Subtraction
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40 free Subtraction trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Subtraction is the sum most of us do without noticing: working out change, counting the days to a holiday, checking how far there is still to go. It is also where school maths first gets tricky, with borrowing, negative numbers and answers that depend on which number comes first. This quiz mixes plain take-away sums with real-world problems drawn from history, sport, science and games, so every answer comes with a story as well as a number. It opens with basic subtraction facts, moves on to long subtraction with bigger figures, and ends with the vocabulary, symbols and methods behind the minus sign. It suits pupils practising their subtraction facts, teachers and parents who want a ready-made quiz or a printable worksheet, and adults checking that their mental arithmetic still works. Every answer has a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Wright brothers first flew in 1903 and Apollo 11 reached the Moon in 1969: how many years apart?
66
Just 66 years separate the two, and Neil Armstrong carried scraps of fabric and wood from the Wright Flyer down to the lunar surface.
Q 02A modern piano has 88 keys, 52 of them white: how many black keys does that leave?
36
The 36 black keys complete the standard 88, but the Imperial Bösendorfer runs to 97 keys, its extras sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid.
Q 03On the Fahrenheit scale water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212: how many degrees separate them?
180
The gap is 180 degrees, so one Fahrenheit degree is 1/180 of the span. Celsius splits the same span into only 100 steps, which makes each of its degrees bigger.
Q 04Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only the Great Pyramid of Giza survives: how many have been lost?
6
Six have been lost, and the survivor was already the oldest by far. The Great Pyramid kept its white stone facing until around AD 1300, when locals took it for building material.
Q 05The Hundred Years' War between England and France began in 1337 and ended in 1453: how many years was that?
116
It lasted 116 years, longer than its name admits, though the fighting was broken up by long truces and is usually divided into three phases.
Q 06Opposite faces of a standard cubic die always add up to seven: which number is opposite the 5?
2
The 2 sits opposite the 5, a rule so old that a terracotta die dug up in the Indus Valley city of Mohenjo-daro, made before 1900 BCE, already follows it.
Q 07Disney's 101 Dalmatians include 99 puppies, 15 of them Pongo and Perdita's own: how many did the pair adopt?
84
They adopt 84, all bought from shops for Cruella de Vil's planned fur coats. With the two parents, that brings the household to the 101 of the title.
Q 08To switch calendars in 1752, Britain cut 11 days from the 30 in September: how many days did that month keep?
19
September 1752 kept only 19 days: Wednesday the 2nd was followed by Thursday the 14th. Tales of riots over the lost days are very likely a myth, with no record of any from the time.
Q 09Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address of 1863 looked back 87 years to the nation's founding: which year did he mean?
1776
He meant 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln spoke for only about two minutes, after a two-hour oration by Edward Everett.
Q 10The Titanic sank in 1912 and Robert Ballard's team found the wreck in 1985: how many years had passed?
73
It lay hidden for 73 years. The search was made possible in part by a US Navy job: Ballard's team first had to map the wrecks of two sunken nuclear submarines.
Q 11Children grow 20 milk teeth and adults have 32 permanent ones: how many more teeth does a full adult set have?
12
A full adult set has 12 more. The last to arrive are the third molars, better known as wisdom teeth, which usually hold off until the late teens or later.
Q 12Adding two numbers gives a sum: what is the result of subtracting one number from another called?
Difference
The result is the difference. Accountants can ask for one without any sign at all: a lower figure written in red usually means it is to be subtracted from the figure above.
Q 13A standard deck has 52 playing cards, 13 of them hearts: how many cards remain when every heart is taken out?
39
Take out the hearts and 39 cards remain. One of the cards removed is a 'one-eyed jack': the jack of hearts is drawn in profile, as is the jack of spades.
Q 21In statistics, subtracting the smallest value in a data set from the largest gives which simple measure of spread?
Range
That gap is the range, and it comes out in the same units as the data: the range of a class's heights is itself a height.
