Easy spring trivia to open the round
Start with the season itself: when it begins, what the word equinox actually means, and the odd calendar facts that come with March, April and May.
These eleven are the warm-up — the season itself rather than any holiday in it — so play them first and save the arguing for the rounds that follow.
Q1.In the Northern Hemisphere, on roughly what date does the spring (vernal) equinox fall?Tap to reveal
Answer: On or around March 20
It drifts between the 19th and the 21st because the Earth's orbit takes about six hours longer than 365 days, and the calendar only catches up when a leap day arrives.
Q2.The word "equinox" is built from two Latin words. What do they mean?Tap to reveal
Answer: Equal night, from aequus and nox
Day and night are not exactly equal on the day itself: the atmosphere bends sunlight over the horizon and the sun is a disc rather than a point, so you get several extra minutes of daylight.
Q3.Astronomers define the equinox by where the sun is. Where is it at that moment?Tap to reveal
Answer: Directly above the equator
The sun crosses the celestial equator twice a year, heading north in March and south in September. The March crossing starts spring in the north and autumn in the south at the same instant.
Q4.Which Roman goddess was the goddess of flowers and of spring?Tap to reveal
Answer: Flora
Her festival, the Floralia, ran from late April into the first days of May and had a reputation for being the rowdiest party on the Roman calendar.
Q5.Which spring month's name probably comes from the Latin aperire, meaning "to open"?Tap to reveal
Answer: April
The buds-opening explanation is the oldest surviving one, though Roman writers also tied the month to Venus. No etymology for April is certain.
Q6.In any given year, how many other months begin on the same day of the week as May?Tap to reveal
Answer: None
May and June are the only two months that keep their opening weekday to themselves in every year. One more month usually manages it as well — August in a common year, October in a leap year — but only May and June are guaranteed.
Q7.What are the traditional birthstones for April and for May?Tap to reveal
Answer: Diamond for April, emerald for May
The custom of a stone per month is centuries old, but the list most jewellers use was standardised by an American trade body in 1912.
Q8.Which two zodiac signs share the month of May?Tap to reveal
Answer: Taurus and Gemini
Taurus runs to about May 20 and Gemini takes over from there, which is why May babies can be either.
Q9.March, April and May are spring north of the equator. What season are they in the Southern Hemisphere?Tap to reveal
Answer: Autumn
The hemispheres run half a year apart, so May in Ohio is the seasonal twin of November in Melbourne.
Q10.Every February 2 a Pennsylvania groundhog is asked how soon spring will arrive. What is it supposed to mean if he sees his shadow?Tap to reveal
Answer: Six more weeks of winter
Punxsutawney Phil has been doing the job at Gobbler's Knob since 1887. Reviews of his record put his accuracy at roughly the level of a coin toss.
Q11.Vermonters have a name for the sodden weeks between winter and true spring. What do they call it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Mud season
The ground thaws from the top down, so meltwater sits on soil that is still frozen underneath and the dirt roads turn to soup.
Spring in nature: blossom, bulbs and waking ground
This round is the part of spring you can see from a window: bulbs coming up, orchards in flower, pollen everywhere.
Two of these questions have a sting in them. The tulip is not originally Dutch, and the daffodil is not something you want in a salad.
Q1.Which yellow flower, among the first to bloom in spring, is the subject of Wordsworth's best-known poem?Tap to reveal
Answer: The daffodil
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" came out of a walk along Ullswater, and his sister Dorothy described the same crowd of wild daffodils in her journal two years before he wrote the poem.
Q2.The daffodil is the national flower of which country, worn on its patron saint's day on March 1?Tap to reveal
Answer: Wales, on St David's Day
The leek is the older Welsh emblem. The daffodil edged in partly because its Welsh name, cenhinen Bedr, literally means "Peter's leek".
Q3.Daffodil bulbs are poisonous to eat. Which toxin do they contain?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lycorine
It is concentrated in the bulbs and leaves, and daffodil bulbs have been mistaken for onions often enough that poison centres keep a note on it.
Q4.During which winter of the Second World War did people in the Netherlands resort to eating tulip bulbs?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Hunger Winter of 1944-45
Food ran out in the occupied west, and bulbs held back for the next season's flowers were boiled and eaten instead. Growers circulated instructions on which ones were safe.
