Rolex Trivia
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49 free Rolex trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Rolex trivia quiz covers the world's most famous watchmaker from a London import business in 1905 to the crown on a million wrists a year. The easy questions are ones any watch fan could answer: the founder, the city where Rolex is based today, the diving watch James Bond wore, the racing chronograph named after a Florida beach, and the actor whose own Daytona set an auction record. The harder end is for collectors and horology nerds: why the name Rolex was chosen, the swimmer who wore an Oyster across the English Channel, the Perpetual rotor of 1931, the airline that asked for a dual-time watch, the model built for CERN scientists, the watch strapped outside the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960, the helium valve on the Sea-Dweller, the steel grade Rolex switched to in 1985, and the foundation that has owned the company since 1960. Tudor, Datejust, Day-Date, Explorer, Milgauss and the Rolex 24 at Daytona get questions too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the company, its founder and its models before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our luxury brands, James Bond and Switzerland quizzes next.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was the company that became Rolex founded in 1905?
London
London is where Hans Wilsdorf, aged 24, and Alfred Davis began by importing Swiss watch movements and casing them for jewellers; the head office did not leave for Geneva until 1919.
Q 02Collectors nickname the first Rolex GMT-Master's two-colour bezel after which soft drink?
Pepsi
Pepsi's colours matched the bezel, whose red half marks the daylight hours and blue half the night; a later black-and-red version duly became the 'Coke'.
Q 03What does Rolex laser-etch, almost invisibly, into its crystals?
Crown logo
Crown logo: a copy almost too small to see sits in the crystal at six o'clock to trip up counterfeiters; Rolex registered the five-point crown as its trademark in 1925.
Q 04In which country was Rolex's founder Hans Wilsdorf born?
Germany
Germany: born in Kulmbach, Bavaria, Wilsdorf was orphaned at twelve and sent to boarding school, then left as a young man for a job with a Swiss watch-exporting firm.
Q 05What relation was co-founder Alfred Davis to Hans Wilsdorf?
Brother-in-law
Brother-in-law Alfred Davis gave the firm half its first name, Wilsdorf & Davis; both surnames were dropped in 1915, when it became the Rolex Watch Co.
Q 06Besides brevity, why is Hans Wilsdorf said to have chosen the name Rolex?
It sounded like a watch being wound
It sounded like a watch being wound, the story goes; he also wanted a word that anyone could pronounce in any language and that would fit on a dial beside the retailer's own name.
Q 07Which wartime measure pushed Rolex to start moving its operations to Switzerland in 1915?
A steep customs duty on watches
A steep customs duty on watches, a third of their value, led Wilsdorf to run exports from Bienne, where his movements were made; Geneva became the headquarters in 1919.
Q 08What name did Rolex give its 1926 waterproof and dustproof case?
Oyster
Oyster cases sealed tight thanks to a patent Rolex bought in 1926 for a winding crown that screws down into the case, combined with a screw-down back and bezel.
Q 09In 1927 swimmer Mercedes Gleitze wore a Rolex for over ten hours in which waters?
The English Channel
The English Channel beat her that day, a cold October repeat of her crossing two weeks earlier, but the watch was still keeping time and Rolex told the story across the front page of the Daily Mail.
Q 10Which British driver endorsed Rolex after wearing one on his 1930s land speed record runs?
Malcolm Campbell
Malcolm Campbell had a Rolex on in 1935 when he became the first to drive at over 300 miles per hour, and his praise for it began the company's long association with motor racing.
Q 11What did Rolex patent in 1931, adding the word Perpetual to its watches?
A self-winding rotor
A self-winding rotor, a half-moon weight that swings as the wearer moves, winds the watch; with no daily winding by hand, the screw-down crown could stay shut and keep water out.
Q 12Rolex built dive watches for which country's navy frogmen, who crippled two British battleships in 1941?
Italy
Italy's navy got the watches through the Florence instrument maker Panerai, which fitted its own glowing dials to Rolex-made cases and built complete watches itself only from the 1950s.
Q 13What kind of owner has held Rolex since Hans Wilsdorf died in 1960?
A charitable foundation
Q 21Which US president was the first to wear a gold Day-Date?
Johnson
Rolex had already been calling the bracelet the President bracelet since 1957.
