Wood
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50 free Wood trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Wood is the oldest building material people still use every day, and it turns up in far more places than furniture and floorboards. It has flown in wartime aircraft, crossed oceans as rafts, flavoured desserts and whisky, and even given a country its name. This quiz covers the timbers behind famous ships, instruments and sports equipment, the science of how a tree lays down its trunk, the tools and joints of the workshop, and the materials made from pulp and resin. A few questions follow wood into folklore, scripture and art. It suits woodworkers, gardeners, science students and quiz hosts looking for a round that is a little different. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing why one species ends up as a bat and another as a barrel.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Howard Hughes's flying boat, mocked as the Spruce Goose, was built almost entirely of which wood?
Birch
Birch was chosen because wartime rules kept aluminum for other aircraft, so Hughes had the wood moulded into shape instead. The giant plane made only one brief flight, in 1947.
Q 02Which type of saw descends from a device Scottish doctors devised in the 1780s to ease childbirth?
Chainsaw
Chainsaw ancestors were fine serrated chains drawn back and forth between two wooden handles to cut through bone. One was pictured in a 1785 textbook on midwifery.
Q 03Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Pacific in 1947 on Kon-Tiki, a raft of nine trunks of which light wood?
Balsa
Balsa is the Spanish word for raft, and the tree's wood is the softest ever measured on the standard hardness test. Botanists class it as a hardwood all the same.
Q 04Which US president's false teeth, long said to be wooden, were really made of ivory, brass and gold?
George Washington
George Washington had a single natural tooth left on the day he was first sworn in. He owned at least four sets of dentures, and none of them contained any wood.
Q 05Which popular ice cream flavour can be made artificially from the waste liquor of wood pulp mills?
Vanilla
Vanilla flavouring made from paper-mill waste took over the market in the 1930s. By 1981 a single mill in Ontario supplied 60 percent of the world's synthetic version.
Q 06Which Italian city rests on closely packed tree trunks driven down through mud into hard clay?
Venice
Venice was founded on trunks of alder, a wood noted for resisting water. Slabs of Istrian limestone were laid across the tops of the piles to carry the buildings.
Q 07Bamboo is used like timber for floors and furniture, but it belongs to which group of plants?
Grasses
Grasses include the giant bamboos, whose stalks can grow more than 40 metres long. Some species are among the fastest-growing plants on Earth.
Q 08Which South American country is named after a tree whose wood gave European cloth makers a red dye?
Brazil
Brazil takes its name from brazilwood, pau-brasil in Portuguese, a name probably linked to a word for glowing embers. Europe's cloth trade had previously imported such dyewood from India at great cost.
Q 09Which British World War II warplane was nicknamed the Wooden Wonder for its mostly timber airframe?
Mosquito
Mosquito wings and fuselages were built by a group of twenty furniture companies. That put cabinetmakers to work whose skills the war effort was otherwise leaving idle.
Q 10Which light, shock-resistant wood, rubbed with linseed oil, is the classic choice for cricket bats?
Willow
Willow of one particular white variety can take a fast delivery without denting or splintering, yet stays light to swing. The handle spliced into it is cane.
Q 11By US law, bourbon whiskey sold in America must be stored in a new container made of which wood?
Oak
Oak barrels can hold bourbon only once, so most are then sold to distillers in Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean to age other spirits.
Q 12Which aromatic wood became the favourite for pencils because it sharpens without splintering?
Cedar
Cedar ran so short in the early twentieth century that pencil makers recycled old fences and barns to get it. A substitute species was later dyed and perfumed to pass for the original.
Q 13Before plastics took over, the black keys of a piano were traditionally made from which dense wood?
Ebony
Ebony black keys once sat beside white keys covered in strips of ivory. With ivory-yielding animals now protected by treaty, piano makers use plastics almost exclusively.
Q 21Which natural polymer, making up 20 to 35 percent of dry wood, stiffens the cell walls of trees?
Lignin
Lignin lends rigidity and does not rot easily, which helps timber last. Paper mills work hard to remove it, and pulp that keeps some of it comes out brownish.
