Sharpie
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
40 free Sharpie trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Few everyday objects are as recognisable as a Sharpie. Since the 1960s the marker has labelled moving boxes, signed baseballs and jerseys, and turned up in places its makers never planned for, from operating theatres to political rows. Behind the familiar barrel is a company far older than the pen itself and a surprising amount of chemistry. This quiz gathers the fun facts about Sharpies that people go looking for: how the marker began and who made it, the stars and athletes who promoted it, the moments it made the news, how the ink works and what will and will not remove it, and the other things that have shared its name. The opening questions are ones most people can have a go at, and the later ones suit stationery obsessives. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish with a few stories worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Sharpies are the writing tool of choice for crews in which workplace, because the markers write however they are held?
International Space Station
International Space Station crews favour Sharpies because the pens keep working in zero gravity. Canadian commander Chris Hadfield praised them for writing whichever way up they are held.
Q 02Which NFL receiver pulled a Sharpie from his sock in 2002 to autograph the ball after scoring a touchdown?
Terrell Owens
Terrell Owens signed the ball during a Monday night game in Seattle, then gave it to his financial adviser. Sharpie put the value of the publicity that followed at about $5 million.
Q 03In 2019's 'Sharpiegate', a hurricane forecast map was altered with a Sharpie to show the storm reaching which state?
Alabama
Alabama was not expected to be hit by Hurricane Dorian, and the local weather bureau had already told worried callers so. The hand-drawn loop on the map gave the row its nickname.
Q 04Scribbling over dried Sharpie ink on a smooth surface with which kind of pen lets you wipe both marks away?
A dry-erase marker
A dry-erase marker carries a solvent that loosens the permanent ink underneath, so the two wipe off together. The trick only works on smooth, non-porous surfaces.
Q 05Kentucky lawyer Charlie Kratzer made headlines in 2008 by covering which part of his home in Sharpie murals?
The basement
The basement walls took about $10 worth of marker, with drawings running from Picasso's Paris salon to Sherlock Holmes. Kratzer began with a single mark in the middle of one wall.
Q 06Which NBC talk show host was among the first celebrities to endorse the Sharpie, using it to sign autographs?
Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson signed autographs with the marker at The Tonight Show in the year it launched. Jack Paar, who had hosted the programme before him, was another early endorser.
Q 07What colour was the ink in the very first Sharpie, the pen-style marker Sanford launched in 1964?
Black
Black ink filled the first Sharpie, which its maker calls the first pen-style permanent marker. It was sold on its ability to write on glass, wood, stone, plastic and metal as well as paper.
Q 08Which US president demanded Sharpies by name and gave aides markers printed with his own signature?
George W. Bush
George W. Bush had Sharpies made bearing his signature, along with a Camp David edition. Senior aides received them in a gift bag beside a signed golf ball and baseball.
Q 09Sharpie's FAQ long said the classic dye-based marker could not be made in which colour, which needs opaque pigment?
White
White needs a pigmented ink to cover a surface, and Sharpie said it could not make a marker lay that down evenly. Buyers were pointed to a pump-action paint marker instead.
Q 10Like Band-Aid, the name Sharpie is often used for any permanent marker at all, making it which kind of term?
A generic trademark
A generic trademark is a brand name that has become the everyday word for a whole class of product. Sharpie still owns its name, but people say it of rival markers too.
Q 11Sharpie's maker Sanford began in Massachusetts in 1857 and relocated nine years later to which Midwestern city?
Chicago
Chicago became Sanford's base in 1866. After a fire destroyed its original factory there, the firm had rebuilt its headquarters downtown by 1900.
Q 12Before the Sharpie, the Sanford company was founded in 1857 to make and sell ink and which other product?
Glue
Glue and ink were Sanford's whole business when it opened in Worcester, Massachusetts. The firm only turned to the young marker trade more than a century later.
Q 13Which American illustrator did Sharpie's maker Sanford commission in 1927 to paint an advert for its 70th birthday?
Norman Rockwell
Q 21Sharpie's parent company Newell added which food-container brand to its own name after a 1999 merger?
Rubbermaid
Rubbermaid joined Newell in a $5.8 billion deal, and the group traded under both names until it became Newell Brands. Sharpie had arrived seven years earlier, when Newell bought Sanford.
Q 22Which of these kitchen appliance brands has shared a parent company, Newell Brands, with Sharpie?
