Harry Houdini Trivia
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48 free Harry Houdini trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Harry Houdini built his legend so carefully that half of what people know about him is wrong, and this quiz sorts the record from the myth. It starts with the boy born Erik Weisz in Budapest who claimed Appleton, Wisconsin, the trapeze act at nine, the French magician he named himself after and later attacked in print, his brother Dash and the girl they both courted. Then the rise: Martin Beck and the Orpheum circuit, the Handcuff King challenging police across Europe, a Siberian prison van in Moscow, a libel suit in Cologne, and the Daily Mirror cuffs of 1904 that may or may not have needed a kiss from Bess. The great escapes follow: the milk can, the Upside Down that posters called the Chinese Water Torture Cell, straitjackets dangling from cranes, a whale's belly in Boston, a vanished elephant at the Hippodrome, plus the sideline as Australia's first aviator and a run of silent films. The last stretch covers the war on spiritualists that cost him Conan Doyle's friendship, the casket in a hotel pool, the punch in Montreal, peritonitis in Detroit, the bronze coffin, the code word Rosabelle and the ten Halloween séances. Easy questions suit anyone who has heard the name; the expert tier reaches Werner Graff, the Voisin biplane and the will that ordered his props burned. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on Houdini, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under what name was Harry Houdini born on March 24, 1874?
Erik Weisz
Erik Weisz became Ehrich Weiss once the family reached America, where the surname was respelled. 'Ehrie', his family nickname, is the likeliest root of 'Harry'.
Q 02In which city was Houdini born?
Budapest
Budapest was not the answer he gave: once famous, he told the public he had been born in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his family settled when he was four.
Q 03What was the profession of Houdini's father when the family settled in Appleton, Wisconsin?
Rabbi
Rabbi of a small Reform congregation, he lost the post after about four years, and the family slid into poverty in Milwaukee.
Q 04Billed as 'the Prince of the Air', nine-year-old Houdini made his first public appearance as what?
A trapeze artist
A trapeze artist, but not under any big top: the 'circus' was a neighbourhood show that the boy and his friends staged themselves.
Q 05How did the teenage Houdini come to idolise the French magician Robert-Houdin?
He read his memoirs
He read his memoirs: Robert-Houdin, a clockmaker turned conjurer now called the father of modern magic, had died before Houdini was born. The teenager added an 'i' to the name and made it his own.
Q 06In 1917 Houdini coaxed which retired magician, a fellow Harry he admired, back on stage for a war benefit?
Harry Kellar
Harry Kellar, long the dean of American magicians, had retired in 1908. Houdini drew him out for one last show at the Hippodrome, staged for families of men lost when a U-boat sank the transport Antilles.
Q 07In Metamorphosis, the trunk illusion that first won the Houdinis notice, what happened in an instant?
The performers swapped places
The performers swapped places: Houdini was tied in a sack and locked in the trunk, and moments later stood free while Bess was found bound inside. His brother Dash had partnered him in it before her.
Q 08By the account biographers accept, where were Houdini and Bess both performing when they met in 1894?
Coney Island
Coney Island had Bess singing and dancing with the Floral Sisters while Harry did magic nearby. His brother courted her first, but she married Harry after about three weeks.
Q 09What advice from manager Martin Beck in 1899 turned the struggling Houdini into a star?
Drop the magic
Drop the magic was the gist: Beck, who tested him with his own cuffs in a St. Paul beer hall, told him to build the act on escapes. Within months Houdini was playing the country's top vaudeville houses.
Q 10Under which billing did Houdini dare police forces across Europe to keep him locked up?
The Handcuff King
The Handcuff King let officers strip and search him, then lock him in their own irons and cells. Each escape was free advertising for his show in that city.
Q 11In Moscow, Houdini claimed to escape from what, saying that failure would have meant a trip to Siberia?
A prison transport van
A prison transport van, a locked cell on wheels that carried convicts to Siberia. By his account the only key was kept at the far end of the journey, so failing meant riding all the way to be let out.
Q 12Houdini sued a Cologne policeman for slander in 1902 over which claim?
That he made his escapes by bribery
That he made his escapes by bribery was the policeman's story. In court Houdini slipped a police chain in front of the judges, then opened the officer's own trick lock, and won.
Q 13Which London newspaper challenged Houdini in 1904 to escape handcuffs said to have taken five years to make?
Q 21In March 1910 Houdini was hailed as the first person to make a controlled powered flight in which country?
