Twins Trivia
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This twins trivia quiz has 105 free questions with answers and covers everything twin-related except the baseball team: the biology of identical and fraternal twins, mirror twins and conjoined twins, the countries and towns where twins are most common, and the science of vanishing twins, superfetation, and twins with different fathers. It also runs through the famous pairs, from Romulus and Remus and Castor and Pollux to the Olsens, the Sprouses, the Winklevosses, the Bryan brothers, and the astronaut Kelly twins. It was built to double as a free twin trivia baby shower game: every question is clean, fun, and multiple choice, so guests who don't know a zygote from a zodiac sign can still guess along. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a few real stumpers for the twin parents in the room. Every answer has been checked against a reference page (mostly Wikipedia and a peer-reviewed twinning-rate study), so you can trust the answers when the arguments start.
30 of 105 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which term describes identical twins, as opposed to fraternal ones?
Monozygotic
Monozygotic twins are the identical kind: one zygote (from Greek zygotos, 'yoked') splits into two embryos, while dizygotic twins each grow from a separate fertilized egg.
Q 02Worldwide, roughly one delivery in how many produces twins?
About 1 in 90
About 1 in 90: a 2021 global study put twinning at 12 per 1,000 deliveries, while identical twins are rarer at roughly 3 to 4 per 1,000.
Q 03Roughly how many twin sets per 1,000 births occur among West Africa's Yoruba people?
About 45
About 45 twin sets per 1,000 births, roughly 90 twins per 1,000 babies, several times the global average of about 12 sets per 1,000.
Q 04A 2011 global study found the highest national twinning rate, 27.9 per 1,000 births, in which country?
Benin
Benin topped the 2011 Smits and Monden survey at 27.9 twin deliveries per 1,000; the lowest rates, under 9 per 1,000, were in South and Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Q 05Igbo-Ora, nicknamed the 'Twin Capital of the World,' is a town in which country?
Nigeria
Igbo-Ora sits in Nigeria's Oyo State; locals credit the local diet, though researchers have found no proven cause for its twinning rate.
Q 06In Yoruba tradition, if the first-born twin is Taiwo, what is the second-born called?
Kehinde
Kehinde, 'the one who came last', is considered the elder, having sent Taiwo out first to check whether the world was fit to enter.
Q 07Which Rio Grande do Sul town is nicknamed 'Land of Twins' for its twinning rate?
Candido Godoi
A theory blaming Nazi doctor Josef Mengele made headlines, but geneticists point to a founder effect among the town's German and Polish settlers, and the twin births predate his arrival.
Q 08Do identical twins have identical fingerprints?
No, never
Fingerprints are shaped partly by contact with the womb, so each twin touches a different environment and grows unique ridges. Their DNA is nearly identical, though.
Q 09Fraternal twins run in families because some women inherit a tendency to do what?
Release more than one egg per cycle
This tendency to hyper-ovulate is genetically linked, which is why fraternal twins cluster in families. Identical twinning, by contrast, has no known genetic link.
Q 10By 2011, roughly what share of US twin births were estimated to result from IVF and similar technology?
36%
About 36 percent: fertility drugs and IVF often produce more than one embryo, which is a big reason twin births climbed so steeply from the 1980s onward.
Q 11Researchers suspect as many as how many pregnancies begin as multiples but end with a single baby?
1 in 8
Perhaps 1 in 8: in most cases the lost twin is reabsorbed so early that the mother never knew there were two, which is why early ultrasounds keep turning them up.
Q 12Fraternal twins with two different biological fathers are the result of a phenomenon with what name?
Heteropaternal superfecundation
Heteropaternal superfecundation happens when two eggs released in the same cycle are fertilized by different men; one study of disputed-paternity twin cases found it about 2.4 percent of the time.
Q 13Possibly the longest gap between twin births, 97 days, was recorded in which German city?
Cologne
Q 21Who was the famous sister of the Gemini twins of Greek myth?
Helen of Troy
Helen of Troy was Leda's daughter alongside the twins, who were known collectively as the Dioscuri, 'sons of Zeus', and served as patrons of sailors.
