Dining-knowledge quiz
Etiquette — the dinner-table edition.
Cutlery, napkins, wine pouring, the awkward bits — a pop quiz on what to do, and why anyone bothers.
Etiquette is one of those subjects that sounds fussy until you're at a table where someone's quietly anxious about which fork. Quizine's etiquette questions cover the modern, useful bits — how to hold cutlery, which way to pass the salt, what your napkin is meant to do, how to taste wine when the waiter is hovering, how to handle a course you don't want without offending the cook. We err on the side of relaxed and continental rather than starchy. Short explanations after every answer, with the reason behind the rule — most of them, it turns out, were there to make life easier, not harder.
Three sample questions
Have a think, then tap to reveal the answer. The real quiz adapts in difficulty as you go.
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Which side of the dinner plate is the fork traditionally placed on?
Reveal answer
A. The left
Forks go on the left, knives and spoons on the right. The convention comes from most people being right-handed and historically cutting with the dominant hand, then either eating with the fork in the left (Continental) or switching it over (American).
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The 'Continental' or 'European' style of using cutlery differs from the 'American' style mainly in that:
Reveal answer
B. In Continental, the fork stays in the left hand tines-down throughout; American switches the fork to the right hand to eat after cutting
Continental: fork left, knife right, no switching — the fork stays tines-down in the left hand to bring food to the mouth. American 'zig-zag': cut with the fork in the left, put the knife down, switch the fork to the right hand tines-up, eat, repeat. Both are correct; mixing them at a formal table reads as careless.
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The finger bowl that arrives at the end of a formal meal is for:
Reveal answer
B. Cleaning sticky fingers — dip fingertips, dry on the napkin
A small bowl of warm water (sometimes with a lemon slice or rose petal) appears with finger-food courses or after dessert. You dip fingertips only — never the whole hand — and dry them on your napkin. There's a famous Queen Victoria story of her drinking from one to spare a guest's embarrassment.
Questions, asked
Is Quizine free?
Completely. No account, no card, no upsell. Sign in if you'd like your progress to follow you between phone and laptop; otherwise it all works in the browser, no questions asked.
Is the etiquette stuffy or practical?
Practical. We skip the parlour-game stuff and focus on what makes other people at the table feel comfortable. Where two traditions disagree (continental versus American hands-on-the-table, say) we mention both.
How do the levels work?
Three levels of difficulty. You start at level one and the quiz nudges you up after a short run of correct answers; a couple of wrong ones drops you back down. The aim is to keep you on questions that are just hard enough to be interesting.
How long does a session take?
Five minutes is normal. Most people answer eight to twelve questions and come back the next day. The daily challenge is three questions on purpose — easy to keep up with.
What if I think an answer is wrong?
Tell us. There's a contact link in the footer and every report gets read. Mistakes get fixed quickly.
Other Quizine categories
Mix and match — they all live in the same quiz.
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