Solomon Islands Trivia
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57 free Solomon Islands trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Solomon Islands (no 'the', officially) is a chain of six big islands and nearly a thousand small ones north-east of Australia, and this quiz digs into all of it: the Spanish navigator who named them after a biblical king, the British protectorate that ran them from a tiny island called Tulagi, the World War II campaign that turned Guadalcanal into a household name, and the independence that came on 7 July 1978 with a Queen still on the coins. Easy questions ask for the capital, the biggest island and the ocean; the harder ones want the sea god a submarine volcano is named after, the world's largest raised coral atoll, the gene behind the islands' famous blond hair, the futsal captain who scored three seconds into a match, and the two islanders who paddled JFK's coconut message to safety. There is Pijin, shell money from the Langa Langa Lagoon, Ironbottom Sound, the flag's five stars and the country's switch from Taiwan to China. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its islands, its history and its people, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Solomon Islands lies in which region of Oceania?
Melanesia
Melanesia takes in nearly all Solomon Islanders, yet a few outlying islands, among them Tikopia, Rennell and Anuta, are home to Polynesians.
Q 02Which Spanish navigator, sailing from Peru, became the first European to reach the Solomon Islands in 1568?
Álvaro de Mendaña
Álvaro de Mendaña left Callao with two ships and spent six months exploring the islands. He came back in 1595 to plant a colony and died there weeks after landing.
Q 03The Solomon Islands were named in the hope that they were which biblical land of gold?
Ophir
Ophir was the land said to have supplied King Solomon's gold, and the Spaniards who arrived in 1568 hoped they had found it. They left other names too: Guadalcanal is named after a village in Spain.
Q 04Solomon Islands became independent in 1978, two years before which neighbour that Britain and France had ruled jointly?
Vanuatu
Vanuatu was the New Hebrides until 1980. The Solomons' own independence was not unanimous: a breakaway movement in the western islands feared being run from Honiara.
Q 05Since independence in 1978, who has been the head of state of Solomon Islands?
A hereditary monarch
A hereditary monarch it is: the British sovereign reigns separately as King or Queen of Solomon Islands. Parliament nominates the governor-general who stands in, always a Solomon Islander.
Q 06Which small island, colonial capital of the Solomons before Honiara, did US Marines capture in August 1942?
Tulagi
Tulagi was picked in 1896 by the first resident commissioner, who set up there with a whaleboat and a handful of Fijian police. Japan seized it in May 1942, and the capital never returned.
Q 07What was the 19th-century kidnapping of Solomon Islanders for Queensland and Fiji plantations called?
Blackbirding
Blackbirding began with kidnapping and trickery, though many later recruits signed on willingly, some more than once. Death rates on the plantations stayed high throughout.
Q 08An 1899 treaty gave Britain most of Germany's northern Solomons in return for dropping British claims to which islands?
Samoa
Samoa was the prize: Germany took its western islands and the United States the east. The line redrawn through the Solomons that year is still the border with Papua New Guinea.
Q 09Which island, the largest of the Solomon Islands archipelago, belongs to another country?
Bougainville
Bougainville stayed on the German side when the colonial border was redrawn in 1899, so it ended up in Papua New Guinea instead of with its southern neighbours.
Q 10American fighters flying from Guadalcanal ambushed and killed which Japanese admiral in April 1943?
Isoroku Yamamoto
Isoroku Yamamoto's travel plans were read by US codebreakers. Only the long-range P-38 could reach him, so its pilots flew more than 400 miles at wave-top height to meet his plane on schedule.
Q 11Which network hid behind Japanese lines in the Solomons to radio warnings of air raids?
The Coastwatchers
The Coastwatchers, planters, missionaries and islanders in hiding, went by the code name Ferdinand, after the storybook bull who would rather smell flowers than fight. It reminded them to watch and report, never to attack.
Q 12After PT-109 sank in 1943, John F. Kennedy's rescue message was carved on what and paddled to safety by islanders?
A coconut
A coconut was scout Biuku Gasa's idea: he showed Kennedy how to scratch '11 alive need small boat' into the green husk. As president, Kennedy kept it on his Oval Office desk.
Q 13Which American novelist sailed his yacht Snark to the Solomon Islands in 1908?
Q 21What is the unit of currency in Solomon Islands?
Dollar
Dollar notes replaced Australian money one-for-one in 1977, a year before independence. Earlier the islands used pounds, and wartime Japan even issued its own occupation notes there.
