Shrove Tuesday Trivia
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50 free Shrove Tuesday trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Shrove Tuesday is the one day of the year when a frying pan counts as sporting equipment. It is the last day before Lent, and almost every Christian country built a custom around emptying the pantry: pancakes in Britain, doughnuts in Poland and the American Midwest, cream buns in Scandinavia, a whole carnival in the Rhineland. These 50 questions go past the obvious. They cover the medieval verb hiding in the word 'shrove', the rules of the pancake race that has been run between an English town and an American one since 1950, the mob-football matches that survived a Victorian ban, how the Ash Wednesday ashes came to Rome, why the date wanders, and what the day is called from Iceland to Hawaii. Each answer carries a one-line explanation with something worth repeating. Play it on the day, hand it to a church group or a classroom, or print it for a pancake-night quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01'Short shrift', today a curt brush-off, originally named the hurried confession granted to whom?
Condemned prisoners
Condemned prisoners got a short shrift, a rushed confession before execution; shrift is the noun from shrive, the verb whose past tense gives Shrove Tuesday its name. Shakespeare's Richard III has the first printed use.
Q 02In Newfoundland's fortune-telling Shrove Tuesday pancakes, a hidden nail means the finder will become, or marry, what?
A carpenter
A carpenter is the nail's promise, while a coin means riches, a pencil stub a teacher and a holy medal a religious calling; families cook the tokens in so children can read their futures.
Q 03What prize traditionally awaits the winner of Olney's pancake race at the church door?
A kiss from the verger
A kiss from the verger, the 'kiss of peace', greets the winner at St Peter and St Paul's; the race had lapsed until the vicar revived it in 1948, and it has been timed against a Kansas rival since 1950.
Q 04On Iceland's Bolludagur, what do children do to their parents to earn cream buns?
Spank them with a paper stick
Children spank them with a paper stick, decorated with coloured strips, chanting 'bolla, bolla, bolla!' until the buns appear; Iceland took the custom from Denmark and Norway in the 19th century.
Q 05Spanish towns close carnival on Ash Wednesday with a mock funeral, painted by Goya, for which creature?
A sardine
A sardine, usually an effigy, is paraded and then set alight in the Entierro de la Sardina, a burial of the past so society can be reborn; Goya painted the Madrid version in the 1810s.
Q 06Which plastic-lemon juice brand marketed Shrove Tuesday as its own 'Lemon Day'?
Jif
Jif ran the slogan 'Don't forget the pancakes on Jif Lemon Day', and defended its squeezy plastic lemon all the way to the House of Lords, which in 1990 stopped a rival selling juice in a lookalike.
Q 07What did the Fastelavn barrel that Danish children smash open for sweets once hold?
A live cat
A live cat was once shut inside, and beating the barrel to drive it out stood for chasing away evil; today a painted cat suffices, and the children who break the barrel are crowned Cat Queen and Cat King.
Q 08Which future king made Ashbourne's Shrovetide football 'Royal' in 1928 by starting play?
Edward VIII
Edward VIII, then heir to the throne, 'turned up' the ball in 1928, and his great-nephew Charles repeated the honour as heir in 2003, throwing it into the crowd from a raised plinth.
Q 09Which English town, birthplace of the co-operative movement, cooked the 15-metre Guinness record pancake in 1994?
Rochdale
Rochdale saw the Co-operative Union cook it on 13 August 1994, 15.01 m wide and 3 tonnes, 150 years after the Rochdale Pioneers opened their shop; Guinness still listed it as the largest ever made 20 years later.
Q 10In France, crêpes are the traditional dish of which 2 February feast, when a coin is held in one hand while flipping?
La Chandeleur
La Chandeleur, Candlemas, is France's crêpe day: flipping the first one with the right hand while the left holds a gold coin is said to bring a year of prosperity.
Q 11Which US state's German-descended communities fry fasnacht doughnuts on Fastnacht Day, their name for Shrove Tuesday?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's Dutch counties around Lancaster, York and Berks keep Fastnacht Day; the doughnuts were a way to empty the pantry of the fat, sugar and butter that Lent forbade.
Q 12Finland's Laskiainen, its Shrove Tuesday, is usually described as a mid-winter festival of which activity?
Sledding
Sledding down snow or ice tracks is the Laskiainen pastime, paired with pea soup with ham and a cream bun; the name may come from laskeutua, to descend, or laskea, to count the days to Easter.
Q 13Veilchendienstag, one German name for Shrove Tuesday, translates as the Tuesday of which flower?
Violet
Q 21Olney's pancake-race rules require each runner to toss the pancake at which points?
At the start and the finish
At the start and the finish the pancake must be tossed, and runners wear an apron and headscarf, echoing the 1445 housewife said to have run to church with her frying pan still in hand.
Q 22Collop Monday, the old English name for the day before Shrove Tuesday, takes its name from a dish of eggs and what?
