Thanksgiving Trivia Questions and Answers for Kids & Adults

Here are 52 Thanksgiving trivia questions, each with its answer printed right under it. The first sixteen are easy enough to read aloud to kids around 6 to 10, and the rest move on to the 1621 harvest feast, the presidents who set the date, and turkey, food and football, which suit older kids, teens and adults. Most answers name where they come from, whether that’s the one eyewitness letter from 1621, a presidential proclamation or the USDA’s own turkey counts.

One date keeps turning up. George Washington’s first Thanksgiving proclamation named Thursday, November 26, 1789, and the national Thanksgiving Day that Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in 1863 fell on Thursday, November 26. Thanksgiving 2026 lands on Thursday, November 26, too. A few favorite answers don’t hold up once you read the sources, like the turkey at the first feast and the president who supposedly started the turkey pardon, so they get their own section near the end.

How to play Thanksgiving trivia at the table

Thanksgiving trivia needs one reader and at least one other player, so it works for two people or a full table. With more than six players, split into teams of two to four and seat a kid and an adult on each team, so the kid can take the turkey questions and the adult the dates. Give a point for each right answer and stop at ten questions a round, because past that the pie gets cold and the kids start drifting away from the table. Those team sizes and round lengths are our suggestions, so bend them to fit your crowd.

Pick one section per round and hand the list to a different reader each time. The reader should be the only person looking at the page, since every answer sits directly under its question. Ask everyone else to put their phones face down before the first question. Read the answer and its source out loud together, because “Winslow’s letter says about 90 men” settles a family argument faster than “trust me.”

Save the myths section for last and play it as true-or-false. Most of those six turn up on popular trivia lists, so someone at the table has probably heard one and can say where. For a tie, ask a “which came first” question, like the first Macy’s parade against the first Lions Thanksgiving game (1924 beats 1934). Which Came First? Timeline Trivia Cards is a whole deck of that kind of question, 400 cards with the answer and date printed at the bottom of each one.

Easy Thanksgiving trivia for kids

These sixteen work read aloud for kids around 6 to 10, because every answer is one word or a short name and none of them asks a child to remember a year.

1. Farmers have a one-word name for a male turkey. What is it? Answer: a tom, the same word the University of Kentucky’s poultry extension guide uses.
2. What’s the floppy piece of skin that hangs over a turkey’s beak called? Answer: the snood. Per the same extension guide, the flap under the beak is the wattle, and the bumps on the head and neck are caruncles.
3. And what’s a female turkey called? Answer: a hen.
4. What’s a baby turkey called? Answer: a poult, though you’ll sometimes hear turkeyling too.
5. Can wild turkeys fly? Answer: yes. Unlike farm turkeys, wild ones are fast fliers, though they usually stay close to the ground and cover no more than about a quarter mile.
6. The Native American people who shared the 1621 harvest feast with the Plymouth colonists were the ___. Answer: the Wampanoag.
7. What was the name of the ship that carried the Plymouth colonists across the Atlantic in 1620? Answer: the Mayflower, which had 102 passengers and a crew of about 30 aboard.
8. On what day of the week is Thanksgiving in the United States? Answer: Thursday, and it’s always the fourth Thursday of November.
9. Canada has a Thanksgiving too. What day is it in 2026? Answer: Monday, October 12, 2026. Canada holds its Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October, which puts it 45 days before the American one this year.
10. Which state raises the most turkeys? Answer: Minnesota, at 34.0 million turkeys for 2026 in the USDA’s preliminary estimate from September.
11. Which state grows the most cranberries? Answer: Wisconsin, which usually harvests around 60 percent of the U.S. crop, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service.
12. Which state grows the most pumpkins? Answer: Illinois. The Illinois Department of Agriculture says 95 percent of the U.S. pumpkins grown for processing come from there.
13. At harvest time, farmers flood cranberry beds with water. What do the berries do? Answer: they float. A harvester drives through the bed to pull the fruit off the vines, and the floating berries are herded into a corner and pumped out.
14. Which cartoon cat was the very first giant balloon in the Macy’s parade? Answer: Felix the Cat, in 1927, the year the Library of Congress gives for the parade’s first balloons.
15. The woman who pushed for a national Thanksgiving also wrote a nursery rhyme about a girl whose lamb followed her to school. What’s it called? Answer: “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” first published as Sarah Josepha Hale’s poem in 1830. Hale comes back in question 34.
16. The song “Over the River and Through the Wood” began as a poem about a trip to Grandfather’s house. Which holiday was the trip for? Answer: Thanksgiving. Lydia Maria Child published it in 1844 as “The New-England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day,” and some later versions sing “Christmas” instead, which is why plenty of kids guess wrong.

