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50 free Roman Numerals trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Roman numerals look like a relic, yet they are everywhere: on clock faces, at the end of film credits, in the Super Bowl's name and after the names of kings and popes. Reading them is a small skill that pays off constantly. This quiz mixes conversions you can work out with facts you probably cannot guess: why the NFL skipped one game's numeral, why clock dials break their own rules, how the Romans managed without a zero, and what the odd spellings on old buildings really say. It suits anyone who has ever squinted at a film's closing credits, plus teachers and pub-quiz setters who want a reason behind every answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Why did the NFL brand its February 2016 championship game Super Bowl 50 rather than Super Bowl L?
An L-only logo looked bad
An L-only logo looked bad, the NFL's creative director admitted: the asymmetrical letter fought the standard template and risked reading as the 'loser' hand sign. The league went gold-themed instead.
Q 02Which famous London clock writes four o'clock as IV rather than the IIII most Roman-numeral dials use?
Big Ben
Big Ben, whose dial was designed in 1852, runs I to XII with a subtractive IV, while most Roman-numeral clock faces keep the older IIII for four yet still write nine as IX.
Q 03Roman fractions were counted in unciae, twelfths whose Latin name gave English which pair of units?
Inch and ounce
Inch and ounce both descend from uncia, the Roman twelfth: on coins, fractions below six twelfths were shown as one dot per uncia, so a five-twelfths piece carried five dots, the quincunx.
Q 04Which number does the Roman numeral MIX stand for, a numeral that happens to spell an English word?
1,009
1,009 is M plus IX with nothing written for the empty hundreds and tens: the Roman system has no zero symbol, so a missing place is simply left out, as in 207 written CCVII.
Q 05Roman numerals descend directly from the number symbols of which people, Rome's neighbours in north-central Italy?
Etruscans
Etruscans supplied the symbols for 1, 5, 10, 50 and 100, and like the Romans they wrote them from higher to lower value, though in their script that ran right to left.
Q 06In which year did the subtitles Episode IV and A New Hope first appear on the original 1977 Star Wars?
1981
1981 brought the subtitles, at the film's fourth theatrical re-release, to line it up with the 1980 sequel titled on screen as Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back.
Q 07Why did Hollywood studios take such care over the year on a film's title screen before 1988?
A wrong numeral could void copyright
A wrong numeral could void copyright under US law before the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, when an incorrect or ambiguous date in the notice could even change when the copyright ended.
Q 08Why is 49 written XLIX in standard Roman numerals, and never the two-letter IL?
I precedes only V or X
I precedes only V or X, so the six standard subtractive pairs are IV, IX, XL, XC, CD and CM; 49 therefore has to be 40 plus 9, and 99 is XCIX rather than IC.
Q 09Boris Yeltsin signed a document dated in the Russian style as 10.XI.'88; what does the XI stand for?
November
November is XI, the eleventh of the twelve: the mixed style writes that part of the date in Roman numerals and the day in Arabic ones, so 4.VI.1789 and VI.4.1789 both unambiguously mean 4 June 1789.
Q 10Which year does the Statue of Liberty's book give as MDCCLXXVI, nine letters built place by place?
1776
1776 is M + DCC + LXX + VI: a numeral is built place by place from thousands down to units, which is why the same method renders 1918 as MCMXVIII.
Q 11After the one-off Super Bowl 50, which Roman numeral did the NFL use for the next season's championship game?
LI
LI, for 51, picked the numerals straight back up after the golden-anniversary game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, the 50th edition the league chose to mark with gold-themed branding instead.
Q 12On a Lithuanian shop's opening-hours sign written in Roman numerals, which day of the week does VII stand for?
Sunday
Sunday is VII because such signs, also seen in railway and bus timetables, take Monday as the first day of the week and number it I.
Q 13Which Roman numeral spells 1066 in standard form, a year whose empty hundreds place is simply omitted?
MLXVI
MLXVI is M + LX + VI, with no hundreds place written at all; misplacing one letter turns it into 1046 (MXLVI) or 1064 (MLXIV), which is why each place is spelled separately.
Q 21What does a vinculum, the bar drawn above a Roman numeral, do to the value written beneath it?
Multiplies it by 1,000
Multiplies it by 1,000: the bar came into use in the late Republic and was the common way to write thousands in the Imperial era, since M for 1,000 only arrived in the medieval period.
