Yams
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40 free Yams trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Yams feed hundreds of millions of people, yet most shoppers in North America have never tasted one: the orange roots sold under that name are sweet potatoes. True yams are starchy climbers of the tropics, some no bigger than a potato and others weighing over a hundred pounds. This quiz turns the best fun facts about yams into trivia. It covers where the crop grows and who grows the most, the harvest festivals of West Africa and the Pacific, purple yam desserts, Japanese and Caribbean kitchens, the look-alikes that borrow the yam name, and the wild species that reshaped the modern drug industry. It suits curious cooks, gardeners, pub quiz fans and anyone hunting for a fun fact about yams to share at the holiday table. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Jamaican sprinter's father told reporters that Trelawny yams explained his son's speed?
Usain Bolt
Usain Bolt grew up in Trelawny, Jamaica's yam-growing heartland, a parish credited with at least half of the island's crop.
Q 02Hormones first made cheaply from wild Mexican yams paved the way for which medical breakthrough?
Oral contraceptives
Oral contraceptives grew out of chemist Russell Marker's discovery that a compound in Mexican wild yams could be turned into cheap synthetic hormones, replacing costly animal extracts.
Q 03Which West African country grows roughly two-thirds of all the yams harvested worldwide?
Nigeria
Nigeria harvests about two-thirds of the global crop, and in its growing regions a farmer's social standing has long been judged by the size of his yam holdings.
Q 04Candied yams, a sweet potato dish of American Thanksgiving, are often topped with which confection?
Marshmallows
Marshmallows crown a dish whose name is a misnomer: true yams grew rare in American kitchens, so the candied yams on the table are really sweet potatoes.
Q 05What is the Tagalog name for the purple yam that flavours Filipino ice cream and cakes?
Ube
Ube shares an ancient root with uwhi, the Maori word for the same yam, a trace of the seafarers who carried the plant across the Pacific.
Q 06At Abelam yam festivals in the Sepik region, a man traditionally gives his largest yam to whom?
His exchange rival
His exchange rival is a permanent ceremonial partner who later hands over his own best yams, and the man who keeps giving the longer tubers gains great prestige.
Q 07In which country does the word yam usually mean oca, a small tuber first grown in the Andes?
New Zealand
New Zealand shoppers know oca simply as yams, though the plant is a wood sorrel from South America and no relation of the true yams.
Q 08In which US state has the air potato, a yam introduced in 1905, become a notorious invasive weed?
Florida
Florida struggles to clear the air potato because new plants sprout from its aerial bulbils, and the stems grow back from buried tubers even after being cut down or burned.
Q 09Which US state promoted its sweet potatoes as yams with a Yambilee festival in Opelousas?
Louisiana
Louisiana held its first Yambilee in 1946 to win nationwide publicity for the state's sweet potatoes, and the festival ran until 2012.
Q 10A South African yam with a huge corky stem above ground is named after which animal's foot?
Elephant
Elephant's foot yam earns its name from a domed stem armoured with thick, hard plates, which can grow to more than three metres around.
Q 11Which Chinua Achebe novel follows Okonkwo, a West African yam farmer, as colonisation arrives?
Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart began as a much longer draft: Achebe cut its second and third sections, kept only the yam farmer's story and published it in 1958.
Q 12Iyan, or pounded yam, is traditionally made in West Africa by beating boiled yam with which tool?
Mortar and pestle
Mortar and pestle work turns boiled yam into a dough similar to mashed potatoes but heavier, which is served with rich soups and stews.
Q 13In Malaysia and Singapore, yam usually means which other root, the one mashed into Hawaiian poi?
Taro
Q 21The orange yams in American supermarkets are really sweet potatoes, members of which plant family?
Morning glory
Morning glory vines and sweet potatoes share the family Convolvulaceae, while true yams sit in a family of their own, so the two crops are not related.
Q 22Jinenjo, a wild mountain yam, is a traditional binder in the dough of which Japanese noodle?
Soba
Soba makers prize jinenjo for its unusually strong, stable stickiness; the same native yam is often foraged from the wild.
Q 23Grated nagaimo yam is a classic ingredient in the batter of which savoury Japanese cabbage pancake?
Okonomiyaki
Okonomiyaki batter mixes flour, eggs and shredded cabbage with grated nagaimo, a long yam that acts as a binding agent.
Taro belongs to the arum family, not the yam family, yet it borrows the yam name in both countries.
Q 14Which crunchy Mexican root, usually eaten raw with lime and chili, is also known as the yam bean?
Jicama
Jicama is no yam at all: the vine belongs to the pea family and bears pods much like peas above its crisp, sweet root.
Q 15Which Filipino shaved-ice dessert is often topped with purple yam jam?
Halo-halo
Halo-halo is often translated as mix-mix: sweet beans, fruit and jellies sit under shaved ice and milk, topped with purple yam jam, flan or ice cream.
Q 16Which US agency requires any food label that says yam to also carry the words sweet potato?
The USDA
The USDA rule exists because the orange yams in American shops are soft sweet potatoes, a nickname first given by enslaved Africans who saw a likeness to the yams of home.
Q 17West African yam farmers often prefer digging tools of which material, as it damages fewer tubers?
Wood
Wood is gentler on the fragile tubers than metal, though such tools wear out fast; a damaged yam stores badly and soon spoils.
Q 18The word yam is thought to come from West African words such as Fulani nyami, meaning what?
To eat
To eat is the sense of Fulani nyami; English picked the name up in the 1580s by way of Portuguese inhame or Spanish igname.
Q 19The Chinese yam is nicknamed after which spice because its small flowers carry the same scent?
Cinnamon
Cinnamon vine is the plant's other English name, and it is the rare yam whose tubers are safe uncooked, grated into a slippery paste.
Q 20Which West African people celebrate Iri Ji, the festival that must precede any tasting of new yams?
Igbo
Igbo communities first offer the new yams to gods and ancestors, and in some places every old yam must be finished or thrown out on the eve of the feast.
Q 24Raw yam contains more of which mineral than any other of the world's ten major staple foods?
Potassium
Potassium is where yam outranks every other major staple, yet the tuber is a poor source of protein, at around 2 percent of its fresh weight.
Q 25Yams are monocots, which makes them closer relatives of which plants than of sweet potatoes?
Lilies and grasses
Lilies and grasses share with yams a single seed leaf, the mark of a monocot, whereas sweet potatoes sprout with two.
Q 26Which water-soluble pigments give purple yams the violet colour that tints ice cream and cakes?
Anthocyanins
Anthocyanins colour purple yams so strongly, and dissolve so readily in water, that they have been proposed as natural food dyes.
Q 27Pounded yam belongs to a group of West African dough staples known by which name?
Swallow
Swallow foods get their name from the way they are eaten: a piece is pinched off, rolled into a ball, dipped in soup and gulped down without chewing.
Q 28Yams' genus Dioscorea honours Dioscorides, a Greek physician whose five-volume work covered what?
Herbal medicine
Herbal medicine was the subject of his De materia medica, which was read for more than 1,500 years and stayed at the core of European pharmacy into the 19th century.
Q 29In which Pacific country do Trobriand Islanders treat yams as currency and stack them in yam houses?
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea's Trobrianders count yams as wealth: each year a man grows them for his sister, and the more she receives, the richer and more powerful she is.
Q 30US biologists have released which insects to chew through the invasive air potato yam?
Beetles
Beetles of the species Lilioceris cheni feed on the air potato and, like the yam itself, come from Asia, which made them a natural choice for biological control.