Pi Kappa Alpha
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40 free Pi Kappa Alpha trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Pi Kappa Alpha began in 1868 in a student room at the University of Virginia, where six young men put their purpose into a single sentence. That sentence, the preamble, is still the first thing most new members learn, and it sets out in three short clauses what the founders wanted a fraternity to be. This quiz starts with the preamble: what it asks for, who proposed it and who drafted it. It then covers the founding and the founders, the near collapse and revival of 1889, the growth from a Southern fraternity into an international one, and the colors, flower, magazine and headquarters that members know by heart. A run of questions on well-known Pikes takes in coaches, actors, inventors, authors and a wartime general. The opening questions suit anyone curious about Greek life. Later ones are for new members studying for a pledge test and for alumni who want to see how much of the history has stuck.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Pi Kappa Alpha member first served his chicken dishes to travelers at a Kentucky service station?
Harland Sanders
Harland Sanders, the white-suited Colonel of Kentucky Fried Chicken, is listed with the fraternity's University of Florida chapter. He took over the Shell station in Corbin in 1930.
Q 02Pi Kappa Alpha's preamble opens by seeking to establish what "on a firmer and more lasting basis"?
Friendship
Friendship comes first in the preamble, ahead of brotherly love and mutual benefit. Two of the founders drafted the single sentence as a statement of how the fraternity began.
Q 03Pi Kappa Alpha's 1988 Memorial Headquarters was inspired by which US president's Virginia home?
Monticello
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's hilltop house, was the model for the building. Jefferson also designed the University of Virginia rooms where the fraternity was founded.
Q 04Which writer roomed in 1826 on the University of Virginia row where Pi Kappa Alpha was later founded?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe lived at No. 13 on the row and left after a year for lack of money. Pi Kappa Alpha keeps No. 47, its birthplace, and Woodrow Wilson later lived at No. 31.
Q 05Pi Kappa Alpha member Bob Bowman, a Florida State graduate, coached which swimmer to 23 Olympic titles?
Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps is the swimmer Bowman is best known for coaching. Bowman has also guided the champions Léon Marchand and Summer McIntosh.
Q 06Pi Kappa Alpha member Will Shortz, an Indiana graduate, is famous for editing which New York Times feature?
The crossword
The crossword became his to edit in 1993. Shortz designed his own Indiana major and holds the only known college degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles.
Q 07Pi Kappa Alpha shares which pair of official colors with the Florida State Seminoles?
Garnet and gold
Garnet and gold have a mixed pedigree at Florida State, where garnet came from blending crimson with the purple of its early football teams.
Q 08Pi Kappa Alpha first left the United States in 1970 for the University of Windsor, in which country?
Canada
Canada's University of Windsor, in Ontario, hosted the Eta Gamma chapter, which lasted only until 1972. Later chapters followed elsewhere in Ontario and in Alberta.
Q 09Which country star, who married Faith Hill in 1996, pledged Pi Kappa Alpha at Northeast Louisiana University?
Tim McGraw
Tim McGraw went to the Monroe campus on a baseball scholarship, and a knee injury there ended his hopes of a sports career. His father was major league pitcher Tug McGraw.
Q 10Pi Kappa Alpha member Nolan Bushnell founded Chuck E. Cheese and which video game company behind Pong?
Atari
Atari was later sold to Warner Communications, and Bushnell went on to start more than 20 companies. Newsweek named him one of its 50 Men Who Changed America.
Q 11Pi Kappa Alpha member S. Truett Cathy founded which chicken sandwich chain that closes every Sunday?
Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A grew out of the Dwarf Grill, a tiny diner Cathy opened near Atlanta in 1946. He is listed with the fraternity's Georgia Southern chapter.
Q 12Which Pi Kappa Alpha member from the University of Houston won four Emmys playing Sheldon Cooper?
Jim Parsons
Jim Parsons appeared in 17 plays in three years as a Houston theater student. He played Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory from 2007 to 2019.
Q 13Pi Kappa Alpha member Eric Stonestreet won two Emmys as Cameron Tucker on which sitcom?
Modern Family
Q 21Pi Kappa Alpha was founded in Room 47 of which row of student rooms at the University of Virginia?
West Range
West Range also names the street of the fraternity's headquarters, which stands at 8347 West Range Cove. The fraternity maintains the founding room as its birthplace.
Q 22Which Pi Kappa Alpha member from the University of Utah wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?
