50 free Toilet trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
48 free toilet trivia questions with answers. The flush toilet was described by Queen Elizabeth's godson in 1596, Thomas Crapper did not invent it, and 827,280 Victorians paid a penny to try one at the Great Exhibition. This toilet trivia quiz covers the whole unglamorous history: Indus Valley sewers, Roman pay toilets, castle garderobes, the S-trap, the 1.6-gallon law, the Australian dual flush and the Japanese Washlet. It also takes in toilet paper (perfumed sheets for a Ming emperor, splinter-free tissue, the 1973 Johnny Carson panic, over versus under), the bidet's horsey name, Duchamp's urinal, the space toilet, the outhouse and World Toilet Day. Easy questions ask which artist signed a urinal 'R. Mutt'; the hard ones want who invented the waterless urinal and where America's first pay toilet stood. It suits a pub quiz novelty round, a plumbing office party or anyone who reads in the bathroom. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Elizabethan courtier described England's first flushing toilet, the 'Ajax', in a 1596 book?
Sir John Harington
The name punned on a slang word for a privy; the book's political jokes got the Queen's godson banished from court.
Q 02Harington's toilet book, The Metamorphosis of Ajax, angered which monarch, his godmother?
Elizabeth I
He was one of her 102 godchildren; she had earlier ordered him to translate all of Orlando Furioso as punishment for racy verses.
Q 03Which Scottish watchmaker invented the S-trap in 1775, still used to keep sewer gas out of bathrooms?
Alexander Cumming
The bend holds a plug of water that seals the pipe; Bramah began his career installing closets built to Cumming's design.
Q 04Which Victorian plumber, contrary to legend, did NOT invent the flush toilet, though he held nine patents?
Crapper
A tongue-in-cheek 1969 biography by satirist Wallace Reyburn inflated his fame; his manhole covers in Westminster Abbey are a minor tourist draw.
Q 05Which royal residence gave Thomas Crapper his first royal warrant after he supplied thirty lavatories?
Sandringham House
The future Edward VII bought the Norfolk estate in the 1880s; Crapper's firm later got warrants from him as king and from George V.
Q 06What did a famous Chelsea plumbing firm open on King's Road that was a world first?
A bath, toilet and sink showroom
He had apprenticed to his brother George, a master plumber in Chelsea, in 1853.
Q 07At the 1851 Great Exhibition, 827,280 visitors each paid how much to use George Jennings' 'Monkey Closets'?
One penny
For that they got a clean seat, a towel, a comb and a shoe shine, and English gained the phrase 'spend a penny'.
Q 08Which Roman emperor is believed to have started charging citizens to use public toilets around AD 74?
Vespasian
French and Italian still call street urinals vespasiennes and vespasiani in his honour.
Q 09Which ancient civilization, in cities like Mohenjo-Daro and Lothal, had the first known urban sanitation systems?
Indus Valley
Upper-class houses in Lothal had private toilets flushing into a covered brick sewer held together with gypsum mortar.
Q 10Which Neolithic village in Orkney, occupied from about 3100 BC, had small rooms over a communal drain?
Skara Brae
The stone-built settlement was buried in sand and only re-exposed by a storm in 1850.
Q 11What was a garderobe in a medieval castle?
A toilet
Usually a hole discharging into the moat or a cesspit; at Donegal Castle people hung cloaks there believing the ammonia kept moths away.
Q 12Which of these was NOT a nickname for a chamber pot?
Puddle jug
'Guzunder' because it goes under the bed; Greeks and Romans took chamber pots to their meals and drinking parties.
Q 13The word 'toilet' entered English from French in 1540 meaning what?
A little cloth over the shoulders
It shifted to the dressing table, then the act of dressing, then the room, and finally, first in America, the fixture itself.
Q 21The world's first known toilet paper, in the 6th century AD, was used in which country?
China
By 1393 the Ming court at Nanjing was ordering 720,000 sheets a year, and the emperor's family got 15,000 perfumed ones.
Q 22How many perfumed soft toilet-paper sheets were made for the Hongwu Emperor's family in 1393?
15,000
The wider court got 720,000 ordinary sheets that year.
Q 23Who introduced the first commercial US toilet paper in 1857, as medicated sheets watermarked with his name?
Joseph Gayetty
Seth Wheeler of Albany patented the roll and dispenser in 1883, and Scott Paper popularised rolls from 1890.
Q 14Harington's Ajax got its name from an old English slang word for a privy. What was it?
Jakes
'Loo' has an obscure origin, possibly from 'gardez l'eau', shouted before emptying a chamber pot into the street.
Q 15Which US law required that from 1994 new toilets use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush?
Energy Policy Act of 1992
Such toilets are sometimes called Ultra Low Flow; older models used several gallons more.
Q 16The two-button dual-flush cistern was developed in 1980 by Caroma, a company from which country?
Australia
The Duoset offered two flush volumes to save water in a dry country; Brisbane later mandated waterless urinals in a drought.
Q 17Which Japanese company launched the 'paperless' Washlet toilet-bidet in 1980?
Toto
Bidet-toilets with heated seats are now in roughly three quarters of Japanese households.
Q 18Roughly what share of Japanese households have a bidet-toilet?
76%
They caught on in South Korea too, and slowly in the US after the 1990s.
Q 19The word 'bidet' comes from the French for what?
A small horse
You straddle it like a pony; Italy and Portugal have required one in every bathroom since 1975.
Q 20Since 1975, which two European countries have legally required a bidet in every bathroom with a toilet?
Italy and Portugal
Spain has drifted the other way, with new homes often skipping them.
Q 24As late as the 1930s, the Northern Tissue company advertised its toilet paper as being free of what?
Splinters
Manufacturing took decades to refine; softer two-ply arrived in Britain in 1942 as Andrex.
Q 25Which talk-show host's 1973 joke about a possible shortage triggered a real run on toilet paper in the US?
Johnny Carson
He was riffing on remarks by Wisconsin congressman Harold Froehlich; viewers rushed out and emptied the shelves.
Q 26Which British brand introduced softer two-ply toilet roll in 1942 from a mill in Walthamstow?
Andrex
Izal, disinfected with carbolic acid, was made in Sheffield until 1981.
Q 27In surveys, what share of Americans prefer the toilet roll to hang 'over' rather than 'under'?
60-70%
'Like a waterfall', as most put it; the roll's inventor's own 1891 patent drawings show it over.
Q 28Which Australian toilet paper brand donated a million rolls during the 2020 pandemic panic-buying?
Quilton
Shortages hit multiple countries in March 2020 as shoppers hoarded.
Q 29What did rural Americans commonly use in the outhouse before toilet paper was widely available?
Mail-order catalogs
Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs plus old newspapers did the job.
Q 30Which Australian word means outhouse?
Dunny
'Long-drop' is New Zealand and 'bog' is British; the crescent moon on American privies was mostly a cartoonists' invention.