Q 22Gemini, the zodiac sign of the twins, is ruled by which planet?
Mercury
Mercury rules Gemini, the third sign of the zodiac and an air sign; NASA borrowed the name for its two-astronaut spacecraft program in the 1960s.
Q 23In the Book of Genesis, the twin Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob in exchange for what?
A bowl of stew
A bowl of red lentil stew, the 'mess of pottage'; Jacob later disguised himself in Esau's clothes to claim their blind father Isaac's blessing as well.
Cologne's twins arrived in November 2018 and February 2019; delayed-interval delivery keeps the second twin in the womb after the first comes prematurely, so some twins get different birthdays, months or years.
Q 14A private language developed by twins that only the two of them understand is called what?
Cryptophasia
Cryptophasia comes from the Greek for 'secret speech'; it usually fades as the children learn the language everyone else speaks.
Q 15Roughly how often do conjoined twins occur?
About 1 in 50,000 pregnancies
About 1 in 50,000 pregnancies; most conjoined twins are girls, by a ratio of about three to one, and the most common type is joined at the chest.
Q 16As of 2019, how many cases of semi-identical 'sesquizygotic' twins had been documented?
Two
Only two: the second case, in Brisbane in 2019, showed the twins shared 100 percent of maternal and about 78 percent of paternal DNA, the result of one egg fertilized by two sperm.
Q 17Chang and Eng Bunker, the original 'Siamese twins', were born in Siam, now called what?
Thailand
Siam became Thailand in 1939; the brothers settled in North Carolina, married two sisters, and fathered 21 children between them, none of them conjoined.
Q 18Chang and Eng Bunker married Adelaide and Sarah, two sisters with which surname?
Yates
The Yates sisters married the twins in a double wedding in 1843; the couples eventually kept two separate households, alternating three days at each.
Q 19According to legend, the twin founders of Rome were suckled as infants by which animal?
A she-wolf
A she-wolf nursed Romulus and Remus in the cave called the Lupercal; Roman tradition put the city's founding at around 753 BC.
Q 20Which pair of mythological twins was placed in the sky as the constellation Gemini?
Castor and Pollux
In the myth only Pollux, son of Zeus, was immortal; when mortal Castor died, Pollux asked to share his immortality and the two became stars.
Q 24What name was given to Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother, delivered 35 minutes before him?
Jesse Garon
Jesse Garon's name rhymed with Elvis's own middle name, Aron; Elvis was raised as an only child in Tupelo, Mississippi, and later Memphis.
Q 25Which actor played both Kray twins in the 2015 film Legend?
Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy played Ronnie and Reggie; the Krays ran the East End 'Firm', owned the nightclub Esmeralda's Barn, and were photographed by David Bailey before being jailed for life in 1969.
Q 26Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen got their start sharing the role of Michelle Tanner on which sitcom?
Full House
Full House ran from 1987 to 1995; despite looking alike, the Olsens are fraternal twins, and they founded the luxury fashion label The Row in 2006.
Q 27What was the 1990s sitcom starring Tia and Tamera Mowry as twins separated at birth?
Sister, Sister
Sister, Sister was cancelled by ABC after two seasons and picked up by The WB for four more; both sisters were born in Gelnhausen, West Germany.
Q 28In which sport did the Winklevoss twins compete for the US at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?
Rowing
Rowing: they finished sixth in the men's coxless pair; Armie Hammer played both brothers in The Social Network, and they later founded the crypto exchange Gemini.
Q 29In which 1999 Adam Sandler comedy did twins Dylan and Cole Sprouse share the role of a five-year-old?
Big Daddy
Big Daddy cast the Arezzo-born brothers as Julian; Cole later played Jughead Jones on Riverdale while Dylan opened a meadery in Brooklyn.
Q 30Twins James and Oliver Phelps played which prankster brothers in the Harry Potter films?
Fred and George Weasley
They had no acting experience and skipped school to attend an open audition in Leeds. Oliver is the elder by 13 minutes.