Numbers 10, 11 and 12 are easier with a map of the U.S. on the table, since a child can point to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois instead of spelling them out loud. If trivia is one game in a longer evening, our fall party games guide sets it beside other fall games, with the scoring rule to settle before each one.

Thanksgiving history trivia: the 1621 harvest feast

Almost everything known firsthand about the 1621 feast comes from one letter. Edward Winslow, one of the English colonists at Plymouth, wrote it in December 1621, and it was printed in London the next year in a book now known as Mourt’s Relation. Questions 20 to 28 stick to what that letter says and to what Plimoth Patuxet Museums, the history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, says about it. The three before them cover the spring of 1621, and the last three bring the Wampanoag side of the story up to today.

17. In March 1621, a visitor walked into Plymouth and greeted the colonists in English. Who was he? Answer: Samoset, an Abenaki sagamore, or leader, from what is now Maine, who had picked up English from fishermen. He arrived on March 16, 1621, and asked for beer.
18. Which Patuxet man did William Bradford say showed the colonists “how to set their corn” and “where to take fish”? Answer: Tisquantum, better known as Squanto. He had learned English after an English captain kidnapped him in 1614 and sold him in Spain.
19. Who was the colony’s governor by the time of the 1621 harvest? Answer: William Bradford, elected after the first governor, John Carver, died. Bradford took office in May 1621.
20. Who wrote the only surviving eyewitness account of the 1621 feast? Answer: Edward Winslow, in a letter he wrote that December.
21. What was the Wampanoag leader’s name? Answer: Massasoit, whom Winslow calls “their greatest king Massasoit.” Plimoth Patuxet also uses his name Ousamequin.
22. About how many Wampanoag men came with him? Answer: about 90, since Winslow’s letter says “some 90 men” in Plimoth Patuxet’s transcription.
23. How many days did the feasting go on? Answer: three, in Winslow’s words “for three days we entertained and feasted.”
24. What did the Wampanoag hunters bring to the plantation? Answer: five deer, which they gave to the governor, the captain and others.
25. Before the feast, the governor sent four men out to do what? Answer: hunt birds, which Winslow calls going “on fowling.”
26. About how many English colonists were still alive by the harvest of 1621? Answer: about 50. Plimoth Patuxet says about half of the 102 Mayflower passengers were still alive, and its list has 24 men, five women and 24 children and teenagers.
27. Did the colonists call their 1621 feast a “thanksgiving”? Answer: no. Seventeenth-century accounts do not identify it as a day of thanksgiving but as a harvest celebration, and Plimoth Patuxet still calls it the 1621 harvest celebration.
28. Who first called it “the first Thanksgiving,” and when? Answer: Alexander Young, a Unitarian minister, who added the phrase in an 1841 footnote to Winslow’s account.
29. The Wampanoag translate their name as “People of the ___.” Answer: the First Light.
30. Are there still Wampanoag nations today? Answer: yes. Two have federal recognition, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), both in Massachusetts.
31. Since 1970, people have gathered on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth every Thanksgiving Day for what event? Answer: the National Day of Mourning. The first one was held on November 26, 1970, after Massachusetts officials planning the 350th anniversary of the Mayflower’s landing wouldn’t let Wampanoag leader Frank “Wamsutta” James give the speech he had written.

Numbers 27 and 28 make a good pair to read back to back, because the name everybody uses for the event came 220 years after it. Number 31 can open a longer conversation than a trivia round has room for, so give it time if an older child asks why the speech was stopped.

Thanksgiving trivia about presidents and the date

Thanksgiving didn’t get a date fixed by law until 1941, and from Lincoln until then, the day came from a new presidential proclamation every year. These eleven suit older kids and adults, since many of the answers are dates.

