Run this live with your team

Everyone answers on their phone, you control each question, live scores and a podium. £5 includes five rounds; add up to five more for £1 each.

Hard words and language quiz

A challenger round for word nerds. Spelling bees were just the warm-up.

Free to use with your own team, courtesy of WorkplaceHero - workplacehero.co.uk

Question sheet

1. What is a group of crows called?
- A. A parliament
- B. A murder
- C. A conspiracy
- D. An unkindness
2. What does 'sesquipedalian' describe?
- A. Using long words
- B. A fear of feet
- C. Half a century
- D. A type of poem
3. What is an interrobang?
- A. A combined ? and !
- B. A double hyphen
- C. An upside-down comma
- D. A sideways semicolon
4. The word 'robot' comes from which language?
- A. German
- B. Russian
- C. Czech
- D. Polish
5. Which plural of 'octopus' follows its Greek origin?
- A. Octopi
- B. Octopodes
- C. Octopae
- D. Octopuses
6. What is the dot over a lowercase i called?
- A. A tittle
- B. A jot
- C. A serif
- D. A kern
7. The word 'quarantine' comes from the Italian for which number?
- A. Fourteen
- B. Twenty
- C. Forty
- D. Ninety
8. What is 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' an example of?
- A. A palindrome
- B. A pangram
- C. An anagram
- D. A lipogram
9. Which word means a fear of long words?
- A. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
- B. Arachibutyrophobia
- C. Triskaidekaphobia
- D. Logophobia
10. In Middle English, the word 'nice' originally meant what?
- A. Foolish
- B. Kind
- C. Wealthy
- D. Tidy
11. What does the abbreviation 'e.g.' stand for?
- A. Exempli gratia
- B. Ergo generalis
- C. Et gratia
- D. Exemplum generale
12. What do you call words that sound the same but are spelled differently, like pair and pear?
- A. Homographs
- B. Homophones
- C. Synonyms
- D. Antonyms

Team answer sheet

Team name

Date

Write the letter or your answer beside each question.

Total score / 12

1. B - A murder
A parliament is owls and an unkindness is ravens.
2. A - Using long words
It comes from Latin for 'a foot and a half long'.
3. A - A combined ? and !
It was invented by an American advertising executive in 1962.
4. C - Czech
It was coined for Karel Čapek's 1920 play R.U.R.
5. B - Octopodes
Octopuses is the standard plural; octopi wrongly treats the word as Latin.
6. A - A tittle
Hence the old phrase 'every jot and tittle', meaning every last detail.
7. C - Forty
Ships in Venice had to wait quaranta giorni, forty days, before landing.
8. B - A pangram
A pangram uses every letter of the alphabet.
9. A - Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
Cruelly, it is one of the longest words in the dictionary.
10. A - Foolish
It comes from the Latin nescius, meaning ignorant.
11. A - Exempli gratia
It means 'for the sake of example'; i.e. is id est, 'that is'.
12. B - Homophones
Homographs are spelled the same but may sound different, like lead and lead.