Seasons Trivia
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This seasons trivia quiz has 93 free questions with answers and covers everything that makes spring, summer, autumn and winter happen and everything humans have built around them. The science comes first: the 23.4-degree tilt that causes the seasons, why perihelion falls in January, seasonal lag, what solstice and equinox actually mean, and why the South Pole is colder than the North. Then it widens out to the way cultures count the year, from meteorological seasons and the Celtic cross-quarter days to India's six ritus and the eight seasons of the Sami, plus the folklore of Groundhog Day, Midsummer, harvest moons, dog days and Indian summers. There are questions on autumn leaf chemistry, cherry-blossom season, hibernation, Persephone, Stonehenge, Vivaldi, Haydn and Frankie Valli's Four Seasons, and even Uranus, where a season lasts 21 years. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer has been checked against a reliable source.
30 of 93 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Hindu festival celebrates the arrival of spring?
Holi
Holi's eve is marked with bonfires recalling a legend in which Holika tried to burn young Prahlad alive, only to perish herself while he was unharmed.
Q 02What is Earth's closest point to the Sun in its orbit called?
Perihelion
Perihelion falls in early January, during northern winter, so the Sun's distance is not what drives the seasons.
Q 03Which seabird flies from the far north to the far south and back each year, seeing two summers?
Arctic tern
The Arctic tern meanders across the oceans instead of flying straight, so one year's round trip can cover tens of thousands of kilometres.
Q 04The word 'solstice' comes from Latin words meaning what?
Sun and stand still
Sun and stand still are the meanings of sol and sistere, because at a solstice the Sun's daily path reaches its limit and seems to pause before reversing.
Q 05'Equinox' comes from Latin words meaning what?
Equal night
Equal night is only approximate, partly because refraction makes the Sun appear above the horizon while it is actually below it.
Q 06Where do most monarch butterflies from eastern North America spend the winter?
Mexico
Mexico's mountain fir forests receive monarchs that fly south in a single generation, yet it takes successive generations to make the trip back north.
Q 07What mostly makes July and August hotter than June in the Northern Hemisphere?
Land and sea warming slowly
Land and sea warming slowly delay the hottest weather, the same lag that makes a day's warmest hours come well after noon.
Q 08Which kind of spring begins on March 1 every year, instead of around March 20?
Meteorological
Meteorological spring uses whole calendar months because fixed start dates and steady season lengths make it far easier to compare seasonal statistics year to year.
Q 09On the traditional Celtic calendar, which festival on November 1 marked the start of the coldest season?
Samhain
Samhain was thought to let fairies cross over from the Otherworld, so families left offerings outside for them.
Q 10Which Impressionist painted haystacks again and again as the seasons changed?
Monet
Claude Monet worked on several canvases at once, switching between them as the light changed, and his 1891 show of the series was a great financial success.
Q 11The ancient Egyptian year had three seasons defined by what?
The flooding of the Nile
The flooding of the Nile no longer sweeps Egypt each year, because the Aswan High Dam, finished in 1970, now holds back the floodwater and its silt.
Q 12Before the 16th century, what word did English speakers usually use for autumn?
Harvest
Harvest still names the season in German, as Herbst, while English came to use it mainly for gathering crops.
Q 13Which weather tends to bring out the most brilliant autumn leaf colors?
Sunny days and cool nights
Sunny days and cool nights give the brightest display, but only while the nights stay above freezing.
Q 21Which prehistoric monument lines up with the sunrise at the summer solstice?
Stonehenge
Stonehenge's axis also lines up with the midwinter sunset, and pig bones at nearby Durrington Walls suggest crowds gathered to feast at midwinter.
Q 22Each concerto in Vivaldi's Four Seasons is paired with what kind of poem?
A sonnet
A sonnet came with each concerto, and Vivaldi tied the music so closely to its lines that, as Spring's goatherd sleeps, the orchestra plays his barking dog.
Q 23Vivaldi's Four Seasons are concertos for which solo instrument?
Violin
The violin was Vivaldi's own instrument, and as violin master at a Venetian home for foundlings he wrote many works for its all-female orchestra.
Q 14Which pigment gives autumn leaves their red color?
Anthocyanin
Anthocyanin is mostly made fresh in autumn, from sugars trapped in the leaf, while the yellows were there all along.
Q 15Which full moon is the one farmers traditionally named for bringing in the crops?
The one nearest the autumnal equinox
The one nearest the autumnal equinox rises soon after sunset for several evenings in a row, which once gave farmers extra light to gather their crops.
Q 16What is an 'Indian summer'?
A warm, dry spell in autumn
A warm, dry spell in autumn traditionally counts as a true Indian summer only if it comes after the first frost.
Q 17The 'dog days' of summer were named for the rising of which star?
Sirius
Sirius, the Dog Star, rose with the Sun in the hottest weeks, so Greek and Roman observers blamed it for the summer heat.
Q 18On what date is Groundhog Day observed?
February 2
February 2 is when Punxsutawney Phil makes his forecast, yet studies find no consistent link between a groundhog seeing its shadow and a late spring.
Q 19The Christian feast on June 24, around Midsummer, celebrates the birth of which biblical figure?
John the Baptist
John the Baptist's birth is marked six months before Christmas, because Luke's Gospel says his mother Elizabeth was six months pregnant when Mary conceived Jesus.
Q 20In Greek myth, Hades tricked Persephone into eating what, binding her to the underworld?
Pomegranate seeds
Persephone ate pomegranate seeds in the underworld, so she must spend part of each year with Hades; Demeter's grief during those months was the myth's explanation for the cold, barren part of the year.
Q 24Which of these was a number one single for The Four Seasons?
Sherry
Sherry took Bob Gaudio only about 15 minutes to write, yet by his account settling on its name took longer, with Jackie Kennedy's name among those tried.
Q 25Haydn's oratorio The Seasons, first performed in 1801, is based on a long English poem by whom?
James Thomson
James Thomson's poem reached Haydn as a German libretto by Baron van Swieten, and the composer derided the croaking frogs it made him imitate as 'Frenchified trash'.
Q 26Which planet spins almost on its side, so each pole spends decades in unbroken sunlight and then darkness?
Uranus
Uranus may have been knocked onto its side by a collision with an Earth-sized object long ago.
Q 27The midnight sun occurs in summer beyond which lines of latitude?
The polar circles
Beyond the polar circles the reverse comes in winter, when the Sun stays below the horizon all day, and at the poles each spell lasts about six months.
Q 28What is the Japanese custom of viewing cherry blossoms in spring called?
Hanami
Hanami among Japan's early aristocrats meant admiring plum blossoms, a fashion borrowed from China, before the cherry took over as the favourite.
Q 29Which new year festival, celebrated in Iran and across Central Asia, begins at the very start of spring?
Nowruz
Nowruz is preceded by a festival night when people leap over bonfires, believing the flames cleanse them of the past year's sickness and bad luck.
Q 30Which people of Scandinavia traditionally recognize up to eight seasons?
The Sami
The Sami are best known for herding reindeer, yet that way of life has sharply declined, and most Sámi now make their living in other work.