Q 22Which principle underlies Roman numerals, so that XXVII is simply 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 1?
Additive
Additive is the principle: a numeral's value is the sum of its symbols, each keeping a fixed value wherever it sits, unlike place-value Arabic digits where a 2 can mean 2, 20 or 200.
Q 23The NFL's practice of naming its championship game with Roman numerals was established at which game's number?
V
Q 14In IUPAC names for inorganic compounds, a Roman numeral in parentheses after a metal tells a chemist what?
Its oxidation number
Its oxidation number is what the numeral states, used for cations that can carry several different positive charges; chemists once numbered periodic-table groups the same way, a habit now officially deprecated.
Q 15On a graph that includes negative numbers, which Roman-numeral region has negative values on both axes?
Quadrant III
Quadrant III is where both axes run negative; II has only a negative x, IV only a negative y, and Roman numerals are used so the labels are never confused with the Arabic data being plotted.
Q 16A film made in 2026 would show which Roman numeral for its production year, with MM standing for 2000?
MMXXVI
MMXXVI is MM + XX + VI; the habit of dating films this way survives on title screens even though outside references to the same film use ordinary Arabic numerals.
Q 17Which year is written MCMXCIX in Roman numerals?
1999
1999 is M + CM + XC + IX, three subtractive pairs in a row; MCM alone signifies 1000 + 1000 − 100 = 1900, so every year of the 1900s opens with those same three letters.
Q 18Spanish writes 'siglo XVIII' and French 'XVIIIe siècle' to name which century?
The 18th
The 18th century is XVIII, 10 + 5 + 3; Romance languages favour Roman numerals for centuries, as do Russian and Polish, while German and Turkish write '18.' with a full stop instead.
Q 19In a printed book, which part is conventionally page-numbered in lowercase Roman numerals such as iv and xii?
The preface
The preface, along with the introduction and sometimes the appendices, takes lowercase numerals; book volumes, chapters and the acts of a play also use them, as in Act iii, Scene 2.
Q 20In the United States, what kind of suffix is the IV in a name such as William Howard Taft IV?
Generational
Generational suffixes mark people sharing one name across generations and, like the numbers after monarchs and popes, are read aloud as ordinals: 'the fourth'.
V, the fifth game, is where the practice was established; it then ran unbroken until the league paused it for the golden-anniversary game, which it marked in gold rather than with a single letter.
Q 24Which English cathedral's late-1300s clock already showed IIII for four, as most Roman-numeral dials still do?
Wells
Wells Cathedral has a clock from the late 1300s that pairs IIII with a subtractive IX for nine, the mix that modern Roman-numeral clock faces still very often copy.
Q 25How did the builders of Rome's Colosseum label entrance 44, shunning IV while using XL for forty?
XLIIII
XLIIII appears on gate 44 because the Colosseum's carvers used XL for 40 but systematically avoided IV, a mixed habit that persisted in inscriptions for centuries.
Q 26Which Latin word did Dionysius Exiguus write for zero alongside Roman numerals in a 525 manuscript?
nulla
Nulla stood in for zero as early as a 525 manuscript by Dionysius Exiguus; around 725 Bede or a colleague shortened it to the letter N, which apothecaries were still writing on prescriptions in the 20th century.
Q 27The Roman symbol for 1,000 drifted from a circled X to the letter M under the influence of which Latin word?
mille
Mille, Latin for 'thousand', pulled the symbol toward M; before that the 1,000 sign was partly identified with the Greek letter phi and passed through shapes resembling Ψ and ∞.
Q 28Regnal numbers such as 'the Second' came into widespread use in England during which king's reign?
Henry VIII
Henry VIII's reign is when numbering kings caught on in England; before that a monarch was known by an epithet, such as Edward the Confessor, and the numbers are read aloud as ordinals.
Q 29Louis XIV of France, like Charles IV of Spain, seems to have preferred which form of his number on coins?
XIIII
XIIII, the four-stroke form, is what appears on the Sun King's coinage, and William IV of Great Britain did the same with IIII; a Spanish real likewise shows Charles as IIII.
Q 30Roman numerals on the stern of the clipper Cutty Sark, rising from 13 to 22, mark what in feet?
Draught
Draught marks show how deep the hull sits in the water; on the Cutty Sark the numerals climb the stern from 13 feet at the bottom to 22 at the top.