Magic Trivia
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109 free Magic trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
60 free magic trivia questions with answers. Stage magic has a history as strange as any trick. This quiz covers it from the Roman cups and balls and Reginald Scot's 1584 exposé to Robert-Houdin's orange tree, Houdini's water torture cell and Australian flight, Chung Ling Soo's fatal bullet catch, the first sawing of a woman in half, and the modern giants: David Copperfield vanishing the Statue of Liberty, Penn & Teller at the Rio, David Blaine's endurance stunts, Siegfried & Roy at the Mirage, Doug Henning, Ricky Jay, Criss Angel and the Magic Castle's talking owl. Easy questions ask which monument Copperfield vanished and where Penn & Teller perform. The hard ones want Copperfield's birth name, the newspaper behind the Indian rope trick hoax, and the code word Houdini left his wife. It suits a family quiz night or a round for a pub full of sceptics. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the magicians, illusions and venues, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Canadian city did a student punch Houdini in the stomach, days before his death in 1926?
Montreal
Montreal: McGill student J. Gordon Whitehead struck him in his dressing room. Houdini performed on in pain and died days later in Detroit of a ruptured appendix, though whether the blows caused it is still debated.
Q 02In which city was Houdini born?
Budapest
Budapest, though as a star Houdini claimed he was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his family settled when he was four; his Hungarian birth was not made public until after his death.
Q 03What escape did Houdini introduce at the Circus Busch in Berlin in 1912?
The Chinese Water Torture Cell
The Chinese Water Torture Cell replaced his Milk Can act, which too many imitators had copied: with his ankles locked in stocks, he was lowered head-first into a glass-fronted tank of water.
Q 04Which London newspaper challenged Houdini in 1904 with handcuffs said to have taken five years to make?
The Daily Mirror
The Daily Mirror said a Birmingham locksmith had spent five years on the cuffs. Houdini fought for over an hour before the crowd carried him off in triumph, though biographers suspect he arranged the challenge himself.
Q 05Houdini is often credited as the first person to do what in Australia, in 1910?
Fly a powered aircraft
Fly a powered aircraft: he coaxed a French Voisin biplane into three short flights at Diggers Rest, Victoria, though a brief hop by Colin Defries months earlier has a rival claim to the record.
Q 06Which animal did Houdini famously make vanish on stage at the New York Hippodrome in 1918?
An elephant
An elephant named Jennie walked into a huge cabinet and was gone when it was opened. Houdini had the method from British inventor Charles Morritt, who adapted it from his own disappearing donkey.
Q 07Houdini died in a Detroit hospital in 1926 on which holiday?
Halloween
Halloween. He died on October 31, 1926, of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix; his widow Bess tried to reach him at a seance on each anniversary for ten years, then gave up.
Q 08What secret code did Houdini agree with his wife Bess to prove communication from beyond the grave?
'Rosabelle believe'
'Rosabelle believe' drew on a song Bess sang in her act when they met. A medium claimed to deliver the code in 1929, but Bess later said the sitting was faked and ended her yearly seances in 1936.
Q 09Houdini's crusade against fake mediums cost him his friendship with which famous author?
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the coldly logical Sherlock Holmes, was a leading spiritualist. The rift opened in 1922, when his wife claimed at a seance to reach Houdini's dead mother and Houdini was not convinced.
Q 10Houdini served as president of which organisation from 1917 until his death?
The Society of American Magicians
The Society of American Magicians grew from a New York club into a national network under Houdini. A bust on his grave in Queens was smashed or stolen four times before the society gave up replacing it.
Q 11Which train gave its name to the 1991 TV special in which David Copperfield made a railway carriage vanish?
The Orient Express
The Orient Express. In 'Mystery on the Orient Express' the carriage did not simply disappear: Copperfield first made it float into the air, and it vanished there.
Q 12Which monument did David Copperfield make disappear on live television in April 1983?
The Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty: he raised a curtain before tourists seated on Liberty Island and lowered it on empty sky, then told viewers he wanted them to imagine a world without liberty.
Q 13Which famous structure did Copperfield appear to walk through in 1986?
Q 21At which Las Vegas hotel have Penn & Teller performed since 2001?
The Rio
They are the longest-running headliners at the same hotel in Las Vegas history.