Q 22The word minus comes straight from Latin, where its opposite was plus: what does minus mean in Latin?
Less
Minus is Latin for 'less', just as plus means 'more'. Luca Pacioli's 1494 textbook wrote the pair as a p and an m with a bar on top, short for the Italian più and meno.
Q 23Pluto was discovered in 1930 and stripped of full planet status in 2006: how many years did it count as a planet?
76
Pluto was a planet for 76 years. Its demotion made such a stir that the American Dialect Society voted 'plutoed' its word of the year.
Q 14On a standard number line with zero in the middle, subtracting a positive number moves you in which direction?
Left
You move left, toward the smaller numbers. Keep stepping past zero and the line carries on into the negatives, which is why taking a bigger number from a smaller one still has an answer.
Q 15A ten-pin bowler knocks down 7 pins with the first ball of a frame: how many must fall next for a spare?
3
The last 3 pins must fall for a spare, which clears the whole rack with the second ball. Clearing every pin with the first ball is a strike.
Q 16When a column's top digit is too small to subtract from, American schools teach borrowing, also known by which name?
Regrouping
Borrowing is also called regrouping, and pupils track it with small pencil marks known as crutches, which spread through American classrooms after a study by William Brownell.
Q 17Hawaii became the 50th US state in 1959: how many states had joined the Union after the original 13?
37
Congress has admitted 37 states since the original 13. Texas had a long wait: it asked to join in 1837, but fears of conflict with Mexico held up its admission for years.
Q 18The Solar System has eight planets, of which Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are rocky: how many are giant planets?
4
The other 4 are giants, but not all alike: astronomers now call Jupiter and Saturn gas giants and class Uranus and Neptune as ice giants.
Q 19Elizabeth II came to the British throne in 1952 and died in 2022: how many years did she reign?
70
She reigned for 70 years, the longest of any British monarch. In 2015 she passed the mark set by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.
Q 20In Roman numerals a smaller symbol written before a larger one is subtracted: which number does XC stand for?
90
XC is 90, or ten taken from a hundred. Ancient Rome was not strict about the rule: the numbered gates of the Colosseum write IIII where modern usage has IV.
Q 24A darts player on 501 hits treble 20, worth 60 points, with the first dart: what score remains?
441
The scoreboard drops to 441. Darts is subtraction as sport: each turn's points come off the total, and the winning dart must land in a double or the bullseye.
Q 25Dubai's Burj Khalifa stands 828 metres tall and the Eiffel Tower 330 metres: how much taller is the Burj Khalifa?
498 m
The Burj Khalifa is 498 metres taller, yet the Eiffel Tower was itself the tallest structure in the world from its opening in 1889 until 1930.
Q 26Which word names the weight of an empty container, which a scale subtracts from the gross weight to show the net?
Tare
It is the tare, a word that reached English through Italian from an Arabic term for something thrown away. Kitchen scales have a button that resets the display to zero for the same job.
Q 27Swapping the two numbers in a subtraction changes the result, so the operation lacks which property that addition has?
Commutative
Subtraction is not commutative: reversing the numbers flips the sign of the result, so mathematicians describe the operation as anti-commutative instead.
Q 28Mount Everest is 8,849 metres high and K2, the second-highest mountain, 8,611 metres: how much higher is Everest?
238 m
Everest is 238 metres higher, but K2 has the fiercer name: it became the Savage Mountain after a climber on a 1953 American expedition said it tries to kill you.
Q 29Counting up from 567 to 1,234 in easy hops of 3, 30, 400 and 234 shows that 1,234 − 567 equals what?
667
The answer is 667. The 'same change' trick gets there too: nudge both numbers up by 3 and then by 30, and the sum becomes the far easier 1,267 − 600.
Q 30Which French thinker's 1640s calculating machine had gears that turned only one way, making subtraction awkward?
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal got round it by entering a number's complement, which turns a subtraction into an addition. He built the machine to lighten the sums of his father, a tax official.