Valentine's Day
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152 free Valentine's Day trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
101 free Valentine's Day trivia questions with answers. Valentine's Day is celebrated around the world on February 14, but how much do you really know about this holiday of love? From its origins in ancient Roman festivals and the legends of Saint Valentine, to modern traditions like heart-shaped chocolates, red roses, and romantic movies — this quiz covers it all. Test your knowledge on famous couples throughout history, Valentine's Day spending statistics, international celebrations, and the science of love itself. Whether you're a hopeless romantic or just love trivia, these 152 questions will challenge what you know about the world's most romantic day. The mix works for any room: the easy, funny Valentine's Day trivia (why conversation hearts exist, which animal Cupid rides in art, what Denmark sends instead of roses) suits kids' parties and Valentine's Day trivia for seniors at a community lunch, while the hard questions on Roman festivals, medieval poetry and chart-topping love songs will stretch a pub-quiz crowd. Every answer is checked against a published source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 152 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Legend says the imprisoned Saint Valentine signed a farewell note 'from your Valentine' to whom?
His jailer's daughter
His jailer's daughter: the story, a later embellishment of the saint's legend, says he had befriended the girl and signed the note before his execution.
Q 02What Roman festival of February 15 is often (if doubtfully) cited as a forerunner of Valentine's Day?
Lupercalia
Lupercalia, held on February 15, was a Roman purification and fertility rite; it had died out by about 500, and Valentine's Day did not become a day of romance until around the fourteenth century.
Q 03Who is credited with writing the first known Valentine's message while imprisoned in the Tower of London?
Charles, Duke of Orleans
Charles, Duke of Orleans was taken prisoner at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and held in England for more than twenty years, writing much of his poetry, including the verse to his wife, in captivity.
Q 04Which poet first linked Valentine's Day with romantic love in his poem 'Parlement of Foules'?
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer pictured birds meeting on 'Seynt Valentynes day' to choose their mates; no earlier record ties the saint's day to romance, so he may well have invented the tradition.
Q 05Valentine's Day is the second-biggest holiday for greeting cards in the US, behind which one?
Christmas
Christmas is the only holiday that sells more cards, and the Valentine's tally does not even count the packs of cards that pupils swap in class.
Q 06Most Valentine's roses sold in the US arrive by refrigerated plane from Colombia and which other country?
Ecuador
Ecuador and Colombia, Andean neighbours, supply the large majority of US cut-rose imports; the flowers are flown in chilled, mostly through Miami, to survive the trip.
Q 07In Japan, the cheap 'obligation chocolate' women hand to co-workers on February 14 is called what?
Giri-choko
Giri-choko, 'obligation chocolate', is the inexpensive kind women give male co-workers and bosses; honmei-choko, 'true feeling chocolate', is saved for a partner, and some firms have banned the office custom as harassment.
Q 08Which Valentine's candy traces back to an American machine of 1866 that stamped short sayings onto lozenges?
Sweethearts
Sweethearts conversation hearts descend from NECCO founder Oliver Chase's 1847 lozenge cutter; his brother Daniel devised a way to print sayings on the candy in 1866, and the heart shape followed in the early 1900s.
Q 09Juliet's 'wherefore art thou Romeo?' is often misread as asking where he is; what does 'wherefore' mean?
Why
Why: 'wherefore' is an old word for 'for what reason', so Juliet is lamenting that the boy she loves is a Montague, her family's enemy.
Q 10Which US state was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1912?
Arizona
Arizona became the 48th state on Valentine's Day 1912 after President Taft vetoed its first constitution for letting voters recall judges; Arizonans dropped the clause, won statehood, then voted it back in.
Q 11Which Italian city is the setting of Romeo and Juliet?
Verona
Verona has received letters addressed to Juliet since the 1930s, thousands a year, and a team of local volunteers known as the Juliet Club writes back to them.
Q 12Which country celebrates its lovers' day on June 12, the eve of Saint Anthony's day?
Brazil
Brazil's Dia dos Namorados falls on June 12, the eve of Saint Anthony's day, when single women traditionally perform rituals called simpatias to find a husband.
Q 13What color roses symbolize friendship rather than romantic love?
Yellow
Yellow roses stand for friendship in modern flower symbolism, a reversal of the Victorian language of flowers, in which a yellow rose signalled jealousy or infidelity.
