Freemasons Trivia
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99 free Freemasons trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Freemasons trivia is harder than the conspiracy theories make it look, because the real story is a tangle of rival Grand Lodges, medieval charters, Enlightenment salons and a great deal of committee business. This quiz sticks to what is documented: the three Craft degrees and their tools, the Tyler at the door, the Volume of Sacred Law, the 1717 dinner in London that started the first Grand Lodge, the Antients and Moderns who fought for sixty years before uniting in 1813, and the lodge in Edinburgh with minutes going back to 1598. It also covers the wider world: Prince Hall and African Lodge No. 459, George Washington's inauguration Bible, the Grand Orient de France dropping the requirement to believe in God in 1877, the papal bull of 1738 that still stands, William Morgan's disappearance and the Anti-Masonic Party that held America's first presidential nominating convention, Mussolini's ban, the Scottish Rite's 33 degrees, the Art Deco Freemasons' Hall in Covent Garden, and famous members from Mozart to Bolívar. Easy questions suit anyone who has noticed a square and compasses on a building; the expert tier assumes you know which body meets at Mark Masons' Hall. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Freemasonry, the Anti-Masonic Party and related pages, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
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Q 01What did 'lodge' first mean to medieval stonemasons?
A workshop
A workshop: the lodge was the masons' hut put up beside a big building job, and the word later passed to the group of men who worked there.
Q 02What is Craft Freemasonry's third and highest degree called?
Master Mason
Master Mason: there is no higher degree in Freemasonry, so the many numbered degrees of bodies like the Scottish Rite count as further teaching, not promotion.
Q 03What is the first degree a candidate receives in Freemasonry?
Entered Apprentice
Entered Apprentice is the first of three steps, and each step has its own secret grip and password so that Masons can tell how far another member has gone.
Q 04A Mason is 'initiated' into the first degree, 'passed' to the second, and what to the third?
Raised
Raised comes from the third degree's drama, in which the body of a murdered master builder is lifted from a makeshift grave; the ceremony acts the story out.
Q 05What is the officer called who stands guard outside the door of a working lodge?
The Tyler
The Tyler stands outside with a drawn sword to keep off 'cowans and eavesdroppers', and a lodge whose door is secured is still said to be tyled.
Q 06What is the formal dinner sometimes held after a lodge meeting called?
The festive board
The festive board runs to a set round of toasts and sometimes song; early lodges met in taverns and alehouses, so dining together was part of Masonry from the start.
Q 07What is the most widely recognised emblem of Freemasonry?
The square and compasses
The square and compasses are builders' tools given moral jobs: an 1866 ritual says the square is 'to square our actions' and the compasses to keep Masons 'within bounds with all mankind'.
Q 08In English-speaking countries the Masonic emblem often carries which letter at its centre?
G
G is most often said to stand for God, while the second-degree ritual calls it the initial of Geometry, the science on which Masonry claims to be built.
Q 09Freemasonry describes itself as a 'beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by' what?
Symbols
Symbols: a lodge's rough ashlar, a stone straight from the quarry, stands for the untaught man, and its smooth ashlar for the same man improved by education.
Q 10The Craft degree ceremonies revolve around the building of which structure?
The Temple of Solomon
The Temple of Solomon: most lodge rooms still set up two pillars named Boaz and Jachin, after the bronze columns the Bible puts at the Temple's porch.
Q 11Which legendary chief architect's death is the subject of the Masonic third-degree ritual?
Hiram Abiff
Hiram Abiff is ambushed in the legend by three workmen who demand the master's secrets; he refuses each in turn and is killed, a lesson in loyalty.
Q 12In most lodges, on what is the Masonic oath taken?
A Volume of Sacred Law
A Volume of Sacred Law means whichever scripture the candidate holds sacred, so a lodge whose members follow several faiths may have more than one book open.
Q 13What are the painted depictions used in some lodges to illustrate the themes of each degree called?
Tracing boards
Tracing boards replaced designs once chalked on the lodge-room floor and mopped away after each meeting; painted cloths, then boards, saved the redrawing.
Q 21The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is a system of how many degrees?
33
33 degrees, counting the three Craft ones every Mason takes first; the last is an honour that cannot be applied for, only bestowed by a Supreme Council.
