Christmas food quiz: a daily countdown to Christmas Day

The Mosey Christmas food countdown is a free Christmas food quiz with 44 doors. Door 1 opens on 12 November, a new door opens each day at midnight where you are, and the last opens on Christmas Day. Each door asks one question about Christmas food from around the world, gives you three answers and shows a short fact once you choose.

That is the whole idea, and it is meant to take about a minute a day. This guide explains how the countdown works, what kind of questions it asks, what to do if you miss a day, how to share your score without spoiling anything, and how to turn the quiz into something to talk about at the Christmas table. It also has a set of Christmas food quiz questions of our own to try first, each one checked against a source.

How does the Christmas food countdown work?

You open today's door, read the question and pick one of three answers. You see at once whether you were right, and a short fact appears under the answer, such as what a dish is made of or where it is eaten. Each door can be played once, so the first answer you give is the one that counts.

Doors follow your own calendar. A door never opens early, and it opens at midnight where you are, not at midnight somewhere else in the world. That matters in practice: someone playing in Dublin and someone playing on the other side of the world each get their own today's door on their own morning.

On the Mosey website you do not need an account. Your browser keeps a random code so your answers stay yours without a sign-in. In the Mosey app your answers are kept on your account instead, so they follow you from one phone to another. Either way it is free, there are no prizes and there is nothing of value to win. Like the other Mosey games, it is for people aged eighteen and over.

Your score is counted out of the doors you have played, not out of all 44, so a late starter is not marked down for doors they have not reached.

What does a door look like?

A door has two parts. The question is short, in one of two shapes:

• A place, then a dish. "What is traditional at Christmas in this country?" with three dishes to choose from.
• A dish, then a place. "This dish is a Christmas classic where?" with three countries to choose from.

After you choose, the fact card tells you why the answer is right. It is one or two plain sentences, written to be repeated at a party.

What kind of questions does a Christmas food quiz ask?

A good Christmas food quiz asks about food that people really eat on or around Christmas, and it gets harder only because the world is bigger than your own table. The countdown covers Christmas food from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, so you meet dishes you may never have eaten alongside the ones you grew up with.

Two rules keep the quiz fair. Every right answer is a documented Christmas tradition for that place or dish, and a wrong answer is plainly wrong for that place, for example another country's Christmas food that is not also eaten there. Now and again a door is deliberately easy, with one plainly silly wrong option, because a quiz that every so often hands you a win is more fun to come back to.

The questions are about food, not trivia that needs a search engine. You are never asked for a date, a price or a number, so you do not need to remember anything except what you have eaten, heard of or can reason out. The odd guess is part of it, and the fact card is where the learning happens.

What are some Christmas food quiz questions to try first?

Here are eight Christmas food quiz questions you can use at the dinner table, in a group chat or as a warm-up before you open a door. They are written for this guide, none of them is a question or an answer from the countdown's own doors, so trying them spoils nothing, and each answer has been checked against a source we opened.

Question	Answer
Which crescent-shaped vanilla biscuits, first made in Vienna, are traditionally baked at Christmas in Austria?	Vanillekipferl.
What is sometimes poured over a Christmas pudding and set alight before it is served?	Warm brandy.
Which seed filled the round cake that was once part of a traditional Irish Christmas?	Caraway.
What is often hidden in česnica, the round Serbian Christmas bread?	A coin. Whoever finds it in their piece is said to be lucky.
Which Scottish city gives its name to a light, crumbly Christmas cake made with whisky?	Dundee.
What coats a Swedish Christmas ham before it is browned in the oven?	A mix of egg, breadcrumbs and mustard.
In much of the Caribbean, what is the rum-soaked fruit cake of the Christmas season often called?	Black cake, also known as rum cake.
What is a gingerbread house, the Christmas decoration, built from?	Crisp gingerbread, cut and baked into walls and a roof, then covered with sweets and icing.

If you want to make it a game, read the question aloud, give people ten seconds and let them write an answer down before you reveal it. For a full evening, our guide to a Christmas food quiz for the office party shows how to run it in rounds with teams.

What do people in Ireland eat at Christmas, and how does it compare?

It is worth knowing your own table before you quiz yourself on everyone else's, because some of what feels timeless is more recent than it looks. Turkey is described as a more modern, imported tradition in Ireland, and older Irish Christmas dinners are described as a roast goose and ham with vegetables and roast potatoes. Christmas pudding was a traditional dessert, and it was considered unlucky to cut one before Christmas Day. Christmas cake, sherry trifle, a yule log and mince pies are the other desserts that come up.

Christmas in Ireland also runs past the day itself. St Stephen's Day, on 26 December, is when many households work through the leftovers, and Little Christmas on 6 January, also called Women's Christmas, is when the celebrations traditionally end. The countdown follows the same shape: its last door is on Christmas Day, and the catch-up window stays open until 6 January.