Q5.Tulips are the emblem of the Netherlands, but where are they originally from?Tap to reveal
Answer: Central Asia, reaching Europe through the Ottoman Empire
Wild tulips grow across the mountains of Central Asia, and Ottoman gardeners had been breeding them for generations before the first bulbs travelled west in the 1500s.
Q6.What name is given to the Dutch frenzy of the 1630s, when single tulip bulbs changed hands for the price of a house?Tap to reveal
Answer: Tulip mania, or tulipomania
The market collapsed in February 1637, and it has been the stock example in every lecture on speculative bubbles ever since.
Q7.Which Dutch garden, nicknamed the Garden of Europe, opens for only about eight weeks each spring to show off its bulbs?Tap to reveal
Answer: Keukenhof
The name means "kitchen garden": the land once grew herbs and vegetables for a 15th-century countess's castle.
Q8.What is the general name for the transfer of pollen from a flower's anther to a stigma?Tap to reveal
Answer: Pollination
Spring's misery for hay fever sufferers is a by-product of the wind-pollinated trees, such as birch and oak, which throw out clouds of pollen because wind is a careless courier.
Q9.The hyacinth takes its name from which body of stories?Tap to reveal
Answer: Greek mythology
Hyacinthus was a youth loved by Apollo and killed by a thrown discus, and the flower was said to have sprung from his blood.
Q10.Peach trees flower at what point in the year, and in what order with their leaves?Tap to reveal
Answer: Early spring, with the blossom coming out before the leaves
Flowering first is a gamble. A late frost on open blossom can cost a grower the entire season's crop in a single night.
Q11.Which first lady had Washington's Japanese cherry trees planted, creating the capital's blossom season?Tap to reveal
Answer: Helen Taft
The three thousand-odd trees were a gift from Japan, and she planted the first one beside the Tidal Basin in March 1912.
St Patrick's Day, Easter and the spring feast days
The two biggest spring holidays in the English-speaking world both moved a long way from where they started. St Patrick's Day was a quiet religious feast until Irish emigrants turned it into a parade, and Easter picked up a German hare somewhere along the road.
If this round goes well with your group, the site has full sets on both: see the Easter trivia questions and the St Patrick's Day trivia questions.
Q1.St Patrick's Day falls on March 17. What event does that date commemorate?Tap to reveal
Answer: St Patrick's death
Saints' feast days almost always mark a death rather than a birth. Patrick's has been kept on March 17 since at least the 9th century.
Q2.Ireland's nickname is built on a gemstone. What is it?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Emerald Isle
The phrase comes from a 1795 poem by the Belfast writer William Drennan, and stuck so firmly that most people assume it is far older.
Q3.Green owns St Patrick's Day now. Which colour was associated with the saint first?Tap to reveal
Answer: Blue
"St Patrick's blue" runs through Irish heraldry and the old Order of St Patrick. Green took over as it became the colour of Irish nationalism.
Q4.Which city holds the world's largest St Patrick's Day parade?Tap to reveal
Answer: New York City
It dates to 1762, fourteen years before the Declaration of Independence. The early parades went past the old St Patrick's Cathedral in SoHo; the Fifth Avenue route arrived with the new cathedral, and the march now runs from 44th Street to 79th. By tradition it carries no floats and no motor vehicles. Everyone walks.
Q5.According to Irish folklore, what trade does a leprechaun follow?Tap to reveal
Answer: Shoemaking
The tapping of his hammer is supposed to be how you find him, and in the older stories he is always working on a single shoe, never a pair.
Q6.Easter has no fixed date. What determines when it falls?Tap to reveal
Answer: The moon: it is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox
That rule is why Easter can land anywhere between March 22 and April 25 in the Western churches, and why the whole spring calendar shifts with it.
Q7.Which flower, native to the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, is the traditional Easter flower?Tap to reveal
Answer: The lily, specifically the Easter lily
Lilium longiflorum only became an Easter fixture in the 20th century, after a soldier returning from the First World War brought bulbs home to Oregon.
Q8.What Ukrainian word names an Easter egg decorated by the wax-resist method?Tap to reveal
Answer: Pysanka
It comes from pysaty, to write. The design is drawn in hot wax between dye baths, so nothing is ever actually painted onto the shell.
