Swords
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50 free Swords trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Few objects carry as much story as the sword. For thousands of years it was a soldier's sidearm, a badge of rank and a work of art, and it has outlived its battlefield use in ceremony, sport, film and games. This quiz covers the subject from hilt to tip: how to tell the well-known types apart, from the short blades of ancient armies to the giants of the Renaissance and the curved swords of Asia and the Middle East; what the parts of a sword are called and where the finest blades were forged; and the stories behind famous swords of myth, history and fiction. It suits history fans, fencers, fantasy readers and gamers alike, and works for a quiz night or a classroom. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you guess.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which colour lightsaber did Samuel L. Jackson request for Mace Windu so he would stand out in Star Wars battle scenes?
Purple
Purple made Mace Windu's blade unique among the Jedi on screen. Jackson asked the director for it while filming Attack of the Clones, so he could pick himself out in the crowded arena battle.
Q 02The suit of Swords in tarot and Italian card decks corresponds to which suit in a standard pack of playing cards?
Spades
Spades are the French-suited match for Swords. The English name itself probably comes from spada, a southern European word for a sword, while the French call the same suit pikes.
Q 03Which future American general, an Olympic pentathlete in Stockholm, designed the Model 1913 sword for US cavalry?
George S. Patton
George S. Patton designed it as a young lieutenant and the Army's Master of the Sword, replacing a curved slashing blade with a straight thrusting one. It was obsolete before it was ever used as intended.
Q 04Sabrage is the showy ceremony of opening a bottle of which drink by sliding a sword along its neck?
Champagne
Champagne is the drink, and the blade does not cut: it strikes the lip so the glass collar snaps off with the cork inside it. Legend credits the trick to Napoleon's cavalry.
Q 05In an ancient Greek tale retold by Cicero, a sword hangs by a single horsehair above which seated courtier?
Damocles
Damocles had gushed about how lucky his king was, so the ruler of Syracuse let him sit on the throne for a day, with a blade dangling overhead to show what power really feels like.
Q 06In Arthurian legend, which enchantress gives King Arthur the sword Excalibur after his first blade breaks in a duel?
Lady of the Lake
The Lady of the Lake hands over Excalibur together with a scabbard that stops its wearer's wounds from bleeding. Arthur's first blade had shattered in a fight with King Pellinore.
Q 07Aztec warriors fought with the macuahuitl, a wooden sword edged with razor-sharp blades of which material?
Obsidian
Obsidian, a volcanic glass, flakes to an edge sharper than a steel razor. Spanish conquistadors described macuahuitl blows that killed their horses outright.
Q 08Which long curved Japanese sword did samurai wear thrust through the sash with its cutting edge facing upward?
Katana
The katana rode edge-up in the sash so that a samurai could draw and strike in a single motion. Its older cousin the tachi hung from the belt with the edge facing down.
Q 09In The Princess Bride, the swordsman Inigo Montoya hunts his father's killer, a count marked by which feature?
An extra finger
An extra finger on his right hand gave Count Rugen away. He had ordered a sword built to fit that odd grip from Inigo's father, a great swordsmith, then killed him in a quarrel over it.
Q 10In Greek legend, which conqueror solved the puzzle of the Gordian Knot by slicing through it with his sword?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great met the knot at Gordium in 333 BC, where a prophecy promised rule over all of Asia to whoever could undo it. Everyone expected him to pick at it patiently.
Q 11Which slender thrusting sword began as a Spanish dress accessory and became Renaissance Europe's classic duelling blade?
Rapier
The rapier was known in Spain as the espada ropera, the 'dress sword', because gentlemen carried it as part of an outfit. Its long, narrow blade was made to pierce, not to chop.
Q 12Which sword of Scottish clansmen takes its name from Gaelic words meaning 'great sword'?
Claymore
Claymore is an anglicised claidheamh-mòr, a name stretched over two different weapons: the late-medieval two-handed sword and the later basket-hilted one.
Q 13Which short, broad slashing sword was the favourite weapon of sailors and pirates during the Age of Sail?
Cutlass
Q 21What is the name of the knob at the end of a sword's hilt, first added to stop the weapon slipping away?
Pommel
Pommel comes from the Anglo-Norman word pomel, meaning 'little apple'. Along with the grip and the guard, it is one of the three parts that make up a hilt.
Q 22What is the correct name for the long groove down a sword blade, popularly known as a 'blood groove'?