Stephen Covey
Stephen Covey followed his Utah business degree with a Harvard MBA and a doctorate from Brigham Young. Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential Americans of 1996.
Q 23Which Pi Kappa Alpha chapter president at Howard College later coached Florida State to two national titles?
Bobby Bowden
Modern Family ran from 2009 to 2020. Stonestreet first went on stage at Kansas State after auditioning on a dare, and won the smallest role in the play.
Q 14Pi Kappa Alpha's 1946 Victory Convention chose which Tennessee city for a war memorial headquarters?
Memphis
Memphis got the first Memorial Headquarters in 1954, built to honor brothers killed in military service. The convention that picked the city met on Mackinac Island, Michigan.
Q 15Which Pi Kappa Alpha member from Syracuse anchored ABC's late-night news program Nightline for 25 years?
Ted Koppel
Ted Koppel graduated from Syracuse at 20 and soon became the youngest correspondent ever hired by ABC Radio News. Nightline grew out of nightly reports on the Iran hostage crisis.
Q 16Pi Kappa Alpha member George Nissen, a champion Iowa gymnast, invented which piece of gym equipment?
The trampoline
The trampoline took its name from trampolín, a Spanish word for springboard that Nissen heard while touring Mexico. Circus safety nets had given him the idea.
Q 17Pi Kappa Alpha's preamble calls for the promotion of brotherly love and which other two-word quality?
Kind feeling
Kind feeling is paired with brotherly love in the preamble's second clause. The fraternity's own history calls that pairing the founders' simple mission.
Q 18From 1889, Pi Kappa Alpha limited new chapters to the territory south of which famous American boundary?
The Mason-Dixon Line
The Mason-Dixon Line rule fell in 1909, when a convention abolished every geographic limit on expansion. A Missouri mining school had already become the first chapter outside the South in 1905.
Q 19Which title, taken from a fraternity song by B. E. Shields, did Pi Kappa Alpha first award nationally in 1950?
Dream Girl
Dream Girl comes from a song composed for a fraternity songbook that a convention authorized in 1915. Thirty-five years later another convention elected the first national Dream Girl.
Q 20What does Pi Kappa Alpha call the tribute in its headquarters rotunda to brothers who died in military service?
Gold Star Memorial
The Gold Star Memorial was added in 2008 at the center of the entry rotunda, making it the first thing a visitor meets. The whole building was conceived as a monument to the fraternity's war dead.
Bobby Bowden was elected president of his chapter as a junior and again as a senior at Howard College, since renamed Samford. His Florida State teams were national champions in 1993 and 1999.
Q 24Which goggle-wearing Pi Kappa Alpha member from Clemson won three straight NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls?
Horace Grant
Horace Grant kept wearing his goggles even after eye surgery, because he had become an inspiration to children who played sports in glasses.
Q 25Pi Kappa Alpha member Steve Prefontaine ran for which university under Bill Bowerman, the co-founder of Nike?
Oregon
Oregon's Prefontaine won four straight collegiate titles at three miles or 5,000 meters and finished fourth at the 1972 Munich Olympics. He died in a car crash at 24.
Q 26Pi Kappa Alpha chartered its Beta chapter, exactly one year after its founding, at which North Carolina school?
Davidson College
Davidson College got the charter on March 1, 1869, because the founders saw within a year that growth was critical to survival. The chapter lapsed in 1870 and was not revived until 1894.
Q 27In which city did Pi Kappa Alpha's 1909 convention end its Southern-only rule and adopt the present coat of arms?
New Orleans
New Orleans is where the fraternity declared itself national, with 30 active chapters and 346 active brothers. The coat of arms adopted there has kept its symbolism ever since.
Q 28Which fragrant flower, sold across France every May 1, is the official flower of Pi Kappa Alpha?
Lily of the valley
Lily of the valley is sweetly scented but highly poisonous if eaten, and that includes its small red berries.
Q 29Which Pi Kappa Alpha magazine began in 1890 as The Pi Kappa Alpha Journal before taking its present name?
Shield & Diamond
Shield & Diamond takes its name from two of the fraternity's symbols. The Dagger and Key, named for two more, is a separate secret publication issued after each convention.
Q 30What title does Pi Kappa Alpha give the four delegates who revived the fraternity at its 1889 convention?
Junior Founders
Junior Founders is the name for the men who met in a dorm room when only four chapters were left active. Their convention ended almost a decade of decline.