Q 22Which card do Penn & Teller force on spectators in nearly all their card tricks?
The Three of Clubs
The Three of Clubs keeps turning up for a practical reason: the pair say they chose it mainly because it is a card that can be read easily on a television camera.
Q 23What was the name of Penn & Teller's Showtime series that debunked psychics and pseudoscience?
Bullshit!
Bullshit! was a title chosen with lawyers in mind: Penn told viewers that calling people liars and quacks could get the show sued, while that word, oddly, was legally safe.
The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China: Copperfield staged such one-off landmark stunts to draw viewers to his annual TV specials, and followed this one a year later with an escape from Alcatraz.
Q 14In Copperfield's Death Saw illusion, who ends up strapped beneath the descending blade?
The magician himself
The magician himself: the illusion is staged as an escape gone wrong, in which a giant rotary blade comes down before Copperfield can free himself and seems to cut him in two.
Q 15Copperfield owns Musha Cay, a private island resort in which country?
The Bahamas
The Bahamas: he bought Musha Cay and its neighbouring islands in 2006, renamed them the Islands of Copperfield Bay, and claimed that one of them hides the fountain of youth.
Q 16Over which natural landmark did David Copperfield appear to fly in a 1984 TV special?
The Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon. That flight was made for television, but by 1992 he was flying live on stage, with hoops passed around him to rule out wires and a volunteer carried in his arms.
Q 17Which supermodel was engaged to Copperfield in the 1990s and appeared in his act?
Claudia Schiffer
Claudia Schiffer met him in 1993 when he picked her out of the audience at a Berlin show. Paris Match later called the romance a paid publicity stunt, and the couple sued the magazine.
Q 18David Copperfield founded Project Magic in 1982 to teach sleight of hand to whom?
Hospital patients
Hospital patients: therapists use the tricks as physical therapy, because practising sleight of hand rebuilds dexterity in hands weakened by injury or illness.
Q 19Copperfield's magic secrets were etched in nickel on an archive that crash-landed where in 2019?
The Moon
The Moon: the secrets rode in the Arch Mission Foundation's 'lunar library' aboard Israel's Beresheet lander, which crashed on its descent, though the near-indestructible discs may have survived.
Q 20Penn and Teller first performed together in 1975 at what kind of event?
A Renaissance festival
A Renaissance festival in Minnesota, on August 19, 1975. The duo began as a trio: with Weir Chrisemer, who had introduced them, they toured as the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society until 1981.
Q 24Which How I Met Your Mother star took over as host of Penn & Teller: Fool Us in 2016?
Alyson Hannigan
Alyson Hannigan succeeded Jonathan Ross. The show began on Britain's ITV in 2011 and was cancelled after one series, until reruns did well enough on The CW for the American network to revive it.
Q 25Besides a trophy, what do magicians who fool Penn & Teller on Fool Us win?
A slot in their Las Vegas show
A slot in their Las Vegas show: anyone whose trick the pair cannot work out is flown out to perform as their opening act. The trophy was only added from the second season.
Q 26Blaine's breakthrough 1997 TV special was subtitled what?
Street Magic
Street Magic had no stage, sequins or big props, just a deck of cards and a handful of quarters: Blaine said he wanted to bring magic back to where it was 100 years ago, among people on the street.
Q 27Where was David Blaine suspended in a Plexiglas box for 44 days in 2003?
Beside the River Thames in London
Beside the River Thames in London, where he went 44 days without food. Hecklers jeered, pelted the box with eggs and at one point even cut off his water supply.
Q 28On which talk show did David Blaine hold his breath for a record 17 minutes in 2008?
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show: Blaine breathed pure oxygen for 23 minutes to saturate his blood, then stayed under in a water tank for 17 minutes 4 seconds, beating the record by half a minute.
Q 29In his 2020 stunt Ascension, what lifted David Blaine high above the Arizona desert?
Helium balloons
Helium balloons: Blaine had planned to drift across the Hudson River into New York, but moved the stunt to Page, Arizona, where he let go miles up and parachuted back down.
Q 30Blaine's 2002 stunt Vertigo had him stand for 35 hours on top of what?
A pillar in Bryant Park
A pillar in Bryant Park, just 22 inches wide, with no harness. At the 35-hour mark he jumped off onto a 12-foot pile of cardboard boxes and came away with a concussion.