Australia
Australia was the record he shipped his own plane halfway round the world for: nine witnesses signed a statement after he flew near Melbourne. After the tour he put the plane into storage in England.
Q 22Which horror writer ghostwrote 'Imprisoned with the Pharaohs', a 1924 Weird Tales story published under Houdini's name?
H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft took the job for a fee and no byline. Houdini liked the tale enough to hire him again, for a book attacking superstition that was left unfinished when the magician died.
Q 23Houdini's 1918 serial The Master Mystery is remembered for one of the screen's earliest what?
Robots
The Daily Mirror
The Daily Mirror's man refused to unlock him so that he could take off his coat, so Houdini opened a penknife with his teeth and slashed the coat from his back. He was free after a little over an hour.
Q 14One story of Houdini's hour-long 1904 London handcuff ordeal has his wife Bess slip him the key in what?
A glass of water
A glass of water is magic dealer Will Goldston's version, in which a beaten Houdini sent Bess to beg the key. Biographers doubt it, since the key was six inches long.
Q 15In 1908 Houdini retired his handcuff act and introduced an escape from what?
A locked, water-filled milk can
A locked, water-filled milk can came with posters warning 'Failure Means a Drowning Death', and he invited the audience to hold their breath along with him.
Q 16In which city's Circus Busch did Houdini give the Chinese Water Torture Cell its first public performance, in 1912?
Berlin
Berlin saw it first, though the cell was built in England, where Houdini had already staged the escape as a one-act play purely to copyright it against imitators.
Q 17What did Houdini himself always call the Chinese Water Torture Cell?
The Upside Down
The Upside Down, or USD for short, was his name for being lowered head first with his feet locked in stocks. In the earliest version he was shut inside a steel cage within the tank as well.
Q 18In one of his best-known outdoor stunts, Houdini escaped a straitjacket while doing what?
Dangling by his ankles
Dangling by his ankles from a tall building or a crane, he often chose a newspaper's own offices to be sure of the coverage. Crowds of tens of thousands brought traffic to a halt.
Q 19Why did Houdini stop performing his straitjacket escape behind curtains?
Audiences preferred watching him struggle
Audiences preferred watching him struggle, a lesson his brother Dash learned first by doing the escape in full view. Houdini dropped the curtain and made the fight to get free the act.
Q 20At the New York Hippodrome in 1918, one of Houdini's most famous illusions made what disappear?
A full-grown elephant
A full-grown elephant named Jennie was led into a huge cabinet, and when its doors dropped open she was gone. The idea came by way of a fellow magician, Charles Morritt.
Robots reached the screen early here: the villains' enforcer is a metal man called the Automaton. The 15-part serial did well enough to win Houdini a Hollywood contract.
Q 24What real accident during filming became the climax of Houdini's 1919 feature The Grim Game?
Two planes colliding mid-air
Two planes colliding mid-air was no stunt: the crash was unplanned, nobody died, and the footage went into the film. The ads said Houdini was the man dangling from the rope, but it was a double, Robert Kennedy.
Q 25Houdini's crusade against mediums cost him his friendship with which spiritualist author?
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle would not accept a single exposé. He decided instead that Houdini was himself a powerful medium, doing his escapes by psychic force and refusing to admit it.
Q 26Possibly the most famous medium Houdini debunked was Mina Crandon, better known as what?
Margery
Margery, a Boston surgeon's wife, came close to winning a magazine's prize for genuine mediums. Houdini had her shut in a cabinet with only her head and hands free, and the committee turned her down.
Q 27Which magazine's committee, offering a cash prize to any genuine medium, included Houdini?
Scientific American
Scientific American never paid out. As his fame as a medium-buster grew, Houdini took to attending séances in disguise, with a reporter and a police officer in tow.
Q 28Houdini served as president of which organisation from 1917 until his death?
The Society of American Magicians
The Society of American Magicians broke a wand in his memory after his death in 1926, the first ceremony of its kind, and made it a yearly rite at his grave.
Q 29What did Houdini say kept him alive for an hour and a half in a sealed coffin under water in 1926?
Controlled breathing
Controlled breathing was his whole answer to Rahman Bey, a fakir who credited a trance for an hour in a sunken coffin. Houdini beat the time by half an hour and insisted there was no trick to it.
Q 30How was Houdini buried in his near-fatal California stunt?
Without a casket, in a six-foot pit
Without a casket, in a six-foot pit, he tired and called for help. When a hand broke the surface his assistants hauled him out unconscious; the weight of the earth, he noted, was killing.