Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
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50 free Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The premise of the TV game show is simple and a little cruel: grown adults face questions lifted from elementary school lessons and find out how much they have forgotten since they were ten. The questions are never hard in the usual sense. They are things everybody was taught once, which is exactly why getting one wrong stings. This quiz follows the same idea. It runs through first- to fifth-grade subjects, with science, math, geography, American history, grammar, reading, music and art all in the mix, and it stays on the easy side, so most players will rack up a good score. A handful of questions cover the show itself and the people who have hosted it. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a miss still teaches something. Play it alone to see whether you would pass the class, try it as a family game on a road trip, or run it in a real classroom as a review. Kids often beat the grown-ups, which is the whole fun of it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which U.S. state is home to the Grand Canyon, the mile-deep gorge carved by the Colorado River?
Arizona
Arizona holds the Grand Canyon, which stretches 277 miles and reaches 18 miles across at its widest point.
Q 02Which city, not Los Angeles or San Francisco, has been California's state capital since 1854?
Sacramento
Sacramento won the job by offering its county courthouse as a home for the state legislature in 1852. Under Spanish and Mexican rule the capital had been Monterey.
Q 03Which sugary liquid, made by flowers to attract pollinators, do bees gather and refine into honey?
Nectar
Nectar is the sugar source for honey, which bees make by gathering and refining it. Hummingbirds, butterflies and bats drink it straight from the flower.
Q 04Which bird, shown on the Great Seal gripping an olive branch, is the U.S. national bird?
Bald eagle
The bald eagle became a national emblem in 1782. The tale that Benjamin Franklin pushed for the wild turkey instead is a popular legend with no evidence behind it.
Q 05Which planet, the smallest in the Solar System, orbits closest to the Sun?
Mercury
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun but only the second-hottest, because it has no atmosphere to trap heat. Venus is hotter.
Q 06Which country gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States, shipping it across the sea in crates?
France
France sent the statue as a gift from its people, and Gustave Eiffel built the metal framework that holds up its copper skin.
Q 07What is a polygon with six sides called, the shape bees use for the cells of a honeycomb?
Hexagon
Hexagon comes from the Greek word hex, meaning six. Regular ones fit together with no gaps, which is why honeycomb cells make such efficient use of wax and space.
Q 08Which children's author, born Theodor Geisel, created the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch?
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss was a pen name, and he wrote and illustrated more than 60 books under it. Both of those famous characters first appeared in 1957.
Q 09Which ocean, the second-largest on Earth, separates Europe and Africa from the Americas?
Atlantic
The Atlantic covers about 85 million square kilometers. In the Age of Discovery it was known as the water dividing the Old World from the New World.
Q 10Which gemstone, used in industrial cutting tools, is the hardest natural material known?
Diamond
Diamond is the hardest material on the Mohs scale, and it also conducts heat better than any other natural material.
Q 11What do scientists call an animal built to feed mainly on plants, such as a horse or a cow?
Herbivore
A herbivore that grazes has wide, flat-crowned teeth for grinding grass, and many rely on gut bacteria to break down the tough cellulose in their food.
Q 12Which president's portrait, from a 1796 painting by Gilbert Stuart, is on the U.S. one-dollar bill?
George Washington
George Washington has sat at the center of the one-dollar bill since the 1869 design. The back of the note shows the Great Seal of the United States.
Q 13Which European country, home to Rome and Venice, sits on a peninsula shaped like a boot?
Italy
Italy's peninsula is nicknamed lo Stivale for its high-heeled outline, and the country also takes in nearly 800 islands, including Sicily and Sardinia.
Q 21Which continent, home to more than half of the world's people, is the largest by land area?
Asia
Asia covers about 30% of Earth's land and has the longest coastline of any continent, at 62,800 kilometres.
Q 22Which explorer left Spain in August 1492 with three ships, the largest of them the Santa María?
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was hunting for a western sea passage to the East Indies and its spice trade when he made landfall in the Americas on 12 October.
Q 23What do we call a word with nearly the same meaning as another, as 'begin' is to 'start'?
Synonym
A synonym may match in only one sense: 'long' and 'extended' both describe a stretch of time, yet nobody talks about a long family.
Q 14Which part of speech names a person, place or thing, such as 'teacher', 'river' or 'pencil'?
Noun
A noun can also name things nobody can touch, such as an event, a quality or a quantity, which is why 'birthday' and 'kindness' count too.
Q 15Which planet, second-largest in the Solar System, is famous for bright rings of ice and rock?
Saturn
Saturn is over 95 times more massive than Earth but has only an eighth of its average density. Hundreds of tiny moonlets orbit inside the rings.
Q 16Which force, the one that gives objects their weight, pulls everything on Earth toward the ground?
Gravity
Gravity acts between any two bodies, as Isaac Newton worked out: the pull grows with their masses and fades with the distance between them.
Q 17Which continent, covered by an ice sheet more than a mile thick on average, contains the South Pole?
Antarctica
Antarctica holds about 70% of the world's fresh water as ice, and on average it is the coldest, driest and windiest of the continents.
Q 18What is the distance around the outside of a flat shape called, found by adding up its sides?
Perimeter
Perimeter is the length of fence needed to surround a yard or garden. On a circle the same measurement gets a name of its own, the circumference.
Q 19On which date, now a national holiday, was the Declaration of Independence adopted in Philadelphia?
July 4
July 4 is the day the text was adopted in 1776, but most of the delegates did not put their names to the official copy until August 2.
Q 20Which gas, breathed out by people and animals, do plants take in from the air to make food?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide and water are what plants turn into carbohydrates using energy from sunlight, and the process gives off oxygen as waste.
Q 24Which orchestra family, sounded by vibration of the player's lips, includes the trumpet and tuba?
Brass
Brass instruments are defined by how the sound is made, not by the metal: a saxophone is built of the same alloy yet counts as a woodwind.
Q 25Which mineral, plentiful in milk, yogurt and cheese, does the human body need in order to form bone?
Calcium
Calcium is the most abundant metal in the human body, and roughly 99% of the body's supply is locked away in the skeleton.
Q 26Which Blue Collar Comedy Tour comic hosted Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader when it began on Fox?
Jeff Foxworthy
Jeff Foxworthy fronted the game show from its 2007 debut, having made his name with one-liners about rednecks and six major-label comedy albums.
Q 27Which desert, covering much of North Africa, is the largest hot desert in the world?
Sahara
Sahara comes from an Arabic word that simply means desert. It is far from all sand: rocky plateaus, gravel plains and salt flats fill much of it.
Q 28Which class of animals, with eight legs and no antennae, includes spiders, scorpions and ticks?
Arachnids
Arachnids number over 110,000 named species, and about 51,000 of them, nearly half, are spiders. Mites belong to the group as well.
Q 29Which inventor, nicknamed the Wizard of Menlo Park, worked on the phonograph and the light bulb?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison registered 1,093 patents in the United States, and his Menlo Park site is now considered the first industrial research laboratory.
Q 30Which term names the result of a multiplication, as 21 is for 3 times 7?
Product
Product is the word for the result, while the numbers being multiplied together are called factors.