Currencies that are edible
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Currencies That Are Edible — Daily trivia Saturday, March 7, 2026: questions and answers
All 10 questions with answers and explanations. Play this daily
Q 01Which English word for a regular payment for work derives from the Latin word for salt?
- AWage
- BSalary
- CStipend
- DCommission
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Salary
Salary, from Latin salarium. The popular claim that Roman soldiers were paid in salt is unproven, though the link lives on in 'worth your salt'.
Q 02Ancient Egyptian pyramid builders received daily rations of bread and which other staple?
- AWine
- BHoney
- CMilk
- DBeer
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Beer
Beer. Records suggest Giza's pyramid builders drew about four litres a day, and modern brews made from the ancient recipe reach around 5% alcohol.
Q 03Which beans did Aztec shoppers spend as small change, paying 30 for a small rabbit?
- ABlack beans
- BCoffee beans
- CCacao beans
- DVanilla beans
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Cacao beans
Cacao beans. A 1545 price list valued a large tomato at one bean and a turkey hen at a hundred.
Q 04Samurai pay in feudal Japan was measured in koku, a year's supply for one person of which food?
- AWheat
- BRice
- CBarley
- DMillet
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Rice
Rice. A lord needed lands assessed at 10,000 koku to rank as a daimyo, and the Maeda clan's Kaga was nicknamed the 'million-koku domain'.
Q 05Which spice was so valuable in the Middle Ages that landlords accepted it as rent?
- ACinnamon
- BSaffron
- CCloves
- DBlack pepper
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Black pepper
Black pepper. Rent once paid in pepper gave English law the 'peppercorn rent', now a token sum, and Alaric the Visigoth demanded 3,000 pounds of it from Rome.
Q 06Compressed bricks of which beverage were used as currency across China, Tibet, Mongolia and Siberia?
- ATea
- BCoffee
- CYerba mate
- DKava
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Tea
Tea. Bricks bound with flour, blood or manure could survive handling as cash, and Mongolian and Siberian nomads preferred them to metal coins.
Q 07Bars of what, called 'amole', served as money in Ethiopia into the 20th century?
- ASaltpetre
- BSugar
- CSalt
- DChalk
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Salt
Salt. The bars were cut in the Danakil Depression, one of the hottest places on Earth, and circulated as far south as Lake Zway.
Q 08Osaka's Dojima Rice Exchange is widely recognized as the world's first what?
- ACentral bank
- BStock exchange
- CFutures market
- DInsurance company
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Futures market
Futures market. Samurai drew their pay in rice, and merchants at Dojima traded contracts on rice for future delivery.
Q 09Run Island, which the Dutch gained in the Treaty of Breda, was valuable for producing which spice?
- ANutmeg
- BCinnamon
- CCloves
- DCardamom
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Nutmeg
Nutmeg. The same treaty let England keep Manhattan, so the Dutch effectively traded the future New York for a nutmeg island.
Q 10Which seed's dough did Aztec cacao fraudsters stuff into empty bean hulls, per the Florentine Codex?
- AMaize
- BAmaranth
- CChia
- DSquash
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Amaranth
Amaranth. Swindlers emptied cacao shells and refilled them with amaranth dough, wax or avocado pits to pass off as money.
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