Q 22Kavachi, named after a sea god by nearby islanders in Solomon Islands, is what kind of natural feature?
An undersea volcano
An undersea volcano south of Vangunu, Kavachi has built new islands again and again since its first recorded eruption in 1939, only for the waves to wear each one away.
Q 23Marovo, in Solomon Islands' Western Province, is the world's largest example of what?
Double-barrier lagoon
Jack London
Jack London set out to sail round the world, but tropical infections picked up on the cruise ended it in the Solomons. He turned the trip into the book The Cruise of the Snark.
Q 14Which 1998 war film follows American soldiers through the battle for Guadalcanal?
The Thin Red Line
The Thin Red Line is based on a novel by James Jones, who fought in the Pacific himself and drew on that service for the book.
Q 15What grim nickname did Allied sailors give the waters off Guadalcanal where so many ships sank in 1942-43?
Ironbottom Sound
Ironbottom Sound filled with wrecks because so much of the fighting came after dark: Japanese destroyers ran troops and supplies in by night, a shuttle the Allies called the Tokyo Express.
Q 16Honiara International Airport was known during World War II by what name?
Henderson Field
Henderson Field was begun by Japanese construction troops and seized by US Marines within two days of landing. They named it after Lofton Henderson, a Marine pilot killed at Midway.
Q 17A crocodile and which other animal hold up the shield on the Solomon Islands coat of arms?
A shark
A shark faces the crocodile across the shield, above the motto 'To Lead Is to Serve'. An earlier colonial badge showed only a turtle and was redrawn because the turtle stood for just one district.
Q 18What is the name of the creole that serves as Solomon Islands' everyday lingua franca?
Pijin
Pijin began as a traders' jargon and took shape on the sugar plantations of Queensland, where islanders from dozens of language groups had to talk to one another. Returning labourers brought it home from the 1870s.
Q 19Most of Solomon Islands' local languages belong to which family, spoken from Madagascar to Easter Island?
Austronesian
Austronesian languages arrived with later seafarers and now dominate. A few Papuan tongues, such as Bilua and Savosavo, survive beside them and are thought to go back to the islands' first settlers.
Q 20The people of Langa Langa Lagoon are known for making which traditional Solomon Islands currency?
Shell money
Shell money is made by drilling and polishing shell into small discs and threading them on strings. It is still handed over in customary payments, and visitors can buy it at Honiara's central market.
Double-barrier lagoon: two lines of reef shelter Marovo's waters, which curl around the islands of Vangunu and Gatokae. The name began with one small island and spread to the whole lagoon.
Q 24A 2012 study traced the naturally blond hair of many Solomon Islanders to what?
A home-grown gene mutation
A home-grown gene mutation, in a gene called TYRP1, is found nowhere outside Oceania, so the blond hair owes nothing to European visitors. It is recessive: a child is blond only if both parents pass it on.
Q 25Which Australian city gave its name to the 2000 peace agreement between Solomon Islands' rival ethnic militias?
Townsville
Townsville, in north Queensland, hosted the signing in October 2000. Guale commander Harold Keke refused to sign and took his men to the remote Weather Coast, where the fighting went on.
Q 26The Australian-led force that restored order in Solomon Islands from 2003 arrived at whose request?
Solomon Islands' own government
Solomon Islands' own government asked for the help, and Parliament backed the request unanimously. Police and troops from about 15 Pacific countries came, and the mission stayed until 2017.
Q 27Three years after switching recognition from Taiwan to Beijing, Solomon Islands signed what kind of deal with it in 2022?
A security pact
A security pact, signed in April 2022, lets Solomon Islands call in Beijing's police and troops to keep order. A leaked draft set off alarm in Canberra and Washington before the ink was dry.
Q 28Who elects the prime minister of Solomon Islands?
Members of Parliament
Members of Parliament vote one of their own into the job. Parties are loose and no leader commands a clear majority for long, so governments are stitched together from shifting coalitions.
Q 29Solomon Islands has no army, so which service crews the patrol boats that guard its waters?
The police force
The police force doubles as the country's defence: its maritime wing sails the patrol boats, and officers also fight fires and run disaster relief. There has been no regular military since independence.
Q 30Which part of Honiara was largely destroyed in the 2006 riots over claims the new prime minister had bought votes?
Chinatown
Chinatown burned because rioters believed money from Chinese businessmen had bought Snyder Rini the prime ministership. He resigned before a no-confidence motion could be put to the vote.