Poisons
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50 free Poisons trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Poison has ended reigns, settled inheritances and filled more detective novels than any other weapon. It also sits quietly in gardens, kitchens and garages, which is part of what makes the subject so hard to put down. This quiz covers the famous cases and the science behind them: ancient philosophers and paranoid kings, Victorian households, Cold War assassinations, toxic plants and animals, everyday foods that need careful cooking, and the chemicals under the sink. Every answer comes with a short explanation of how the poison works or why the story matters. It is written for curious general players, mystery and true-crime fans, and anyone warming up for a science or history quiz night. No chemistry degree required.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which poisonous plant did the Greek philosopher Socrates drink after an Athenian jury condemned him at his trial?
Hemlock
Hemlock owes its deadliness to an alkaloid called coniine, and as few as six to eight leaves can kill an adult.
Q 02Which sweet treat is dangerous to dogs because they break down its stimulant theobromine far more slowly than humans?
Chocolate
Chocolate gets riskier as it gets darker, because dark and baking varieties hold far more theobromine than refined sweets.
Q 03Which nutrient makes polar bear liver so toxic that the Inuit have long refused to eat it?
Vitamin A
Vitamin A builds up in the livers of Arctic predators, and about 500 grams of polar bear liver is estimated to be an acute toxic dose for a person.
Q 04Which color was the arsenic pigment, named for chemist Carl Scheele, that sickened Victorians through their wallpaper?
Green
Green wallpaper took the blame when damp rooms made people ill, because mold was thought to release arsenic vapours from the pigment.
Q 05Which garden plant has edible stalks but leaves made poisonous by high levels of oxalic acid?
Rhubarb
Rhubarb leaves are inedible, and even the stalks should be skipped after a severe cold snap, when the acid can migrate out of the leaves.
Q 06Which toxic metal, once used to make felt hats, is the popular explanation for the expression mad as a hatter?
Mercury
Mercury vapors poisoned so many felt hat makers that the illness picked up nicknames such as hatter's shakes and Danbury shakes.
Q 07Which fish, served in Japan as fugu, may only be prepared by chefs with three or more years of training?
Pufferfish
Pufferfish organs carry tetrodotoxin, which paralyzes the muscles while the victim stays fully conscious, and there is no known antidote.
Q 08Which egg-laying Australian mammal defends itself with venomous spurs on the hind feet of the males?
Platypus
Platypus venom is strong enough that the swelling and heightened pain in a stung limb can last for months.
Q 09Which crime novelist learned about poisons while working in a hospital dispensary during the First World War?
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie qualified as an apothecary's assistant in 1917, then refreshed her knowledge in a London hospital pharmacy during the next war.
Q 10Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was killed in London by a suspected ricin pellet delivered with which everyday object?
An umbrella
An umbrella was the weapon, wielded by an unknown man on a London street, and the KGB was later reported to have helped the Bulgarian secret service.
Q 11Which bacterial product, considered the deadliest natural substance known, is injected to smooth facial wrinkles?
Botulinum toxin
Botulinum toxin is sold in strongly diluted form under brand names such as Botox, and it works best on wrinkles in the upper third of the face.
Q 12Which painkiller brand was laced with cyanide in Chicago in 1982, a crime that led to federal anti-tampering laws?
Tylenol
Tylenol capsules bought anywhere in the Chicago area were pulled from homes and shelves in one of the largest pharmaceutical recalls ever.
Q 13Which fruit drink mix, often misremembered as a rival brand, was laced with cyanide at Jonestown in 1978?
Flavor Aid
Q 21Which poison from the seeds of the nux-vomica tree kills through violent muscular convulsions and asphyxia?
Strychnine
Strychnine only works if the hard-coated seeds are crushed or chewed first, so seeds swallowed whole may cause no symptoms at all.
Q 22Drops from which poisonous plant were reputedly used by Renaissance women to dilate their pupils?
Belladonna
Belladonna means beautiful woman in Italian, a name popularly linked to that cosmetic use, and the plant is also called deadly nightshade.
Q 23Which Swiss physician of the 1500s is credited with the maxim that the dose makes the poison?
Paracelsus
Paracelsus wrote in 1538 that all things are poison and that only the dosage keeps a thing from being one.
Flavor Aid, in grape, is what most accounts put in the large metal tub, laced with sedatives too, yet Kool-Aid took the blame in popular memory.
Q 14In The Princess Bride, the man in black wins a battle of wits thanks to his immunity to which fictional poison?
Iocane powder
Iocane powder never gave Vizzini a chance, because both goblets were poisoned.
Q 15In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the old king is murdered when poison is poured into which part of his body as he sleeps?
His ear
His ear is where the ghost says the juice of hebenon went, a poison nobody has firmly identified, though yew and henbane are the usual guesses.
Q 16Which legumes hold the highest levels of a lectin that causes food poisoning when they are eaten raw or undercooked?
Kidney beans
Kidney beans are made safe by soaking and then boiling for at least thirty minutes, which cuts the toxin in a raw red bean from up to 70,000 units to a few hundred.
Q 17Which colorless, odorless gas poisons people by binding to hemoglobin so that the blood cannot carry oxygen?
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide gives little warning, because early symptoms such as headache and dizziness are often described as flu-like.
Q 18Mixing household bleach with which other common cleaning chemical produces dangerously toxic chloramine fumes?
Ammonia
Ammonia and bleach are often said to release chlorine, but the reaction really produces chloramines such as nitrogen trichloride.
Q 19In popular belief, which Egyptian queen died by letting a venomous snake known as an asp bite her?
Cleopatra
Cleopatra may never have touched a snake, since Strabo, Plutarch and Cassius Dio wrote of a toxic ointment or a sharp implement such as a hairpin.
Q 20Which confidant of Russia's last tsar is said to have eaten cyanide-laced cakes in 1916 and appeared unaffected?
Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin's daughter doubted the tale, recording that her father avoided sweet food and would not have eaten the cakes.
Q 24Which king of Pontus and enemy of Rome so feared assassination that he regularly swallowed small doses of poison?
Mithridates VI
Mithridates VI reportedly grew so resistant that his own attempt at suicide by poison failed, and he asked a bodyguard to finish the job with a sword.
Q 25Which radioactive isotope, slipped into a teapot at a London hotel, killed former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko?
Polonium-210
Polonium-210 was identified only after a veteran of Britain's early atomic bomb programme overheard talk of an odd gamma-ray spike and recognised its signature.
Q 26Which heavy metal is nicknamed the poisoner's poison because its salts are colorless, odorless and tasteless?
Thallium
Thallium's telltale sign is hair loss, an effect that once saw it used as a hair remover before its toxicity was properly appreciated.
Q 27Which plant paste do South American hunters put on blowgun darts to paralyze prey, though it is harmless if swallowed?
Curare
Curare is only active once it enters a wound or the bloodstream, where it weakens the skeletal muscles until the diaphragm fails.
Q 28Which metal did the Romans use extensively in aqueducts, although the engineer Vitruvius preferred earthenware pipes?
Lead
Lead is plumbum in Latin, which is why its chemical symbol is Pb, and its toxicity was already noted by ancient Greek and Roman writers.
Q 29Which mushroom, easily mistaken for edible species, is blamed for about nine in ten mushroom deaths worldwide?
Death cap
Death cap toxins resist both heat and cold, so neither cooking nor freezing makes the mushroom any safer.
Q 30Which tall garden flower supplies digitalis, the heart medicine first described in English by William Withering in 1785?
Foxglove
Foxglove is very toxic to people and other mammals, yet Withering's account of its heart effects is considered the beginning of modern therapeutics.