32. Which president issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation under the Constitution? Answer: George Washington, who signed it on October 3, 1789, after both houses of Congress asked him to. It named Thursday, November 26.
33. Which early president didn’t declare a single day of thanksgiving while in office? Answer: Thomas Jefferson. His 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association sets out his view on religious proclamations by the government.
34. Which magazine editor wrote to Abraham Lincoln in 1863 asking for one national Thanksgiving Day? Answer: Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, whose letter of September 28, 1863, is in Lincoln’s papers at the Library of Congress.
35. For how many years had she been writing about the idea by then? Answer: fifteen, since her letter says she’d set it out in the Lady’s Book “for the last fifteen years.”
36. How many days after her letter did Lincoln issue his Thanksgiving proclamation? Answer: five, because his proclamation is dated October 3, 1863.
37. Which Thursday of November did Lincoln’s proclamation name? Answer: the last Thursday. The National Archives files it as Presidential Proclamation 106.
38. Which president moved Thanksgiving a week earlier in 1939, and why? Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt, over worries about a short Christmas shopping season. November 1939 had five Thursdays, so the holiday moved from November 30 to November 23.
39. What nickname did critics give Roosevelt’s earlier Thanksgiving? Answer: “Franksgiving.” The change was meant to give stores an extra week of Christmas shopping, and many people mocked it.
40. When did “the fourth Thursday in November” become law? Answer: December 26, 1941, when Roosevelt signed Congress’s joint resolution, according to the National Archives.
41. What’s the date of Thanksgiving in 2026? Answer: Thursday, November 26. November 2026 has only four Thursdays, so this year Lincoln’s “last Thursday” and today’s “fourth Thursday” land on the same day.
42. Which president gave the first official presidential turkey pardon? Answer: George H.W. Bush, in 1989. The White House Historical Association says a few earlier presidents had spared a turkey, but Bush’s 1989 pardon started the yearly custom.

Save number 41 for the end of the round. The two rules split whenever November has five Thursdays, and the next time is 2028, when the fourth Thursday is November 23 and the last is November 30.

Thanksgiving trivia about turkey, food and football

These ten lean on numbers, kitchen know-how and team names, so they suit a table of teens and adults. Two of them are worth more than a point, because the cook will use the answers before the meal.

43. About how many turkeys were raised in the United States in 2025? Answer: 193.5 million, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, and its forecast for 2026 is 199 million.
44. Which bird did Benjamin Franklin call “a much more respectable Bird” than the bald eagle? Answer: the turkey, in a January 1784 letter to his daughter, Sarah Bache, which is in the Founders Online collection at the National Archives.
45. What internal temperature does a whole turkey need to reach to be safe to eat? Answer: 165°F (74°C), checked with a food thermometer in the innermost part of the thigh and wing and the thickest part of the breast. The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s food extension also says to check with a thermometer even when the turkey has a pop-up timer.
46. How long does a frozen turkey take to thaw in the refrigerator? Answer: about 24 hours for every 4 to 5 pounds at 40°F (4°C) or below, so a 16- to 20-pound bird needs four to five days. Per the same Nebraska guide, a turkey that’s still frozen on the day can go straight into the oven, but it needs at least 50 percent longer to cook.
47. Before people called it the wishbone, what was the forked bone in a bird’s breast called in English? Answer: the merrythought. Pulling it to make a wish goes back to the early 1600s, while the name “wishbone” only turns up from 1860. Scientists call it the furcula, Latin for “little fork.”
48. What was the Macy’s parade called when it started? Answer: the Macy’s Christmas Parade. The Library of Congress dates the first one to Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1924, with animals from the Central Park Zoo in the lineup.
49. Police in which city used “Black Friday” for the crowds and traffic jams after Thanksgiving, long before the name spread nationwide? Answer: Philadelphia, starting in the 1950s, and police in Rochester used it too. In 1961, Philadelphia’s city leaders and merchants tried “Big Friday” instead, and that name was quickly forgotten.
50. Which team did the Detroit Lions play in their first Thanksgiving game in 1934, and who won? Answer: the Chicago Bears, who won 19 to 16, per the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
51. How could fans far from Detroit follow that 1934 game? Answer: on the radio. Lions owner George A. Richards and NBC Radio set up a 94-station network to carry it, according to the Hall of Fame.
52. Which team has played on Thanksgiving almost every year since 1966? Answer: the Dallas Cowboys, and the Hall of Fame lists 1975 and 1977 as the only years they missed.

