Purim Trivia
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120 free Purim trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Purim is the holiday where you are commanded to feast, give, drink and make noise, all to celebrate a genocide that never happened. This quiz covers the story first: Ahasuerus's 180-day banquet, Vashti's refusal, Hadassah becoming Esther, Mordecai and the tribe of Benjamin, Bigthan and Teresh, Haman the Agagite and his lots, the sleepless king, the second banquet and the gallows. It then covers how the day is kept: the 14th of Adar and Shushan Purim in Jerusalem, Purim Katan and Purim Meshulash, the Fast of Esther, mishloach manot and gifts to the poor, Rava's rule about drinking, the 54 mentions of Haman and the grager, hamantaschen and kreplach, masks, spiels, the Tel Aviv Adloyada, henna, Purim Vinz in Frankfurt and the holiday's darker echoes in the 20th century. Easy questions suit anyone who has been to a Megillah reading; the expert tier asks for tractates and calendar quirks. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Purim, the Book of Esther and its characters, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Hanukkah and on Passover.
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Q 01What did Mordecai put on as a sign of mourning when he learned of Haman's decree?
Sackcloth and ashes
Sackcloth and ashes kept Mordecai outside the palace, since nobody in mourning dress could pass the king's gate, so he and Esther had to trade messages through a servant.
Q 02What does the Hebrew word Purim literally mean?
Lots
Haman cast lots to choose the date of the massacre, and the holiday took its name from them.
Q 03The word pur, root of Purim, is usually traced to which Mesopotamian language?
Akkadian
Akkadian is the likely origin, and the word stayed foreign enough that the Book of Esther stops twice to translate it for its Hebrew readers.
Q 04Purim always falls about a month before which major Jewish festival?
Passover
Passover follows a month later, a pairing the Talmud prizes: it speaks of keeping one redemption, the rescue in Persia, right beside the other, the Exodus.
Q 05The Megillah read aloud on Purim gave English the slang phrase 'the whole megillah', meaning what?
A long, tedious story
A long, tedious story is the slang sense: the scroll is read aloud from beginning to end, and Yiddish speakers made 'a gantse megillah' a joke about anything that drags on.
Q 06The name Ahasuerus is believed to derive from the Old Persian name of which king?
Xerxes I
Xerxes I is the usual match: his Old Persian name, Xšayāršā, became 'Xerxes' in Greek and 'Ahashverosh' in Hebrew, which is why some modern Bibles simply print 'King Xerxes' all through the story.
Q 07What was Esther's original Hebrew name?
Hadassah
Hadassah means myrtle, and the Talmud's rabbis argued over why it suited her: one said she was of middling height like the tree, another that her complexion was greenish like it.
Q 08Often called her uncle, Mordecai is which relative of Esther in the Hebrew text?
Her cousin
Her cousin: Esther was the daughter of Mordecai's uncle Abihail, and he adopted her when her parents died, while later retellings such as the Latin Vulgate made her his brother's daughter.
Q 09Like King Saul before him, Mordecai belonged to which tribe of Israel?
Benjamin
Benjamin was King Saul's tribe too, and both men descend from a Kish, so Mordecai against Haman 'the Agagite' plays as a rematch of Saul against King Agag, the enemy he once spared.
Q 10What did Queen Vashti refuse to do, costing her the crown?
Appear before the king's guests
Appear before the king's guests she would not, on the seventh day of his drinking feast, and his advisers turned one refusal into an empire-wide decree that every man be master of his own house.
Q 11At the king's feast that opens the Purim story, the wine was served in cups of what material, no two alike?
Gold
Gold beakers, each of a different design, came with a single rule for the drinking: the king told his stewards to serve every guest exactly as he wished.
Q 12Which two palace guards' assassination plot did Mordecai expose?
Bigthan and Teresh
Bigthan and Teresh, eunuchs who guarded the king's door, were executed once Mordecai's warning reached the king through Esther, yet Mordecai himself got no reward, an oversight the whole plot later turns on.
Q 13Why did Haman decide to destroy all the Jews of the empire?
Mordecai refused to bow to him
Q 21Shushan Purim is kept a day late in cities walled since the time of which biblical leader?
