Test your knowledge with this easy Fun Facts quiz. Each session picks 10 random questions from 30 total — try again for a new set!
10 random questions from 30 total • easy
Each session picks different questions.
In Ireland and Scotland, what were the first jack-o'-lanterns carved from?
Which vegetable did Irish immigrants in America find easier to carve than turnips?
The jack-o'-lantern is named after an old Irish legend about whom?
Know the answers? Test yourself above ↑
Most of what happens on October 31 has a surprisingly specific origin. The first jack-o'-lanterns were turnips, not pumpkins, carved in Ireland and Scotland; Irish immigrants switched to pumpkins in America because they were easier to hollow out. The name Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows' Eve, the night before All Saints' Day, and the festival itself grew out of Samhain, the Celtic feast that marked the end of the harvest.
This quiz asks thirty questions like those, and each round deals ten of them at random. They cover the history of the night, the classic monsters and the books they come from — Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Washington Irving's Headless Horseman — and the real animals that got pulled into the season: why bats come out after dark and how they find their way, how far an owl can turn its head, what a group of crows is called.
There is also a little about how other cultures mark the same days. Día de los Muertos in Mexico is celebrated mainly on November 1 and 2, with altars decorated in bright orange marigolds — a celebration of remembering family rather than a spooky one.
Every answer comes with a one-line explanation, so a wrong answer still teaches something, and the score at the end is easy to compare. It is pitched to work for a family or a classroom: nothing gory, and most questions are answerable by a curious ten-year-old. Play again for a different ten. For games rather than trivia, the Halloween games page has word searches, hangman, a math game and a typing race.
Thirty in the bank. Each round picks ten at random, so replaying gives a different set.
Yes. The questions are about history, books, animals and traditions, with nothing gory, and every answer is explained.
Turnips and other root vegetables, in Ireland and Scotland. Pumpkins took over in North America.
Yes. Put it on a screen and let teams call out answers — the explanations give you something to talk about between questions.