Slices of bacon
Slices of bacon, the collops, were fried with eggs to use up the larder's last rashers before Lent; in east Cornwall the same day was Peasen Monday, for its pea soup.
Q 23Vastlapäev, marked with pea soup and whipped-cream buns, is Shrove Tuesday in which country?
Violet Tuesday sits beside Fastnachtsdienstag, Faschingsdienstag and Karnevalsdienstag as German names for the day, which brings fancy dress and a partial school holiday; Rose Monday comes the day before.
Q 14Historians trace the German carnival word Fastnacht to the verb 'fasten', which means what?
To fast
To fast is the root: Fastnacht is the eve of the fast, and historians around Werner Mezger refuted the rival folk etymologies, showing that the tradition itself is Christian.
Q 15Old English took 'shrive', the verb whose past tense names Shrove Tuesday, from a Latin word meaning what?
To write
To write, Latin scribo, is the root: a priest 'prescribed' penance, so scrifan came to mean hearing confession, and its past tense shrove stuck to the Tuesday when the faithful were shriven before Lent.
Q 16Crempogau, thick buttermilk pancakes stacked and buttered, are a Shrove Tuesday tradition in which part of the UK?
Wales
Wales piles up crempogau, made with buttermilk on a bakestone, for Shrove Tuesday and for birthdays, when the buttered stack is cut into wedges and served like a cake.
Q 17Which poet's 1930 'conversion poem', written after joining the Church of England, is titled Ash Wednesday?
T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot wrote it after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism, building on Dante's Purgatorio; its opening line reworks the start of an exile's ballad by the medieval Italian poet Cavalcanti.
Q 18Atherstone's Shrovetide ball game is said to recall a 1199 match for a bag of gold in which monarch's reign?
King John
King John was on the throne, the story goes, when Warwickshire beat Leicestershire in the 'Match of Gold'; today's game runs along Long Street until a 5 pm whistle, and its best-known rule is that nobody may be killed.
Q 19In 2017 Father Paddy Mooney of Glenamaddy, Ireland, offered Ash Wednesday ashes to commuters in what novel way?
Drive-through
Drive-through ashes let commuters receive them without leaving the car, and the parish added a box for drive-by prayer requests through Lent; clergy have been taking ashes out to public places since 2007.
Q 20Which Kansas town has raced Olney for the fastest pancake time on Shrove Tuesday since 1950?
Liberal
Liberal's Jaycees issued the challenge in 1950 after seeing a magazine picture of the Olney women racing to church, and the two towns have compared their times across the ocean ever since.
Estonia
Estonia's vastlakukkel is a cardamom bun with whipped cream, close to the Swedish semla; the older Shrove fare is pea or bean soup cooked with pig's trotters, a last rich meal before the Lenten fast.
Q 24What is hidden inside a New Orleans Mardi Gras king cake, by tradition leaving its finder to buy the next one?
A plastic baby
A plastic baby, standing for the infant Jesus the three kings visited, hides in the cakes sold from 6 January until Mardi Gras, the city's Shrove Tuesday; its finder brings the next cake or throws the next party.
Q 25Which formula from Mark 1:15 did the 1969 Roman Rite revision add for imposing ashes?
Repent, and believe in the Gospel
Repent, and believe in the Gospel was given first place in 1969, ahead of the older 'Remember that you are dust', which echoes God's words to Adam after the Fall; either may be said as the ashes are given.
Q 26Quinquagesima, the old name for the Sunday that opens Shrovetide, is Latin for which ordinal number?
Fiftieth
Fiftieth counts the days to Easter inclusively, Sunday to Sunday, and its sisters Sexagesima and Septuagesima, sixtieth and seventieth, named the two Sundays before it in the pre-1970 calendar.
Q 27Reforms after which council removed the three pre-Lent '-gesima' Sundays from the Roman calendar?
Vatican II
Vatican II's liturgical reforms folded those Sundays into Ordinary Time, so the Sunday before Shrove Tuesday is now simply the fourth to ninth Sunday of the year, depending on Easter's date.
Q 28Nickanan Night, the Cornish Shrove Monday, licensed local youths to do what after dusk?
Knock on doors and run off
Knock on doors and run off was the game, a 'nicky nicky nine doors' that may have given the night its name, along with carrying off any gear left lying about; the west of Cornwall called it roguery night.
Q 29Iceland's Shrove Tuesday is Sprengidagur, 'Bursting Day', when people fill up on split peas and what?
Salted meat
Salted meat and peas is the Bursting Day dinner, eaten until you can hold no more on the last day before the fast; cream buns come the day before and the children's costumed pranks the day after.
Q 30In Ivrea, Italy, the three days up to Shrove Tuesday bring a mass street battle fought with which fruit?
Oranges
Oranges fly as throwers on foot, cast as the townsfolk, pelt cart crews cast as a tyrant's troops; legend has the revolt begin when a miller's daughter beheaded him, and a red cap marks bystanders as off limits.