Fears, panics and dark myths
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Fears, Panics and Dark Myths — Daily trivia Thursday, October 8, 2026: questions and answers
All 10 questions with answers and explanations. Play this daily
Q 01Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is a fear of what?
- ALong words
- BHippopotamuses
- CMonsters
- DPublic speaking
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Long words
Long words. The joke name inflates sesquipedalian, Latin for 'a foot and a half long', with hippopotamus and monster, just to make itself longer.
Q 02Coulrophobia is the fear of which performers, like Pennywise in Stephen King's It?
- AMimes
- BMagicians
- CClowns
- DAcrobats
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Clowns
Clowns. Despite its Greek look, the word was probably coined only in the late 1980s or 1990s, and it spread through phobia lists online.
Q 03James Stewart's detective has acrophobia, a fear of heights, in which Hitchcock film?
- ARear Window
- BVertigo
- CNorth by Northwest
- DPsycho
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Vertigo
Vertigo. To put Scottie's dizziness on screen, cameraman Irmin Roberts combined a zoom with a camera move in the opposite direction, now called the Vertigo effect.
Q 04Which storybook pirate lives in dread of the crocodile that swallowed a ticking clock?
- ALong John Silver
- BBlackbeard
- CJack Sparrow
- DCaptain Hook
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Captain Hook
Captain Hook. Peter Pan gave the crocodile its taste for him, and it has chased him from sea to sea ever since.
Q 05Charles Darwin put his face close to a zoo's glass, determined to hold still, yet leapt back when which animal struck?
- AA tiger
- BA puff adder
- CA scorpion
- DA gorilla
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A puff adder
A puff adder. He jumped back a yard or two, and wrote that his will and reason were powerless against an imagined danger.
Q 06Safety coffins let people buried alive ring a bell, but where does 'saved by the bell' really come from?
- AChurch services
- BFire stations
- CStock exchanges
- DBoxing
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Boxing
Boxing, where a fighter being counted out is saved when the bell ends the round. Bell-rigged safety coffins were designed, but no one is documented as saved by one.
Q 07Arachnophobia shares its root with Arachne. Which goddess turned that flawless weaver into a spider?
- AAthena
- BHera
- CAphrodite
- DArtemis
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Athena
Athena. Finding no flaw, she shredded the tapestry and beat Arachne with her shuttle; when Arachne took her own life, the goddess pitied her and made her a spider.
Q 08No one convicted in the Salem witch trials was burned. How were most executed?
- ADrowning
- BBeheading
- CHanging
- DStoning
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Hanging
Hanging, the penalty for witchcraft across England and its colonies. Giles Corey, who refused to enter a plea, was pressed to death under heavy stones.
Q 09Anatidaephobia, the fear of being watched by a duck, was coined in which comic?
- AThe Far Side
- BCalvin and Hobbes
- CPeanuts
- DGarfield
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The Far Side
The Far Side. Thanking Gary Larson for his jokes about nature, a biologist named a chewing louse that lives on owls after him.
Q 10Fearing vampires, New England families burned their dead relatives' hearts. What was really killing them?
- ACholera
- BSmallpox
- CTyphoid
- DTuberculosis
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Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, which slowly wasted one relative after another. In 1892 Mercy Brown's family burned her heart and gave the ashes, in water, to her sick brother to drink.
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