Depending on the generation you’re from, the face you know from the most famed family-friendly quiz show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? may well either be the TV legend and host Jeff Foxworthy or the renowned wrestling icon John Cena. Either way, the love for this game show encompasses all generations, from old to young.
No matter your age, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? has always been the ultimate test of one’s academic prowess and intelligence on bits and pieces of random yet interesting know-how. With this, we have compiled a list of the best questions from the show, along with their answers, below.
Whether you want to host your own Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader show for an event or would just like to bond with your family in a fun way, we’ve got you covered.
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? questions: math category
Math — you either hate it or you love it. Ten-year-olds tend to make quicker calculations as they deal with these arithmetic problems more daily at school.
Adults, on the other hand, can get challenged even by the most basic questions for fifth graders as we don’t generally encounter them in the real world. Well, unless you work as a math teacher or something similar. Here are some math questions in the show, along with their answers:
1. You collect 48 pieces of Halloween candy. Your parents say you can eat two pieces per day, plus an extra piece on Saturdays and Sundays. How many weeks will it take to finish all of your candy?
Answer: Three weeks
2. How many inches are there in two yards?
Answer: 72
3. How many sides does a quadrangle have?
Answer: Four sides
4. What whole number is closest to the square root of 65?
Answer: 8
5. Which fraction is more significant, 6/15 or 6/17?
Answer: 6/15
6. If a car is traveling at 40 mph, how long will it take to go 190 miles?
Answer: 4 hours, 45 minutes
7. How many seconds make 1.5 hours?
Answer: 5400
8. If you need 1/2 cup of flour and you only have a 1/4 measuring cup, how many times do you need to use it to get the right amount of flour?
Answer: Two times
9. If a shopping cart contains one apple, two bananas, three oranges, and four hot dogs, what percentage of the cart’s total contents is fruit?
Answer: 60%
10. A farmer notices that every day for the past 10 days, the number of pigeons in his field has doubled. There are 1,024 pigeons in the field today, and there were two pigeons there the first day. How many pigeons were there yesterday?
Answer: 512
11. If a backyard is 50 feet long and 20 feet wide, how many square feet is the yard?
Answer: 1000 square feet
12. Which is bigger: 285 or 200 + 30 – 5 + 60?
Answer: They’re equal
13. How many hours and minutes are in 555 minutes?
Answer: 9 hours and 15 minutes
14. If an ice cream shop sells 102 ice cream cones a day at $3 each, how much money will they make in 5 days?
Answer: $1,503
15. If my closest neighbor lives 212 yards away from me, how many feet away does she live?
Answer: 636
16. How many teaspoons are in 5 tablespoons?
Answer: 15
17. How many grams are in a thousand kilograms?
Answer: 1,000,000
18. What is the smallest prime number?
Answer: 2
19. What is 20% of 200?
Answer: 40
20. How many sides are equal in an isosceles triangle?
Answer: Two
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? questions: English and literature category
Questions on English and literature on the show can be a lot of fun, but not when you come across questions in which you can no longer rely on simple context clues or your stock knowledge. There are just some questions in this category that are extra difficult to answer, making you regret dozing off or daydreaming through English class when you were in school.
Here are some questions on English and literature as seen on the show, together with their answers:
1. Which is the second book in the Harry Potter series?
Answer: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
2. In English, “lice” is the plural of what word?
Answer: Louse
3. How many compound words are in the following sentence? “Someone from the classroom was playing baseball in the cafeteria.”
Answer: Three
4. What is a hyperbole?
Answer: An exaggeration to show emphasis
5. In the sentence, “Sally is a very good person,” what part of speech is the word “very”?
Answer: Adverb
6. Who is the author of the 1960 novel about social and racial inequality, To Kill a Mockingbird?
Harper Lee
7. Who wrote The Little Mermaid originally?
Answer: Hans Christian Anderson
8. Name the first Chinese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Answer: Mo Yan
9. What would you call the central character of a story or plot?
Answer: Protagonist
10. What is the name of the book about a friendship between a spider and a pig named Wilbur?
Answer: Charlotte’s Web
11. What is it called when a character goes through a transformation journey in a story?
Answer: Character arc
12. What point of view is this sentence written in? “They went to the store.”
Answer: Third person
13. In the story about the boy who cried wolf, what is the lesson?
Answer: Always tell the truth.
14. How many syllables are in each line of a haiku?
Answer: Five, Seven, and Five
15. What is the name of a collection of classical stories related to religion or cultural traditions?
Answer: Mythology
16. Who wrote the famous play “Romeo and Juliet”?
Answer: William Shakespeare
17. In the word “unnecessary”, what is the prefix?
Answer: “Un”
18. What part of speech is the word “quickly”?
Answer: Adverb
19. What kind of figurative language does “She was as quick as a fox” use?
Answer: Simile
20. Who is the creator of the book characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn?
Answer: Mark Twain
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?: Social Studies and history category
You either listened to your history teacher and retained the information well or you didn’t. Naturally a vast subject, the questions on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? in the social studies and history category certainly get everyone racking their brains for facts and figures. Here are some of those questions with the answers:
1. Known as “The Conqueror,” what was the first name of the king who won the throne of England in 1066?
Answer: William
2. From which country did Mexico gain its independence in the 19th century?
Answer: Spain
3. What are the three branches of the United States government?
Answer: Legislative, judicial, and executive
4. Name the American president on the half-dollar coin who was assassinated in 1963.
Answer: John F. Kennedy
5. When did Thomas Alva Edison invent the light bulb?
Answer: 1879
6. What was the original name of the city that was renamed Constantinople in the fourth century AD by Constantine the Great?
