How it works
None of these 80 Halloween trivia questions for kids has a ghost, a monster or a graveyard in it. They ask about real pumpkins, bats, spiders, owls and cats, and about where trick-or-treating came from: turnip lanterns, soul cakes and guising.
Read the full guide
Six topics, none of them scary
Children learn that a bat's wing is skin stretched over its finger bones. A black cat means good luck in Britain and Japan. Bats and Pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns have 11 questions each. Spiders and webs and Harvest customs have 14. Owls, cats and crows and Halloween history and trick-or-treating have 15.
Easiest first for a mixed-age party
Every topic is stored easiest first. Pick a round in Start from below the question, finish it, open More options and untick Shuffle questions. The pumpkin topic then runs from what a carved pumpkin is called to the botanist's word for one. For a winner, set Start from to All topics and tick the shuffle box again. Pick Scored round and press Start the round: 20 questions, marked by topic at the end.
- With five-year-olds in the room, start on Harvest customs, where half the 14 questions are easy. The history topic holds the most hard ones, four.
- Draw a paper pumpkin for each team and color in one segment per right answer, so nobody needs candy to keep score.
- For children waiting for dusk, choose a round under Start from, play it and press Print. No topic has more than 15 questions, so each prints whole.
Questions and answers
Are any of the questions scary?
No. Bats, spiders, owls and black cats appear as real animals: what they eat, how they fly, how a web is built. The one Day of the Dead question is about marigolds and remembering family. Nothing mentions a ghost, a monster, a witch or blood.
What ages are the questions for?
About six to eleven. An easy one asks which three colors make up candy corn. A hard one asks where the words trick or treat were first recorded. About one question in five is hard, by our estimate.
Which vegetable was carved before pumpkins?
The turnip. In Ireland and Britain, turnips and other root vegetables were hollowed out as lanterns, often with a carved face. Carving pumpkins is a custom that grew up in the United States. The question is in Pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns.