Famous People Named Dick
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40 free Famous People Named Dick trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For much of the twentieth century, Dick was a name you met everywhere: on cinema posters, on ballot papers, on the backs of football shirts and in the funny pages. It has since fallen out of fashion, which makes the famous Dicks of history a neatly closed set and a very good quiz. Every question here names its Dick and asks what he did. There are real ones, such as Dick Van Dyke, Dick Cheney, Dick Clark, Dick Fosbury and Dick Turpin, and invented ones, such as Dick Tracy, Dick Dastardly, Dick Grayson and Dick Whittington. A few borrow the name another way, from Moby-Dick to a well-loved British pudding. It suits a pub quiz round with a cheeky title, a party for the Dick in your life, or anyone who enjoys general knowledge with a theme. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still leaves you with a story.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Dick Van Dyke's much-mocked Cockney accent comes from playing Bert the chimney sweep in which Disney musical?
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins also gave Van Dyke a second, hidden part as the elderly chairman of the bank. A 2003 Empire magazine poll ranked his Cockney the second-worst accent in film.
Q 02Dick Cheney, who accidentally shot a fellow hunter on a 2006 quail hunt, was vice president to which US president?
George W. Bush
George W. Bush had put Cheney in charge of finding him a running mate, then chose Cheney himself. Cheney had earlier run the Pentagon as defense secretary for Bush's father.
Q 03Which coffee chain takes its name from the chief mate of the whaling ship in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick?
Starbucks
Starbucks came from a list of names beginning with st. The founders liked Starbo, an old mining town on a map, and that put them in mind of Melville's steady first officer.
Q 04Decca Records executive Dick Rowe is remembered for turning down which band after a January 1962 audition in London?
The Beatles
The Beatles lost out to Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, who auditioned the same day and lived closer to London. Rowe later signed the Rolling Stones on a tip from George Harrison.
Q 05Dick Fosbury won gold at the 1968 Olympics by going over the bar backwards in which track and field event?
High jump
High jump was never the same again: at the next Olympics, 28 of the 40 competitors copied his back-first style, by then known as the Fosbury flop.
Q 06Which Ridley Scott film is based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Blade Runner
Blade Runner reached cinemas less than four months after its author died. He had been shown a reel of early footage, though, and came away backing the film completely.
Q 07Which wheezing, snickering dog is the sidekick of villain Dick Dastardly in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races?
Muttley
Muttley laughs hardest when his master's schemes collapse, which is every time: the pair never win a single race. They later got their own spin-off about a squadron of flying machines.
Q 08Dick Grayson, a young circus acrobat taken in by Bruce Wayne, first fights crime under which superhero name?
Robin
Robin arrived in 1940, about a year after Batman, in a costume inspired by Robin Hood. Grayson outgrew the role in 1984 and became the adult hero Nightwing.
Q 09In English folklore, which animal makes the fortune of poor boy Dick Whittington, later Lord Mayor of London?
Cat
A cat is the hero of the tale: sold to a rat-infested country, it fetches a fortune. The real Whittington was a wealthy cloth merchant and moneylender who really did become Lord Mayor of London.
Q 10Dick Clark, nicknamed the world's oldest teenager, hosted which TV dance show for more than three decades?
American Bandstand
American Bandstand went out nationally from 1957 and introduced rock and roll to many viewers. Clark also produced a New Year's Eve special from Times Square that carried his name.
Q 11Dick Wolf created which NBC drama that splits each episode between police investigators and courtroom prosecutors?
Law & Order
Law & Order launched in 1990 and grew into a franchise of spin-offs, led by Special Victims Unit. Wolf had learned the trade as a staff writer on Hill Street Blues.
Q 12Dick York and Dick Sargent both played Darrin, the mortal husband of nose-twitching Samantha, on which 1960s sitcom?
Bewitched
Bewitched swapped one Dick for another in 1969: Sargent replaced an ailing York and played the part for the final three seasons, opposite Elizabeth Montgomery.
Q 13Which actor played Dick Solomon, the alien High Commander posing as a physics professor in 3rd Rock from the Sun?
John Lithgow
Q 21Dick Fuld, nicknamed the Gorilla, was the last chief executive of which investment bank, bankrupt in September 2008?
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers went down with more than $600 billion in assets, the largest bankruptcy filing the United States had seen. Under Fuld it had posted 14 straight years of profit.
Q 22Dick Butkus, namesake of the award for football's best linebacker, spent his entire NFL career with which team?
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears took him third overall in 1965, beating the Denver Broncos of the rival AFL, who had drafted him too. He stayed until 1973.
Q 23Which actor directed the 1990 film Dick Tracy and starred as the comic-strip cop in the yellow overcoat?
Warren Beatty
John Lithgow won three Emmy Awards for the part. His eldest son Ian was in the cast too, playing Leon, one of the professor's less successful students.
Q 14In which TV drama does advertising executive Don Draper hide the fact that he was born Dick Whitman?
Mad Men
Mad Men reveals the secret in flashbacks: Whitman swapped dog tags with a lieutenant killed beside him in the Korean War and came home under the officer's name.
Q 15Major Dick Winters led Easy Company, the American paratroopers followed in which HBO World War II miniseries?
Band of Brothers
Band of Brothers, created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, cast Damian Lewis as Winters. It follows the company from parachute training to the end of the war in Europe.
Q 16Dick Dale's surf-guitar version of Misirlou plays over the opening credits of which Quentin Tarantino film?
Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction took the 1962 recording to a new audience. Dale was left-handed and played a right-handed guitar upside down, without restringing it.
Q 17Dick Scobee was the commander of which Space Shuttle when it was lost shortly after launch in January 1986?
Challenger
Challenger had already carried Scobee into orbit once: he was its pilot on a 1984 mission that deployed one satellite and repaired another.
Q 18Hotel chef Dick Hallorann shares a telepathic gift with a young boy named Danny in which Stephen King novel?
The Shining
The Shining is named for the psychic gift, which Hallorann calls shining. In Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film he is played by the musician and actor Scatman Crothers.
Q 19In hard-boiled crime fiction, the slang word dick, as in a private dick, means a person doing which job?
Detective
Detective is the sense behind the W. C. Fields comedy The Bank Dick, about a drunk hired to guard a bank after foiling a robbery by accident. British cinemas showed it as The Bank Detective.
Q 20Dick Button won two Olympic golds, the second as a Harvard student, then became a television analyst for which sport?
Figure skating
Figure skating had never seen a triple in competition until Button landed a triple loop at the 1952 Games. Four years earlier, aged 18, he had become the sport's youngest male Olympic champion.
Warren Beatty produced the film too, after directors including Steven Spielberg had come and gone. Al Pacino played crime boss Big Boy Caprice and Dustin Hoffman a henchman called Mumbles.
Q 24Spotted dick, the British steamed pudding dotted with currants or raisins, is traditionally made with which fat?
Suet
Suet is the hard fat found around the kidneys and loins of cattle and sheep. It also goes into jam roly-poly and Christmas pudding, and spotted dick usually arrives with custard.
Q 25Dick Hoyt pushed his son Rick, who had cerebral palsy, in a wheelchair through 32 runnings of which marathon?
Boston
Boston's starting line gained a bronze statue of the pair in 2013. They also finished Ironman triathlons, with Dick towing Rick in a boat through the swim.
Q 26Dutch artist Dick Bruna drew which simple storybook rabbit in 1955 after watching a real one on a family holiday?
Miffy
Miffy is Nijntje in Dutch, the way a small child might say the word for little rabbit. Bruna said the Japanese character Hello Kitty was copied from her.
Q 27Dick King-Smith's novel The Sheep-Pig, about a piglet that learns to herd sheep, became which 1995 film?
Babe
Babe earned seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. King-Smith knew his subject: he had been a farmer for 20 years before turning to teaching and then to writing.
Q 28Dick Ebersol, later chairman of NBC Sports, recruited Lorne Michaels in 1975 to create which sketch comedy show?
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live got Ebersol back as executive producer from 1981 to 1985, the years of Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal. He went on to produce NBC's Olympic broadcasts.
Q 29Dick Martin and Dan Rowan hosted which rapid-fire NBC sketch show that featured a young Goldie Hawn?
Laugh-In
Laugh-In began as a one-off special in 1967 and did so well that NBC brought it back as a weekly series, taking the slot of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Q 30Thriller writer Dick Francis was the jockey on Devon Loch when the horse fell close to winning which 1956 race?
Grand National
The Grand National slipped away from the Queen Mother, who owned Devon Loch. Francis turned to writing and produced more than forty bestselling crime novels set in the racing world.