This soap opera trivia quiz has 70 free questions with answers and covers the genre from its 1930s radio roots to today's streaming era. It takes in the great American daytime serials, including General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless, All My Children and Guiding Light, plus the primetime giants Dallas and Dynasty, the British institutions Coronation Street, EastEnders and Emmerdale, Australia's Neighbours and Home and Away, and the telenovelas that conquered markets from Bogotá to Moscow. Expect questions on famous supercouples and weddings, record-breaking cliffhangers, Daytime Emmy records, the stars who got their start on soaps before Hollywood, and the odd stories behind town names, theme tunes and title changes. Early questions suit casual viewers; later ones will test lifelong fans. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries and other primary references before publishing, so you can settle arguments with confidence.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which consumer-goods giant produced 20 soap operas, including Guiding Light, and gave the genre its name?
Procter & Gamble
The label was coined by the 1930s press because radio serials were bankrolled by detergent makers; the same company returned to daytime in 2025 as a producer of a new CBS serial.
Q 02Painted Dreams, regarded as the first soap opera, premiered on WGN radio in 1930 in which city?
Chicago
It ran in a daytime slot aimed at housewives and was written by and starred its own creator, who played the widowed Mother Moynihan.
Q 03Which creator of Guiding Light and As the World Turns was dubbed the 'Queen of the Soaps'?
Irna Phillips
She also created These Are My Children in 1949, the first serial broadcast on a major American TV network, which lasted just one month.
Q 04Counting radio, roughly how long did Guiding Light run before ending in September 2009?
72 years
It began on NBC radio in January 1937 and moved to CBS television in 1952, making it the longest-running American soap opera of all.
Q 05Guiding Light's Bauer, Spaulding and Lewis families lived in which fictional town?
Springfield
The 2000s briefly split the action between the town and a fictional island nation called San Cristobel.
Q 06Which future Oscar winner played half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina Hughes on As the World Turns in the 1980s?
Julianne Moore
She returned for a brief cameo with the Hughes family near the end of the show's run in 2010.
Q 07What were the first words spoken on As the World Turns when it debuted on 2 April 1956?
"Good morning, dear"
Helen Wagner, who said the line as Nancy Hughes, kept the role until her death in 2010 and is in Guinness for the longest uninterrupted performance in a single role.
Q 08Who read the first CBS bulletin on Kennedy's shooting that interrupted As the World Turns on 22 November 1963?
Walter Cronkite
The soap had started at 1:30 as usual; the bulletin slide appeared about ten minutes in.
Q 09Roughly how many viewers watched Luke and Laura's 1981 General Hospital wedding?
30 million
Anthony Geary had joined the show in 1978 for what was meant to be a 13-week stint as Luke Spencer.
Q 10Which Hollywood legend guest-starred at Luke and Laura's wedding as Helena Cassadine?
Elizabeth Taylor
The show has since made a habit of celebrity cameos, from Roseanne Barr to James Franco.
Q 11Which NBC medical soap premiered the same day as General Hospital and won the first Daytime Emmy for best drama?
The Doctors
The NBC serial began as an anthology with different characters each day and ran until the last day of 1982; its alumni include Alec Baldwin and Kathleen Turner.
Q 12Anthony Geary, General Hospital's Luke Spencer, holds the record for Outstanding Lead Actor Daytime Emmys with how many wins?
Eight
The eighth came in 2015 from 16 nominations for the same role, all before his retirement from the show.
Q 13Susan Lucci finally won her Daytime Emmy in 1999 after how many previous nominations without a win?
Eighteen
She got a standing ovation when Shemar Moore read her name; by then her salary had been reported at over $1 million a year.
Q 21In a notorious 1994–95 Days of Our Lives storyline, what happened to Marlena Evans?
She was possessed by the devil
Head writer James E. Reilly, who dreamed up the Exorcist-style plot, went on to create the supernatural NBC soap Passions.
Q 22The Young and the Restless is set in Genoa City, named after a real town in which US state?
Wisconsin
Despite the Midwestern setting, exteriors in the late 1980s were shot around Pittsburgh.
Q 23By what title is The Young and the Restless opening music known, after ABC's 1976 Olympic gymnast montage?
Nadia's Theme
Q 14In May 1972, All My Children's Erica Kane became the first television character to do what?
Undergo a legal abortion
The story predated Roe v. Wade, and when Erica developed an infection afterwards, doctors and nurses phoned ABC with treatment advice.
Q 15All My Children's Pine Valley and One Life to Live's Llanview are suburbs of which real city?
Philadelphia
Pine Valley was modelled on the real suburb of Penn Valley, though many viewers assumed for years that it was in New York.
Q 16Who played Kendall Hart on All My Children (1993–95), winning a Daytime Emmy at 18?
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Kendall was written as a younger version of Erica, and the role led straight into a certain vampire-slaying television job.
Q 17Which actor's One Life to Live role, Billy Douglas, was the first gay teenager on a US daytime soap?
Ryan Phillippe
The storyline about homosexuality and intolerance earned the show its first GLAAD Media Award in 1993.
Q 18Which actress won a record six Lead Actress Daytime Emmys as One Life to Live's Victoria Lord?
Erika Slezak
She played Viki from March 1971 to the show's ABC finale in January 2012 and again in its 2013 online revival.
Q 19Which actor, Days of Our Lives' Dr. Tom Horton, read the 'Like sands through the hourglass' opening for 28 years?
Macdonald Carey
He took over from announcer Ed Prentiss in April 1966 and added the sign-off line identifying himself by name.
Q 20In 2022, Days of Our Lives left NBC after 57 years and moved exclusively to which streaming service?
Peacock
The move left NBC as the only Big Three network without a daytime serial.
Despite the name, the gymnast never actually performed her floor exercise to the piece.
Q 24Which show dethroned The Young and the Restless as top-rated US soap in March 2020 after 32 years?
The Bold and the Beautiful
The Forrester fashion saga, launched by the same Bell family in 1987 as a sister show, is also billed as the most-watched soap in the world.
Q 25Which Young and the Restless character, played by Eric Braeden since the 1980s, was meant to last only 8 to 12 weeks?
Victor Newman
Co-creator William J. Bell said he knew from the first performance that he did not want to lose the actor and rewrote the story to keep him.
Q 26Under what working title did the Bells develop The Young and the Restless in 1972?
The Innocent Years
Bell said the title changed because young America had lost much of its innocence.
Q 27In 1979, which NBC soap became the first American soap opera to expand to 90-minute episodes?
Another World
The Bay City serial ran from 1964 to 1999 and gave early television work to Anne Heche and Brad Pitt.
Q 28In NBC's soap Passions, the witch Tabitha Lenox's sidekick Timmy was what?
A doll brought to life
In 2003 the show even submitted an orangutan named BamBam, who played the recurring role of Precious, for a Daytime Emmy.
Q 29Passions heroine Sheridan Crane recalled phoning which real person just before their fatal 1997 crash?
Princess Diana
The show's fictional town of Harmony was represented in the titles by shots of real-life Camden, Maine.
Q 30Which 2025 CBS soap about the Dupree family was the first new US daytime soap since Passions in 1999?
Beyond the Gates
It was the first daytime soap to premiere in the high-definition era and the first with a primarily African-American cast since NBC's Generations three decades earlier.