Q 22In America, the York Rite administers the Royal Arch, Cryptic Masonry and which knightly order?
Knights Templar
Knights Templar: America's York Rite strings the three orders into one ladder, while in Britain each answers to its own governing body, the Templars to a Great Priory.
Q 23Unlike most Freemasonry, the Swedish Rite of the Nordic countries requires what of every member?
Christian faith
Christian faith: men of other faiths, welcome in lodges elsewhere, cannot join. King Charles XIII, who shaped the rite as Grand Master, founded a royal order of chivalry reserved for its senior members.
Q 14Which Saint John's feast day saw the first Grand Lodge founded?
John the Baptist
John the Baptist's feast, 24 June, is still St John's Day to Masons; fittingly, the rival English Grand Lodges later merged on 27 December, the feast of John the Evangelist.
Q 15The rival 1751 Grand Lodge, the 'Antients', coined which insulting label for the original body?
The Moderns
The Moderns were in fact the older body: the 'Antients', formed in 1751, claimed to keep the old customs and pinned the taunt on the Grand Lodge of 1717.
Q 16England's rival Grand Lodges merged in 1813 under sons of which king?
George III
George III: two of his sons headed the rival bodies, and one of them, the Duke of Sussex, went on to lead the merged Grand Lodge for thirty years.
Q 17Which Scottish city's Mary's Chapel lodge holds minutes from 1599, the oldest of any Masonic lodge still meeting?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh's lodge began as a body of working stonemasons and slowly took in gentlemen who never cut stone, the shift that turned a trade into the Freemasonry of today.
Q 18The Regius Poem, the oldest Masonic manuscript, says which Greek mathematician founded the craft in Egypt?
Euclid
Euclid, in the poem's telling, devised masonry as honest work for the sons of Egyptian nobles; the rhyming text then carries the craft to England under King Athelstan.
Q 19After England's in 1717, which two countries founded Grand Lodges in 1725 and 1736?
Ireland and Scotland
Ireland and Scotland: with England's, theirs are the three Grand Lodges from which regular lodges around the world descend, though many Scottish lodges held aloof for years.
Q 20As of 2025, which body is the world's largest single Masonic jurisdiction by membership?
The United Grand Lodge of England
The United Grand Lodge of England counts about 170,000 members; no American body comes close, because the United States has no national Grand Lodge, only one for each state.
Q 24Which royal was installed as Grand Master of English Craft Masonry in 1967?
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent was installed at the Royal Albert Hall during Grand Lodge's 250th-anniversary celebrations, and fifty years later he presided there again over its 300th.
Q 25Which French philosopher was initiated into the Paris lodge of the Nine Sisters in 1778, weeks before he died?
Voltaire
Voltaire was 83 when he joined Les Neuf Soeurs that April, and he died in May; Benjamin Franklin, then America's envoy in Paris, went on to head the lodge.
Q 26Which composer joined a Vienna lodge in 1784 and wrote music for Masonic ceremonies?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart joined the lodge 'Beneficence' that December, and his opera The Magic Flute, written with a fellow Mason, plays out a quest for enlightenment in Masonic imagery.
Q 27As Emperor of the French, whom did Napoleon select as Grand Master of France?
His own brother
His own brother Joseph, later King of Naples and then of Spain, took the title in 1804, while the lawyer Cambacérès did the real work of running the Grand Orient.
Q 28The Duke of Orléans, Grand Master when the Grand Orient de France was formed in 1773, later voted for whose execution?
King Louis XVI
King Louis XVI was the duke's own cousin; renamed Philippe Égalité, the Grand Master backed the Revolution, cast his vote for death in January 1793 and was guillotined himself that November.
Q 29In 1877 the Grand Orient de France dropped which requirement, losing English Grand Lodge recognition?
Belief in the existence of God
Belief in the existence of God went in 1877 at the urging of a Protestant pastor, Frédéric Desmons; the new constitution promised 'absolute liberty of conscience' instead.
Q 30Which US Grand Lodge withdrew recognition after the Grand Orient de France opened Masonry to all races in 1869?
Louisiana
The dispute began when a Scottish Rite Supreme Council in that state admitted Black members.