Compare that with Sweden, where the julbord is the centrepiece of Christmas Eve, or Poland, where the Christmas Eve supper is meatless, and you start to see why the quiz works. Christmas food is about when you eat as much as what you eat: the evening, the morning after, the sweet bread you slice for breakfast. Many of the same kinds of food turn up under different names, with dried fruit, spice, fish and baking appearing in a different place on each country's table.

Can you catch up on a door you missed?

Yes. Doors that have opened stay open until the countdown closes after 6 January, so you can play them in any order you like. Each door can still be played once, and your score is counted out of the doors you have played.

This is built for real December. Nobody opens a quiz on the day of a work party, a school concert and a family flight. If you skip a week, open the countdown on a quiet evening and play the doors you missed, one after another, over a cup of tea. You cannot play a door ahead of its day, so there is no way to rush to the end.

On the Mosey website, the answer to a door also becomes public once its day has passed everywhere, which means anyone can read a finished door. If you want the fun of guessing, play before you read.

How does the streak work?

The countdown keeps its own count, called doors in a row. Opening today's door keeps it going, a missed door breaks it until you catch up, and catching up joins the run again. If you have not yet opened today's door, that does not break your count. It is a gentle streak, not a nagging one.

How do you share your score without spoiling the answers?

After a door, the countdown gives you a "Share your score" button. The line it shares gives only your score, in the form "I got 31 of 44", with the link. It never includes an answer, a dish or a country, so your friends can still play every door with no spoilers.

That makes it easy to compare notes in a family group chat. Send your score, say which door got you, and ask what everyone else chose. If you are competing with a brother-in-law who always insists he knows every Christmas food, a share line is exactly the right size: a number, not an answer.

If you play on the website and later move to the app, the app is where your answers live on your account. The website shows a "Keep your streak in the app" prompt after you play for this reason.

Is the Christmas food countdown the same as an Advent calendar?

It works like one, with a few differences, and that is why we call it the Christmas food countdown rather than an Advent calendar. An Advent calendar counts the days of Advent. This one starts earlier, on 12 November, and runs to Christmas Day, with a door a day by your own date. That gives it 44 doors rather than 24, and a catch-up period that runs after Christmas.

What a door holds is a question, not a chocolate. You get a fact and a point of pride, nothing to eat, and you can play it in a browser on the day it opens.

What else on Mosey goes with a Christmas food quiz?

The countdown is one of the daily food games on Mosey. The others are Origin, where you place a dish on a world map in five rounds and score by distance, and Ingredient, where one dish gets seven four-option questions from easy to expert. Each is the same puzzle for every player each day, and the daily food games page explains them. They do not count towards the countdown's doors in a row, which is its own count, but they are the natural next thing to play once you have finished a door.

A few other Mosey features fit the season:

• The Christmas food vote. During a season, a question appears at the top of Home in the Mosey app, and you rank up to three places. The seasonal food votes page explains how it works.
• Ratings by the dish. If a Christmas meal out was worth remembering, rate the dish, not just the place, and add a tag such as Celebration or Family Friendly. Our guide to writing a rating that helps the next diner shows how.
• Lists. Keep a list of the places you want to try over the holidays and send an invite link to a friend, who can add to it even before they have joined. Our help guide on making and sharing a list shows how.

If the quiz has you hungry for a proper Christmas meal out, our guide to eating out at Christmas in Ireland covers when to book and what to ask. For a household with people travelling home, where to eat when family flies in covers the meals to book before they land. A table for a group can be reserved through Mosey where a place takes bookings; booking a table and managing your bookings shows how.

How do you make the countdown part of Christmas at home?

A small, regular habit suits it, which suits Christmas better than a big event. A few ideas that cost nothing:

• Do the door at breakfast. One question while the kettle boils, read aloud, with everyone guessing before anyone looks at the answer.
• Let the person who got it wrong read the fact. It spreads the talking around the table.
• Keep a running score on the fridge, or in a group chat, and share only the line the countdown gives you.
• Pair a door with a dish. When a door lands on a food you can cook or buy, make it that week. A Christmas bread or biscuit from another country is often easy to find in season, and plenty of households like to try a new Christmas food each year.
• Save a catch-up evening. Pick one night between Christmas and 6 January to play every door you missed, with leftovers on the table.

None of this needs the whole family to be experts. The point of a food quiz at Christmas is that everyone has a story about what they ate, and the quiz gives you a reason to tell it.

Where do you start?

Open the Christmas food countdown on the Mosey website, under Games, or in the Mosey app, and play door 1 if you have not started, or the newest door if you have. You can begin today even though the countdown opened on 12 November: doors that have opened stay open, so you can catch up on all of them. Then come back tomorrow for the next one.

More guides to read next:

• Eating out at Christmas in Ireland: how to plan
• A Christmas food quiz for the office party

More in the food guides.

To see what people rate highly across the country, look through the ranked lists.