Fuller
A fuller has nothing to do with blood: it lightens the blade while keeping it stiff, working like the flanges and web of an I-beam.
Q 23Which city gives its name to the steel, patterned like flowing water, prized in medieval Near Eastern sword blades?
Damascus
Damascus was where many of the blades were forged and sold, but the metal came from far away: ingots of wootz steel imported from southern India.
The cutlass was sturdy enough to hack through heavy ropes and canvas, yet short enough to swing in a boarding fight or below decks. In the Caribbean the word can also mean a machete.
Q 14Which short stabbing sword, a design borrowed from the tribes of Spain, armed the legionaries of ancient Rome?
Gladius
The gladius gave gladiators their name, which simply means swordsmen. Rome copied the weapon from Celtiberian fighters it met during the Punic Wars against Carthage.
Q 15Which word for the curved swords of the Middle East also names a desert oryx with long, backswept horns?
Scimitar
Scimitar is a European catch-all, not one weapon: it covers the Persian shamshir, the Turkish kilij and the Indian talwar alike. The scimitar oryx of the Sahara is named for its sweeping horns.
Q 16Which huge sword of Germany's Landsknecht mercenaries was carried over the shoulder like a pike, not in a sheath?
Zweihänder
The Zweihänder, literally the 'two-hander', was typically at least 1.4 metres long, far too much blade to draw from the hip. Its wielders fought both alongside and against pike formations.
Q 17Which sickle-shaped Egyptian sword, descended from the battle axe, was buried with Tutankhamun in two examples?
Khopesh
The khopesh doubled as a badge of royal power, and Egyptian art often shows kings holding one. Many surviving examples were never sharpened, which suggests they were made for ceremony.
Q 18Which of fencing's three weapons is the heaviest and lets a fencer score on any part of the opponent's body?
Épée
The épée counts a hit anywhere from mask to toe, while foil scores only on the torso and sabre only above the waist. Its name is simply the French word for sword.
Q 19Which straight, double-edged sword is revered in Chinese culture as the 'Gentleman of Weapons'?
Jian
The jian ranks beside the staff, the spear and the sabre as one of the four first-tier weapons of Chinese martial tradition. It had reached its modern length by about 500 BC.
Q 20In the Japanese martial art of kendo, the shinai practice sword is built from four slats of which material?
Bamboo
Bamboo replaced the hard wooden swords that had been seriously injuring students in practice. Being so light, a shinai can also be swung faster than a solid blade.
Q 24Which Spanish city has been famed for the steel of its sword blades since Roman times?
Toledo
Toledo and its guild of swordsmiths rose to prominence under Moorish rule, and between the 15th and 17th centuries the city's steel came to be regarded as the best in Europe.
Q 25Which swordsmith of around 1300, widely acclaimed as Japan's greatest, has a prize for modern smiths named after him?
Masamune
Masamune forged the Honjo Masamune, a blade handed from shogun to shogun as a symbol of Tokugawa rule. It was a National Treasure when it went missing in 1946.
Q 26In Le Morte d'Arthur, which knight throws Excalibur back into the water at the dying King Arthur's command?
Sir Bedivere
Sir Bedivere inherited the scene from Griflet, a knight of the older French romances. In both versions the knight twice only pretends to obey, unable to throw away so fine a blade.
Q 27In the medieval epic The Song of Roland, which unbreakable sword does the dying hero hammer against a rock?
Durendal
Durendal would not break, so the dying Roland hid it beneath his body to keep it from the enemy. One legend says he hurled it away instead and it came to rest in a cliff at Rocamadour.
Q 28Joyeuse, a sword in the Louvre once carried at French coronations, is said to have belonged to which emperor?
Charlemagne
Charlemagne's legendary sword gave its name to the blade carried before French kings at their coronations from 1270 to 1825. It reached the Louvre from the treasury of Saint-Denis in 1793.
Q 29Zulfiqar, the fork-tipped sword often shown on Ottoman flags, belonged in tradition to which early caliph?
Ali ibn Abi Talib
Ali ibn Abi Talib is a central figure of Shia Islam, and his sword is traditionally pictured with a double point. Middle Eastern smiths sometimes made blades with a split tip in its honour.
Q 30In Japanese myth, the storm god Susanoo finds the sword Kusanagi inside the body of which slain monster?
An eight-headed serpent
An eight-headed serpent, Yamata no Orochi, was lured with vats of sake before Susanoo hacked it apart and found the blade inside one of its tails. Kusanagi is one of Japan's three imperial treasures.