Q 22Which airline asked Rolex to develop the dual-time GMT-Master for its crews?
Pan Am
Pan Am wanted its pilots to read Greenwich Mean Time, the reference they navigated by, beside local time on long-haul flights, hence the GMT in the name; the first watches went to its own crews.
Q 23Which 1953 achievement was the Rolex Explorer launched to celebrate?
The ascent of Everest
The ascent of Everest was made by an expedition that Rolex had equipped with watches, and the company put the name Explorer on a dial later the same year.
A charitable foundation in Geneva, set up by Wilsdorf and named after him, owns Rolex outright, which is why the company has no shareholders to answer to and publishes no financial results.
Q 14Which brand did Wilsdorf conceive as a lower-priced sister to Rolex?
Tudor
Tudor gave Rolex dealers a less expensive watch to sell: bought-in movements fitted inside Rolex-made cases and bracelets, trading on the parent's name for reliability.
Q 15Roughly how many watches did Rolex make in 2023?
1 million
1 million, and a bit more: Rolex keeps its output under wraps, but Morgan Stanley's analysts put 2023 production at about 1.2 million watches, worth roughly 30 percent of the Swiss watch market.
Q 16Rolex uses 904L steel rather than the industry's usual 316L because it better resists what?
Corrosion
Corrosion, above all pitting by salt water, is what 904L shrugs off; Rolex borrowed the costly alloy from chemical plants and seawater cooling systems, and it also takes a brighter polish.
Q 17Rolex introduced ceramic Cerachrom bezels in 2005 to cure which flaw of aluminium ones?
Fading
Fading stopped with ceramic, which keeps its colour and resists scratches, but at a price: Rolex could at first make Cerachrom in a single colour only and needed until 2013 to manage two.
Q 18Which five-link Rolex bracelet made its debut on the first Datejust in 1945?
Jubilee
Jubilee marked the occasion: the Datejust was launched for the company's 40th anniversary, and its new five-piece-link bracelet took the celebratory name.
Q 19What job does the 'Cyclops' on the crystal of many Rolex watches do?
Magnifies the date
Magnifies the date: the lens was once simply glued to the crystal, so the deep-diving Sea-Dweller went without one for fifty years, until 2017, for fear the pressure would shift it.
Q 20Rolex's 1956 flagship was the first wristwatch to spell out what in full on its dial?
The day of the week
The day of the week joined the date on the Day-Date; Rolex made its flagship only in gold or platinum, which helped turn it into the watch of choice for heads of state.
Q 24What extra feature does the Rolex Explorer II carry for cavers who cannot see the sky?
An orange 24-hour hand
An orange 24-hour hand circles the dial once a day against a fixed bezel, so a caver who has lost track of the sun can still tell noon from midnight.
Q 25What does the rotating bezel on a Rolex Submariner let a diver keep track of?
Time spent underwater
Time spent underwater is read off the bezel once its zero is set against the minute hand; it turns one way only, so a knock can only make a dive look longer, never dangerously shorter.
Q 26Which Bond actor wore the Rolex Submariner that collectors call the 'James Bond'?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery wore a Submariner in Dr. No in 1962, and collectors now call that reference the 'James Bond Submariner' and pay a premium for it at auction.
Q 27From GoldenEye in 1995, James Bond switched from Rolex to which brand?
Omega
Omega got the part when costume designer Lindy Hemming picked a blue-dialled Seamaster for Pierce Brosnan's first outing, and Bond was still wearing one in No Time to Die in 2021.
Q 28The all-green Rolex Submariner is nicknamed the Hulk; what do collectors call the 2003 green-bezel, black-dial version?
Kermit
Kermit arrived as a 50th-birthday present to the Submariner: Rolex marked the anniversary by swapping the usual black bezel for a bright green one.
Q 29Which French commercial diving company had Rolex Sea-Dwellers made for its divers with its own name on the dial?
Comex
Comex first bought Submariners specially adapted for its deep divers, then settled on the Sea-Dweller; watches with the firm's name on the dial are now among the most prized by collectors.
Q 30What does the Rolex Sea-Dweller's special valve release during decompression?
Helium
Helium from a saturation diver's breathing gas seeps into the watch over days under pressure; on the way back up it used to blow the crystal off, until Rolex gave it a way out.