Read number 43 slowly. The 193.5 million covers every turkey raised in the country that year, not only the ones cooked on Thanksgiving, and that difference comes back in the myths section below. Numbers 45 and 46 are the two to repeat to whoever is roasting next year, since the thaw has to start days before the meal.

Printable Thanksgiving trivia for the dinner table

A printed sheet keeps a trivia round going once the phones are put away, and nobody has to hold a screen up to read the next question. The Thanksgiving Trivia page in Cozy Fall Party Games has ten multiple-choice questions with a score column down the side, and the book’s answer key lists every answer in game order. The same book has a Fall Trivia page, also ten questions, so a family can sit down for two rounds, plus twelve true-or-false statements about fall for players who’d rather guess than pick from three options.

Check one thing before you print the full-page Thanksgiving Trivia sheet. The green footer band covers most of question 10, which asks which food was almost certainly not at the 1621 feast, so its three choices (venison, wildfowl and pumpkin pie) don’t show. Either read that question and its choices out loud, or print the ink-saver sheet below, where all ten questions show in full.

For scoring, the bonus pack in Cozy Fall Party Games has a score sheet and a game-night scoreboard, both with room for six players. Its twelve Thanksgiving conversation cards are written for place settings, for the stretch after the quiz while people are still eating. If you’d rather talk than score after the last round, our family conversation starters work at the same table.

Print trivia sheets on US Letter at 100%, with scaling turned off. The actual size guide shows where that setting sits in common print dialogs. The ink-saver edition swaps the color blocks for outlines and puts two games on each sheet, and since Fall Trivia and Thanksgiving Trivia share one of those sheets, it halves the paper when you print a copy for every player.

Thanksgiving myths vs. what the records say

Some trivia answers get repeated so often that they sound like facts, and here’s what the sources above say about six of them. Three of them show up on our own Thanksgiving Trivia page, so read those notes before you play it.

Turkey at the first feast. Winslow’s letter names only two foods, deer and wildfowl, and it doesn’t say which birds. William Bradford, the colony’s governor, wrote that there was “great store of wild turkeys” that fall. Plimoth Patuxet calls turkey “likely or almost certain,” but the only eyewitness never wrote it down as part of the feast.

Pumpkin pie in 1621. Almost certainly not, and our own Thanksgiving Trivia page asks this one, with pumpkin pie as the answer. Plimoth Patuxet’s reason is that the colony probably didn’t have enough butter and wheat flour for a pie crust. It adds that a printed recipe for cranberry sauce didn’t turn up for about another fifty years.

Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday. Half true. His 1863 proclamation set one national day, on the last Thursday of November, but presidents after him proclaimed the day again each year, and the fixed date only became law in 1941. Our printed page asks which president “made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863,” so accept Lincoln and then read out this note.

Truman pardoned the first turkey. The White House Historical Association says he didn’t. On December 15, 1947, Truman accepted a 47-pound turkey from the National Turkey Federation for his Christmas dinner. The federation’s early gift birds were meant for the president’s table and often wore a sign reading “Good Eatin’ Mr. President.”

Franklin wanted the turkey as the national bird. There’s no record that he ever proposed it. His turkey praise sits in a private letter to his daughter, in which he mocked the badge of the Society of the Cincinnati, a new hereditary order, saying its eagle looked more like a turkey. He did write that he wished the bald eagle hadn’t been chosen. His own 1776 idea for the Great Seal, according to the State Department’s diplomacy museum, showed Moses dividing the Red Sea.

Americans eat 45 million turkeys on Thanksgiving. You’ll see 45 or 46 million on a lot of trivia lists. That number is credited to the National Turkey Federation, the industry group, and it’s an estimate, not a count. For 2025, the federation’s estimate was “nearly 30 million,” and a trade press report says it came from a poll of 1,000 consumers. The only national count is the USDA’s number of turkeys raised in a year, which is question 43. Our own Thanksgiving Trivia page gives “About 45 million” as the answer to its turkey question, so if you play it, call that answer an estimate.

After the quiz, a thank-you drawing or gratitude leaf gives younger children a way to join in without answering history questions. If the table wants a break from right and wrong answers altogether, our Thanksgiving games guide has would-you-rather questions and word search races.