Joshua
Joshua's day is the yardstick, so walls that fell long ago still count, and the one exception is Shushan itself, treated as walled because the miracle happened there.
Q 22Which is the only city where Purim is definitively kept on the later, walled-city date?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem alone is known for certain to have had walls in the required era, so towns with doubtful histories, among them Hebron and Tiberias, hedge by keeping both days.
Q 23What is the name for the gifts of food and drink exchanged on Purim?
Mishloach manot
Mishloach manot means 'sending portions': the rule is two ready-to-eat foods to one person, and the Talmud tells of two rabbis who met it by simply swapping their Purim meals.
Mordecai refused to bow to him, and Haman, told that the man was a Jew, thought it beneath him to punish one person, so he set out to destroy the whole people instead.
Q 14Haman is called 'the Agagite', linking him to which ancient enemy of Israel?
Amalek
Amalek, whose king Agag gives Haman his label, is the nation the Torah orders Israel to 'blot out', which is why congregations drown out Haman's name whenever it is read.
Q 15How many days did Esther ask the Jews of Shushan to fast before she approached the king?
Three
Three days without food or drink, night and day, was Esther's condition for risking an uninvited visit to the king, an offence punishable by death: 'if I perish, I perish,' she said.
Q 16What was the name of Haman's wife, who urged him to build a gallows for Mordecai?
Zeresh
Zeresh proposed the fifty-cubit gallows, then changed her tune within a day: after Mordecai's moment of honour she told Haman he could not win against a Jew and was sure to fall.
Q 17When Esther risked approaching the throne unsummoned, what did King Ahasuerus hold out to spare her life?
His sceptre
His sceptre, held out and touched at its tip, was the only reprieve from a law that put to death anyone who entered the inner court uninvited, and Esther had not been called for thirty days.
Q 18What reward did Haman suggest for a man King Ahasuerus wished to honour?
A parade in royal robes
A parade in royal robes, on the king's own horse, was Haman's idea because he assumed the honour was his; minutes later he was leading Mordecai through the city square, calling out his praise.
Q 19At what event did Esther reveal she was Jewish and expose the plot against her people?
Her second private banquet
Her second private banquet was the moment: at the first she only asked the king and Haman back the next day, a delay in which Haman built the gallows he would end up on himself.
Q 20After victory in Shushan, what more did Esther ask for?
Another day to fight
Another day to fight was granted, so the Jews of Shushan rested a day later than everyone else, which is why cities with ancient walls still keep Purim a day after the rest of the world.
Q 24What is mattanot la-evyonim?
Charity to the poor
Charity to the poor on Purim means at least two gifts to two people, and Maimonides ruled it better to spend more on them than on one's own feast, since no joy is greater than gladdening the poor.
Q 25On Purim, how far did the sage Rava say drinking should go?
Unable to tell Haman from Mordecai
Unable to tell Haman from Mordecai, or 'cursed' from 'blessed', was Rava's measure; later rulings softened it, Maimonides asking only for wine enough to fall asleep, since a sleeper cannot tell the two apart either.
Q 26What is the Adloyada?
A humorous Purim parade held in Israel
A humorous Purim parade held in Israel, it got its name by contest: hundreds of entries came in, and the writer I. D. Berkowitz's 'Adloyada' beat a suggestion from the poet Bialik.
Q 27In which city was the first Adloyada held, in 1912?
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv was in only its third year when schoolteacher Avraham Aldema organised it, and the day went so well that the town made it a yearly fixture.
Q 28A few Megillah verses, such as one recalling the exile, are sung to which other book's melody?
Lamentations
Lamentations lends its mournful chant to a handful of verses, such as the one on the exile of Mordecai's ancestors, so grief keeps breaking into an otherwise festive reading.
Q 29What is the Yiddish name for the ratchet noisemaker used at Haman's name?
Grager
Grager is the Yiddish word for the rattle; the 16th-century codifier Moses Isserles ruled that the noisy custom should be neither abolished nor mocked, though rabbis since have protested that it disturbs the service.
Q 30In medieval France, children wrote Haman's name on what, then knocked them together to rub it off?
Smooth stones
Smooth stones were struck together until the name wore off, and when the stones fell out of use the knocking stayed, growing into the din that greets Haman's name in synagogue.