Q9.The English word "Easter" is said to come from the name of a goddess. Which one?Tap to reveal
Answer: Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon spring goddess
The 8th-century monk Bede is the only source that mentions her. Most other European languages use a form of the Hebrew Pesach instead, which is why Easter is Pâques in French and Pasqua in Italian.
Q10.Who brought the Easter Bunny to America?Tap to reveal
Answer: German settlers
The Pennsylvania Dutch carried over the Osterhase, a hare that judged whether children had behaved and left coloured eggs for the ones who had.
Q11.In France, who is said to deliver the Easter eggs?Tap to reveal
Answer: The church bells
Bells fall silent from Maundy Thursday, and the story told to children is that they fly to Rome and scatter eggs over the gardens on the way home.
Q12.Norwegians have an unusual Easter tradition involving books and television. What is it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Reading and watching crime stories, known as påskekrim
It started as a publicity stunt in 1923, when a crime novel was advertised on a newspaper front page in a way that made it look like a real robbery report.
Q13.Ash Wednesday marks the first day of what?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lent
Lent is 40 fasting days plus the six Sundays that do not count, which puts Ash Wednesday 46 days before Easter and Shrove Tuesday 47.
April Fools' Day and the rest of the spring calendar
Spring carries more observances than any other season: a day of lies, a day for the planet, a day for trees, a day for mothers, a day for workers and a day for the dead.
The April Fools' questions are the ones people argue about, so it helps to know that the noon rule is a genuine custom in Britain and Ireland rather than something a quizmaster invented.
Q1.In Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, April Fools' pranks are traditionally only allowed until what time?Tap to reveal
Answer: Noon
Play a trick after midday and the prankster becomes the fool. Countries that never adopted the rule, including the United States, keep the joking going all day.
Q2.The French call the victim of an April Fools' prank by the name of an animal. Which one?Tap to reveal
Answer: A fish, poisson d'avril
The classic version is a paper fish stuck to someone's back, and French bakeries sell fish-shaped chocolates for the day.
Q3.On April 1, 1957, the BBC's Panorama showed Swiss farmers harvesting which food from trees?Tap to reveal
Answer: Spaghetti
Richard Dimbleby narrated it in his most serious voice, and enough viewers rang in asking how to grow their own that the hoax is still the benchmark.
Q4.Iranians play pranks on the 13th day of their new year, which falls right around April 1. What is their new year called?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nowruz
Nowruz begins at the spring equinox, and the 13th day, Sizdah Bedar, is spent outdoors. Pranks are part of the day, which is why Iranians bristle when April Fools' is called a Western invention.
Q5.In 1998 Burger King took out a newspaper ad for a product aimed at left-handed customers. What was it?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Left-Handed Whopper
The ad ran on April 1 and explained that the condiments had been rotated 180 degrees. Thousands of customers asked for one, and others specifically requested the right-handed version.
Q6.On what date is Earth Day held?Tap to reveal
Answer: April 22
The first one, in 1970, was organised by US senator Gaylord Nelson after a huge oil spill off Santa Barbara, and it drew an estimated twenty million people.
Q7.Which US state invented Arbor Day, and what do people do on it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nebraska, and they plant trees
It began in Nebraska City in 1872 on the near-treeless plains. National Arbor Day now falls on the last Friday in April, and the word arbor is simply Latin for tree.
Q8.Cinco de Mayo is widely mistaken for Mexican Independence Day. What does May 5 actually mark?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Mexican victory over French troops at the Battle of Puebla in 1862
Independence Day is September 16. Cinco de Mayo is a much bigger event in the United States than in most of Mexico, where it is mainly observed in Puebla itself.
Q9.On which Sunday in May is Mother's Day held in the United States and Canada?Tap to reveal
Answer: The second
Anna Jarvis campaigned it into existence in 1908 and spent her later years trying to get it abolished, furious at what florists and card printers had done with it.
Q10.May 1 is International Workers' Day across much of the world. When do the United States and Canada hold their workers' holiday instead?Tap to reveal
Answer: In September, on Labor Day
The May date commemorates the Haymarket affair in Chicago in 1886, which is a large part of why American officials preferred a different day.
Q11.When is Memorial Day observed in the United States?Tap to reveal
Answer: The last Monday in May
It moved off its old fixed date of May 30 under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which took effect in 1971 and created the long weekend that now marks the unofficial start of summer.