Q 21Which country marks November 11 as 'Singles' Day', a celebration of being unattached?
China
China's Singles' Day began among Nanjing University bachelors in 1993, the date 11/11 chosen for its four lone '1's, and became the world's largest shopping day after Alibaba adopted it in 2009.
Q 22Which 1989 Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan comedy asked whether men and women can really be just friends?
When Harry Met Sally
When Harry Met Sally (1989) grew out of Nora Ephron's conversations with director Rob Reiner about his single life, with Billy Crystal shaping Harry; its Katz's Delicatessen scene is marked by a sign above the table.
Q 23What does 'XOXO' stand for in the context of Valentine's messages?
Hugs and kisses
Q 14Which 1990 film features the pottery wheel scene between Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze?
Ghost
Ghost set its pottery-wheel scene to the Righteous Brothers' 1965 recording of 'Unchained Melody', which promptly returned to the charts a quarter-century after its release.
Q 15In Catalonia, lovers exchange roses and books on which saint's day, April 23?
Saint George
Saint George, Sant Jordi, is Catalonia's patron saint; books joined the older custom of roses after Spain moved its Book Day to April 23, the date UNESCO later chose for World Book Day.
Q 16Early martyr lists pair Valentine of Rome with a namesake bishop of which Italian city?
Terni
Terni's bishop shares February 14 in those lists with a priest of Rome and a third Valentine martyred in Africa; the first two were buried beside the same road and may be one man remembered twice.
Q 17In which country is February 14 celebrated as 'Día del Amor y la Amistad'?
Mexico
Mexico's name for February 14 means 'Day of Love and Friendship', so friends as well as couples and spouses swap roses, cards and teddy bears.
Q 18Colombia holds its 'Día del amor y la amistad' on the third Saturday of which month, not February?
September
September's third Saturday is Colombia's Día del Amor y la Amistad, so the country that flies roses to the United States for February 14 keeps its own day of love seven months later.
Q 19Which 1942 film ends with 'Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship'?
Casablanca
Casablanca got its closing line late: producer Hal Wallis wrote it after filming had finished, and Humphrey Bogart was called back about a month later to dub it.
Q 20Ancient Egyptian embalmers left the heart in the body but threw away which organ as unimportant?
Brain
The brain was drawn out through the nose and discarded, while the liver, lungs and stomach were kept in canopic jars and the heart stayed in place as the seat of the soul.
Hugs and kisses: a 1763 letter ending in a row of X's was long cited as the earliest example, but the Oxford English Dictionary now reads those X's as blessings and dates the kisses to 1878.
Q 24Counting every card exchanged, which group receives the most valentines in the US?
Teachers
Teachers come out on top because whole classes swap cards, so one teacher can collect a card from every pupil; adults buy far fewer for each other.
Q 25One theory traces the heart symbol to the seed of which plant, stamped on ancient coins of Cyrene?
Silphium
Silphium was so prized as a medicine and seasoning that Cyrene, in modern Libya, put it on its coins; the plant then vanished in ancient times, and its fate and even its species remain a mystery.
Q 26Which 2003 British romantic film weaves ten interconnected pre-Christmas stories?
Love Actually
Love Actually was first planned with fourteen storylines; Richard Curtis cut four, two of them after they had been filmed, and set the rest in the five weeks before Christmas.
Q 27Which Greek god of love and desire is usually shown as a winged youth with a bow?
Eros
Eros starts out in Hesiod's Theogony as one of the first gods to exist, but later poets recast him as Aphrodite's mischievous son, the winged archer of love.
Q 28Which diarist recorded 1660s London valentine customs, such as drawing names by lot?
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys noted in 1667 that being his wife's valentine 'will cost me £5', since a valentine was owed a present; that morning young Will Mercer had brought her name in gold letters.
Q 29What chemical compound, sometimes called the 'love hormone,' is released during hugging and bonding?
Oxytocin
Oxytocin does heavier work too: it drives the contractions of childbirth and the release of breast milk, and doctors give a synthetic version to induce labour.
Q 30The Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 took place in which American city?
Chicago
Chicago's massacre left seven men tied to Bugs Moran's gang dead in a North Clark Street garage, shot by gunmen dressed as policemen; Al Capone was widely blamed, but the crime was never solved.