Answer: Byzantium
7. The Hundred Years War of the 14th and 15th centuries was primarily a conflict between England and what other country?
Answer: France
8. The Great Sphinx in Egypt has the head of a man and the body of which species of animal?
Answer: Lion
9. Who was the 16th president of the United States?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln
10. How many amendments are in the Bill of Rights?
Answer: 10
11. What act did Britain impose on American colonists requiring taxes on various papers, documents, publications, and playing cards?
Answer: The Stamp Act
12. Who founded the Red Cross?
Answer: Clara Barton
13. If a lot of people want ice cream, but there isn’t enough, then____ is high, and ___ is low.
Answer: Demand, supply
14. What revolutionary leader wrote the influential “Common Sense” in 1776?
Answer: Thomas Paine
15. The stripes on the U.S. flag represent what?
Answer: The 13 original British colonies in early America
16. What was the name of the last Queen of France?
Answer: Marie Antoinette
17. In which decade did Hong Kong revert from British rule?
Answer: The 1990s
18. From whom did the United States buy territory in the Louisiana Purchase?
Answer: Napoleon/France
19. Who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean?
Answer: Amelia Earhart
20. What year did the United States land the first man on the moon?
Answer: 1969
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? questions: geography category
The geography questions on the show are for those who are experts in unearthing figures and bits and pieces of interesting facts about different places all over the globe. Definitely among the most difficult categories, the questions and answers listed below will help you prepare for the next game night:
1. Which state is Mount Rushmore located in?
Answer: South Dakota
2. What is the longest river in the world?
Answer: The Amazon
3. Imaginary lines traversing the globe from pole to pole are called ____.
Answer: Meridians
4. The United States and Mexico are separated by which river?
Answer: The Rio Grande
5. What country has the longest border with the United States?
Answer: Canada
6. Name the famous mountain range that has Mount Everest.
Answer: Himalayas
7. Which month does the autumnal equinox fall in the Northern Hemisphere?
Answer: September
8. Which continent is the least populated?
Answer: Antarctica
9. How many countries are in Africa?
Answer: 54
10. Which country is both an island and a continent?
Answer: Australia
11. In which country are the most languages spoken?
Answer: Papua New Guinea
12. What’s the largest and deepest ocean in the world?
Answer: Pacific Ocean
13. In what US city do the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet and form the Ohio River?
Answer: Pittsburgh
14. Budapest is the capital of what European country?
Answer: Hungary
15. What divides the earth into the Western and Eastern hemispheres?
Answer: The Prime Meridian
16. To travel from New York to London, you fly over which ocean?
Answer: The Atlantic Ocean
17. What is the main language spoken in the Canadian province of Quebec?
Answer: French
18. The mountain range that includes Mount Everest is called what?
Answer: The Himalayas
19. Which country is both an island and a continent?
Answer: Australia
20. Which country is the largest in size?
Answer: Russia
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? questions: science and computer category
If there’s something Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? does best, it’s banding adults and kids together with their love of the pursuit of knowledge. Science questions on the show are well-loved by most as these get everyone racking their noggins for the correct answers. Here are some questions for the science and computer whizzes, with the answers, of course:
1. What color in the visible light spectrum does chlorophyll absorb the least?
Answer: Green
2. What stores short-term memory programs and data in the computer system?
Answer: Random Access Memory
3. What is the largest internal organ in the human body?
Answer: The liver
4. What is the most abundant element in the universe?
Answer: Hydrogen
5. The Earth is at least how many billion years old?
Answer: 4 billion
6. What does USB stand for?
Answer: Universal Serial Bus
7. True or False: The platypus is a mammal.
Answer: True
8. What was the name of the first satellite pulled into orbit by the United States?
Answer: Explorer
9. What is the freezing point of water?
Answer: 32°F or 0°C
10. In which year was the first computer invented?
Answer: 1943
11. What is the name for the scientific study of traits passed down from parents to their children?
Answer: Genetics
12. The atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere are ecosystems part of the ___?
Answer: Biosphere
13. Color, density, volume, and mass are properties of
Answer: Matter
14. Solar energy, wind energy, hydro energy, tidal energy, geothermal energy, and biomass energy are examples of what kind of resources?
Answer: Renewable resources
15. Why do you often see lightning before you hear the thunder?
Answer: Light travels faster than sound
16. What is the closest planet to the sun?
Mercury
17. Animals without backbones are known as what?
Answer: Invertebrates
18. What species can live both in water and on land?
Answer: Amphibians
19. What are the three states of matter?
Answer: Solid, liquid, and gas
20. What is the thinnest layer of Earth called?
The mantle
The well-loved game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? continues to age well. The quiz show where adults are pitted against fifth-graders to test their academic prowess has been a household name for decades.
Isn’t it just so satisfying to still recall your academic knowledge and prove your memory to be among the best even years after school? Go ahead and put yourself to the test with family and friends with these questions, and you may just be surprised at how well the human brain works.