Q12.Which motor race, first run in 1911, now takes place over Memorial Day weekend?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Indianapolis 500
Ray Harroun won the first one in a car fitted with what may have been the first rear-view mirror, which let him drive without a riding mechanic to watch behind him.
Spring in books, music, art and sport
Spring has given its name to a concerto, a painting, a ballet that caused a riot, a book that started the environmental movement and a failed political thaw.
The last four are for the first Saturday in May, which is the one spring date that a sports fan will always get right.
Q1.Which composer wrote The Four Seasons, whose first concerto is called La primavera, or Spring?Tap to reveal
Answer: Antonio Vivaldi
He published the set in 1725 with four sonnets attached, one per season, so the music follows a written text line by line, birdsong and thunderstorm included.
Q2.Primavera, one of the most famous paintings of spring, is by which Renaissance artist?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sandro Botticelli
Painted around 1480 and now in the Uffizi, it is crowded with botanically recognisable plants — surveys have named hundreds of species, most of them in flower in a Tuscan spring.
Q3.Which composer's ballet The Rite of Spring caused a near-riot at its Paris premiere in 1913?Tap to reveal
Answer: Igor Stravinsky
The audience jeered so loudly at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées that the dancers could not hear the orchestra and Nijinsky had to shout the counts from the wings.
Q4.Which 1962 book by Rachel Carson is credited with launching the modern environmental movement?Tap to reveal
Answer: Silent Spring
Its title imagines a spring with no birdsong left. The book's case against DDT led to a US ban a decade later.
Q5.What name was given to the 1968 period of political liberalisation in Czechoslovakia?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Prague Spring
"Socialism with a human face" became the slogan of Dubček's reforms. Warsaw Pact tanks ended them that August, but the phrase gave every later political thaw its name.
Q6.Which poem opens with the line "April is the cruellest month"?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
Published in 1922, it makes spring the villain: the season drags memory and desire back to life in people who would rather stay numb.
Q7.The Wind in the Willows opens with Mole abandoning a particular seasonal chore. What is he doing?Tap to reveal
Answer: Spring cleaning
He flings down his whitewash brush, says "Hang spring cleaning!" and goes above ground, where he sees a river for the first time in his life.
Q8.On which day of the year is the Kentucky Derby run?Tap to reveal
Answer: The first Saturday in May
The first Saturday in May is the fixed slot in the modern calendar, and the whole American racing season is built backwards from it. The Derby has left the slot only under wartime and pandemic disruption; the inaugural running in 1875 was not on that Saturday at all.
Q9.Which Louisville racetrack hosts the Kentucky Derby?Tap to reveal
Answer: Churchill Downs
The race is a mile and a quarter and only three-year-old horses may enter, so no horse can ever run in it twice.
Q10.What is the official drink of the Kentucky Derby?Tap to reveal
Answer: The mint julep
Bourbon, sugar, water and crushed mint. Churchill Downs gets through well over a hundred thousand of them across Derby weekend.
Q11.Which horse was the first to run the Kentucky Derby in under two minutes?Tap to reveal
Answer: Secretariat
He did it in 1973 in 1:59 2/5, and the record still stands. Only one other horse, Monarchos in 2001, has since gone under two minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many spring trivia questions are on this page?
There are 58, split across five rounds: the season itself, spring in nature, St Patrick's Day and Easter, April Fools' Day and the rest of the spring calendar, and spring in books, music, art and sport.
When does spring actually start?
It depends who you ask. Astronomical spring begins at the equinox, on or around March 20 in the Northern Hemisphere. Meteorologists ignore the equinox and count spring as the whole of March, April and May, because whole calendar months are easier to compare from year to year.
Which holidays fall in spring?
In the Northern Hemisphere the spring run includes St Patrick's Day, Nowruz, Holi, Passover, Easter, April Fools' Day, Earth Day, Arbor Day, Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day, May Day and Memorial Day. Easter moves each year, which shifts Lent, Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday with it.
Are these questions suitable for children?
Yes. Everything here is family-friendly, and the first two rounds are the easiest. For a younger group, run rounds one and two and skip the literature and racing questions at the end.
Can I use these spring trivia questions for free?
Yes. Read them aloud, print them or copy them into a slide deck for a classroom, office or pub quiz at no cost. You can also build the same set into a live multiplayer quiz on Trivio.NET and let people join from their phones.