Crock-Pot
Crock-Pot slow cookers joined Sharpie's parent in 2016, when Newell merged with Jarden, the owner of Coleman camping gear, Yankee Candle and Mr. Coffee.
Q 23Which whiteboard marker brand was a Sanford stablemate of Sharpie's when Newell bought the company in 1992?
Expo
Norman Rockwell's painting ran in several magazines to sell Sanford's ink, decades before the firm made a marker. Its caption praised a will written in the company's ink.
Q 14From 2001 to 2009, the Sharpie 500 was a NASCAR night race run at which short track?
Bristol
Bristol hosted the Sharpie 500 under the lights each August. In 2010 the marker's parent company switched the race's name to its Irwin tools brand.
Q 15Which NASCAR driver won the 2004 Cup title in a Roush Racing car with Sharpie as its main sponsor?
Kurt Busch
Kurt Busch won three races that season on his way to the first title decided by NASCAR's Chase playoff.
Q 16Sharpie moved into sports marketing by sponsoring which golf great, known to fans as the King?
Arnold Palmer
Arnold Palmer was signed alongside fellow major winner Gary Player and two younger PGA golfers. By then the marker was the standard tool for signing balls and jerseys.
Q 17Which England soccer star became Sharpie's global ambassador in 2008, appearing in adverts signing autographs?
David Beckham
David Beckham had joined LA Galaxy the summer before, and the campaign launched first in the United States. Sharpie called his autograph one of the most sought-after in the world.
Q 18Which US state is home to the town that renamed itself Sharpieville USA for a day in 2004?
Tennessee
Tennessee's Shelbyville, then home to the marker plant, took the name for the brand's 40th birthday. The town was already nicknamed the Pencil City for its pencil makers.
Q 19A debunked 2020 'Sharpiegate' rumour claimed ballots marked with Sharpies were being thrown out in which US state?
Arizona
Arizona's attorney general investigated and said a day later that the markers had cost nobody a vote. Maricopa County added that its ballot layout stops bleed-through affecting the count.
Q 20A 2008 Canadian study found Sharpies used to mark surgery sites don't spread germs, because their ink is based on what?
Alcohol
Alcohol in the ink left the Sharpie tips germ-free after 24 hours with the cap on, while a sterile single-use surgical marker stayed contaminated. Surgeons could stop binning a pen per patient.
Expo and Sharpie both came to Newell in its 1992 purchase of Sanford, the writing-instrument maker behind the two brands.
Q 24Sharpie gained Paper Mate, Parker and Waterman as stablemates in 2000 when which razor company sold its pen business?
Gillette
Gillette had owned Paper Mate since 1955 and later added Waterman and Parker. Selling them to Newell put Sharpie under one roof with some of the oldest names in pens.
Q 25Sharpie's parent company began in 1903 as the Newell Manufacturing Company, a maker of which metal household item?
Curtain rods
Curtain rods were how Edgar Newell started out in Ogdensburg, New York, and Woolworth stores began selling them nationwide in 1916. Markers joined the family most of a century later.
Q 26Which brand, sold from the early 1950s as a glass tube of ink with a wick, paved the way for the Sharpie?
Magic Marker
Magic Marker, Sidney Rosenthal's invention, made wick-tipped pens so popular that by 1958 they were in common use for lettering, labels and posters. Sharpie slimmed the idea down to pen size.
Q 27Long before the marker, 'sharpie' was the name for a type of what, first built around New Haven, Connecticut?
Sailboat
Sailboat sharpies were flat-bottomed oyster boats, cheap to build and fast under sail. By the 1880s nearly 200 of them lined the wharves of a single New Haven neighbourhood.
Q 28Unrelated to the Sharpie marker, 'sharpies' were suburban youth gangs of the 1960s and 1970s in which country?
Australia
Australia's sharpies were most prominent in Melbourne, where their brawls with rival mods made the newspapers. The name came from their focus on dressing sharp.
Q 29In New Zealand, any permanent marker of the Sharpie kind is commonly called by which local brand name?
Vivid
Vivid is to New Zealanders what Sharpie is to Americans, a brand name that now covers every such pen. South Africans say koki instead.
Q 30Markers such as the Sharpie are also named after the pressed fibre traditionally used for their tips, which is what?
Felt
Felt gave the felt-tip pen its name, though modern nibs are usually compressed synthetic fibres or porous ceramic. An absorbent core inside the barrel feeds the ink to the tip.