Q 22Which term names the inner wood of a trunk, made decay-resistant by a natural chemical change?
Heartwood
Heartwood is named only for its position, not because the tree relies on it. The living sapwood around it does the work of carrying water up from the roots.
Q 23A knot in a plank of wood marks the spot where which part of the tree once grew?
A branch
A branch that dies low on the trunk is slowly swallowed by later layers of growth, sealing its base inside. Knots weaken a board under tension but are often shown off for their looks.
Q 14Indoor basketball courts, including the NBA's floors, are usually made of which polished wood?
Maple
Maple from the same species that is tapped for syrup is tough enough for bowling too. Both the lanes and the pins are commonly made from it.
Q 15Which springy wood was long the standard for baseball bats, after heavy hickory fell from favour?
Ash
Ash let hitters swing faster than hickory, whose weight slows a bat down. Babe Ruth's bat pattern is still kept in the Louisville Slugger archives as model R43.
Q 16In Carlo Collodi's story, which poor Tuscan craftsman carves the wooden puppet Pinocchio from a log?
Geppetto
Geppetto is given the log by a carpenter, Master Antonio, who had meant to turn it into a table leg. The newly carved puppet's first act is to laugh in his maker's face.
Q 17Which giant lumberjack of North American folklore is accompanied by a blue ox named Babe?
Paul Bunyan
Paul Bunyan was merely very tall and strong in the earliest tales. A writer named William Laughead later made him tower over the trees, and also gave the ox its name.
Q 18Which Aboriginal Australian instrument is traditionally made from a trunk hollowed by termites?
Didgeridoo
Didgeridoo makers search for trees in termite country, then knock on the peeled trunk to hear whether the hollow resonates. The insects eat only the dead centre of a living tree.
Q 19Which percussion instrument takes its name from the Ancient Greek words for wood and sound?
Xylophone
Xylophone bars have to be wooden for the name to fit. Toy versions with metal bars are, strictly speaking, glockenspiels.
Q 20Which lightweight black fuel is made by strongly heating wood with very little oxygen?
Charcoal
Charcoal is mostly carbon, because the heat drives off the wood's water and other volatile parts. It was widely used in place of coke for smelting in blast furnaces.
Q 24Planing against which feature, the lengthwise run of a board's fibres, leaves a torn surface?
Grain
Grain mostly follows the length of the trunk, since that is how the tree's fibres grew. One wood scientist called it a confusingly versatile term, because the word is used in so many senses.
Q 25Freshly cut timber that has not yet had time to dry out is described by which colour?
Green
Green timber still holds its natural moisture, so it gives off less heat as firewood. Part of the fire's energy is spent turning that water to vapour.
Q 26Which simple alcohol earned the nickname wood alcohol because it was once made by distilling timber?
Methanol
Methanol was first isolated in pure form by Robert Boyle in 1661, when he distilled it from boxwood. It is more acutely toxic than the alcohol found in drinks.
Q 27Which metal did Humphry Davy name after the burnt-wood residue that had long supplied its salts?
Potassium
Potassium comes from potash, the residue left when burnt wood was soaked in a pot and the water boiled away. Its symbol K comes from kali, which traces back to an Arabic term for the same burnt plant remains.
Q 28Which fabric, once sold as artificial silk, is made from cellulose taken from wood pulp?
Rayon
Rayon was the first commercial semi-synthetic fibre, pioneered by the French industrialist Hilaire de Chardonnet. It is also called viscose, after the thick solution used to make it.
Q 29Which US state is home to Petrified Forest National Park, where Triassic logs have turned to stone?
Arizona
Arizona's fossil trees fell about 225 million years ago. Buried in wet sediment with little oxygen, they decayed so slowly that minerals, mostly silica, took the place of the wood.
Q 30Which panel is made of thin wood sheets glued together, each turned at right angles to the next?
Plywood
Plywood takes its name from the French verb plier, to fold. Crossing the layers stops a panel splitting when it is nailed near the edge, and keeps it from swelling and shrinking.