Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Alphabet trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
43 free alphabet trivia questions with answers. The alphabet you are reading has a 4,000-year backstory, and this quiz covers all of it. Expect questions on the Phoenician abjad and the Greek invention of vowels, the Latin alphabet's rise, the 26 English letters and why U and J are latecomers, the NATO phonetic alphabet from Alfa to Zulu, letter frequency (E is king, Z is last), the ampersand, pangrams, braille, Morse code, Hangul and Cyrillic. Easy questions ask how many letters English has and what a pangram is. The hard ones want the saints behind the Glagolitic alphabet, the sarcophagus with the oldest Phoenician text and the word 'acrophony'. It suits a language-lover's quiz, a classroom or a pub round. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on alphabets and writing systems, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many letters are in the modern English alphabet?
26
Each has an uppercase and a lowercase form.
Q 02The word 'alphabet' comes from the first two letters of which alphabet?
Greek (alpha and beta)
Those Greek names in turn came from the Phoenician words for ox and house.
Q 03The Greek letter names alpha and beta derive from Phoenician words for what?
Ox and house
Aleph meant ox and bet meant house.
Q 04How many consonant letters does the Phoenician alphabet have?
22
It was an abjad, leaving vowel sounds unwritten.
Q 05What is an abjad, like the Phoenician or Arabic script?
An alphabet that writes only consonants
Vowels are left implicit.
Q 06Which script was the first to give vowels their own independent letters?
Greek
The Greeks reused Phoenician letters for sounds that did not exist in Greek.
Q 07How many letters are in the modern Greek alphabet?
24
It runs from alpha to omega.
Q 08The Latin script evolved most directly from which earlier neighbouring script?
Etruscan
The Etruscans ruled early Rome.
Q 09Which is the most widely used writing script in the world today?
The Latin alphabet
It spread across Europe with the Roman Republic.
Q 10Which letter is the most commonly used in English?
E
The least-used letter is Z.
Q 11Which letter is the least commonly used in English?
Z
E is the most common.
Q 12Which two modern English letters were introduced as distinct from V and I in the 16th century?
U and J
W also became an independent letter around then.
Q 13What is a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet called?
A pangram
'Holoalphabetic' is another name for it.
Q 14Which sentence is the best-known example that uses every letter?
Q 21Who invented the raised-dot reading system for the blind, at age 15?
Louis Braille
He had lost his own sight in a childhood accident.
Q 22Each character in the raised-dot reading system for the blind uses a cell of how many dots?
Six
The dots are arranged in two columns of three.
Q 23The telegraph code used to send text over wires encodes letters as which two signals?
Dots and dashes
They are also called dits and dahs.
Q 24After whom is the dot-and-dash telegraph code named?
'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'
Western Union used it to test Telex equipment.
Q 15In the NATO phonetic alphabet, what word stands for the letter A?
Alfa
It is spelled 'Alfa' to avoid mispronunciation by non-English speakers.
Q 16Which code word stands for the letter Z in the NATO alphabet?
Zulu
'Zulu Time' is used for Greenwich Mean Time.
Q 17Why are 'Alfa' and 'Juliett' spelled with unusual endings in the NATO alphabet?
To avoid mispronunciation by non-English speakers
'Juliett' has a double-t so French speakers do not treat the final t as silent.
Q 18Which organisation defined the NATO phonetic alphabet in 1955-56?
The International Civil Aviation Organization
Its official name is the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet.
Q 19The ampersand symbol '&' began as a ligature of which Latin word?
Et (meaning 'and')
The name comes from 'and per se and'.
Q 20The word 'ampersand' is a corruption of which phrase?
'and per se and'
Letters that were also words, like A, I and O, were recited as 'per se'.
Samuel Morse
He was one of several developers of the telegraph code.
Q 25Which Korean king created the Hangul alphabet in 1443?
Sejong the Great
Before it, Korea used Chinese characters (Hanja).
Q 26What is unusual about Hangul among the world's alphabets?
Its shapes reflect the mouth's place of articulation
It is a 'featural' alphabet, planned by the government of the day.
Q 27Which script did Korea use before Hangul was created?
Chinese characters (Hanja)
Hanja was poorly suited to Korean and contributed to high illiteracy.
Q 28The Cyrillic script is used to write which language?
Russian
Around 250 million people use Cyrillic as an official script.
Q 29The Cyrillic script became the third official script of the EU when which country joined in 2007?
Bulgaria
About 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic.
Q 30Which pair is credited with creating the Glagolitic alphabet, ancestor of Cyrillic?
Cyril and Methodius
Cyrillic itself was created by their disciples at the Preslav Literary School.