivor. In Survivor: Palau, its tenth season, the Ulong tribe failed to win a single immunity challenge and shrank until one member was left, who then had to join her rivals.
Q 02Palau forms the western part of which larger archipelago?
Caroline Islands
Caroline Islands. Spanish explorers named the chain in the 17th century; when its other districts united as one federation in the 1970s, Palauans voted to stay out and go it alone.
Q 03Which purpose-built site became Palau's seat of government in October 2006?
Ngerulmud
Ngerulmud. The name means 'place of fermented angelfish': women once gathered on the hill there to offer the fermented fish to the gods.
Q 04Palau's capital holds what unusual distinction among the world's sovereign capitals?
Least populous
Least populous. The constitution ordered a permanent capital on the largest island, so the government sits in a purpose-built complex with almost nobody living around it.
Q 05Palau's Blue Corner is one of the country's best-known sites for which activity?
Scuba diving
Scuba diving. Tourism is Palau's main industry and the reefs are the draw; since 2020, four-fifths of the country's waters have been closed to all commercial fishing.
Q 06Palau's 340 or so islands add up to about the same land area as which European microstate?
Andorra
Andorra. Each covers a little under 500 square kilometres, yet Palau's islands are scattered across about 600,000 square kilometres of sea that it also has to police.
Q 07Giant stone discs quarried in Palau were shipped about 400 kilometres by sea to serve as money on which island?
Yap
Yap. Its sailors carved the discs from cave rock in Palau and ferried them home, and the hardship of each voyage became part of a stone's value.
Q 08In 1696, stranded islanders showed a missionary the layout of Palau and its neighbours using what?
Pebbles
Pebbles. They laid them out to stand for their home islands, and the Jesuit Paul Klein drew a map from the pattern, which inspired three failed mission voyages before one reached Palau in 1710.
Q 09Prince Lee Boo, son of a ruler in Palau, was taken to London in 1784 and died there within months of what?
Smallpox
Smallpox. He had sailed to learn about Europe, lived with the captain's family and went to school in London, but caught the disease about five months after landing.
Q 10Which company's ship Antelope was wrecked off Palau in 1783?
British East India Company
British East India Company. Stranded for three months, the crew built a new boat from the wreckage with the islanders' help, and the local ruler's son Lee Boo sailed away with them.
Q 11After the Spanish-American War, Spain sold Palau in 1899 to which country?
Germany
Germany. It ruled for only 15 years, long enough to start mining the islands' phosphate, before Japan seized them in 1914, in the opening months of the First World War.
Q 12Between the world wars, Japan governed Palau as part of a territory known as what?
The South Seas Mandate
The South Seas Mandate. The League of Nations awarded it in 1920 and Japan ran the whole of it from Palau's main town, where Japanese settlers came to outnumber Palauans.
Q 13US forces invaded Peleliu in September 1944 chiefly to capture what?
Its airfield
Q 21The yellow disc set slightly off-centre on Palau's blue flag represents what?
The full moon
The full moon. Palauans traditionally count it the best time for fishing, planting and harvesting, and the design won a national flag contest in 1979.
Q 22On 1 January 1981 Palau raised its own flag and became what?
A republic
A republic. Its constitution took effect that day, yet the islands stayed under American administration until full independence in 1994.
Q 23Palau's famous Rock Islands are made mostly of what?
Limestone
Limestone. The islands are old coral reefs lifted out of the sea and deeply undercut at the waterline, which leaves many of them shaped like mushrooms.
Its airfield. The US commander forecast a four-day fight, but it lasted more than two months; Admiral Halsey had urged skipping the Palau islands altogether.
Q 14What finally persuaded Peleliu's last holdouts to surrender in April 1947?
A Japanese admiral
A Japanese admiral. The men had hidden in the island's caves for two and a half years, believing the war was still on, until the Americans sent a senior Japanese officer to tell them it was over.
Q 15Peleliu's Umurbrogol ridge, riddled with fortified caves, earned which nickname from US Marines in 1944?
Bloody Nose Ridge
Bloody Nose Ridge. Engineers had linked its caves by tunnel into a fortress, and the first Marine regiment sent against it took such losses that Army troops had to be brought in.
Q 16Which United Nations body suspended its work in 1994 once Palau, its last territory, became independent?
The Trusteeship Council
The Trusteeship Council. Palau was the last of the 11 trust territories it supervised, so the council stopped meeting, though on paper it remains one of the UN's six main bodies.
Q 17Palau's constitution delayed independence for over a decade by declaring the islands what?
Nuclear-free
Nuclear-free. The clause could be waived only by a 75 percent vote, so the agreement with Washington failed seven referendums before the bar was amended and an eighth passed in 1993.
Q 18Palau became fully sovereign in 1994 under what kind of agreement with the United States?
Compact of Free Association
Compact of Free Association. In return for US aid it lets islanders live, work and study in the United States without a visa, and it took eight referendums over a decade to pass.
Q 19What currency does Palau use?
The US dollar
The US dollar. It came with American administration after the Second World War and stayed at independence, and US aid still underpins much of the government's budget.
Q 20On 1 January 2020, Palau banned which everyday product to protect its coral reefs?
Certain sunscreens
Certain sunscreens. Lotions containing oxybenzone or nine other chemicals can no longer be sold or even worn in the country, because they are toxic to young coral and other sea life.
Q 24The Rock Islands Southern Lagoon is Palau's only entry on which list?
World Heritage
World Heritage. UNESCO inscribed the lagoon in 2012 for culture as well as nature: among its mushroom-shaped islands lie stone villages abandoned in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Q 25The marine lake on Palau's Eil Malk island is famous for which creatures that cross it daily?
Golden jellyfish
Golden jellyfish. They are a subspecies found in this one lake, and the whole swarm has vanished after strong El Nino years before rebuilding from tiny polyps on the lake walls.
Q 26The jellyfish of Palau's Jellyfish Lake cross it daily to follow what?
The sun
The sun. Algae in their tissues need the light to make food for them, and staying in sunlit water also keeps the jellyfish clear of the anemones that lie in wait along the shaded edges.
Q 27In 2009 Palau announced the world's first national sanctuary for which animal?
Sharks
Sharks. The president unveiled the fishing ban at the United Nations and urged the world to outlaw finning, saying the animals mattered more than a bowl of soup.
Q 28Palau polices about 600,000 square kilometres of ocean, roughly the area of which country?
France
France. Just two long-range patrol boats, one given by Australia and one by a private foundation, hunt poachers and unlicensed fishing boats across all of it.
Q 29Since 2017, visitors to Palau have signed a pledge stamped in their passports promising to do what?
Protect the environment
Protect the environment. The Palau Pledge is stamped into each visitor's passport on arrival and has to be signed, a vow to act in ecologically and culturally responsible ways.
Q 30Which reptile is native to Palau's mangroves and has killed only one person there in modern history?
Saltwater crocodile
That single fatal attack in 1965 triggered an eradication and hide-trade programme; conservation since the 1990s has stabilised numbers.