Things That Come in Fives
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50 free Things That Come in Fives trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Five turns up everywhere once you start looking: on a hand, on the Olympic flag, in a basketball line-up, in a poker deal and in the books that open the Hebrew Bible. Some of these sets are ancient, some were coined by hunters, cooks or spy-catchers, and a few are fives only because somebody stopped counting. This quiz gathers the best-known groups of five and asks what you remember about their members. Expect geography, history, science, sport, music, film and food, with every question tied to a famous fivesome: the senses and tastes, the Pillars of Islam, the Good Emperors of Rome, the Golden Ticket winners and plenty more. It suits pub quiz teams, teachers building a themed round and anyone who enjoys the moment a half-remembered list clicks into place. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave with the story behind the set as well as the name.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of New York City's five boroughs is the only one located mainly on the US mainland?
The Bronx
The Bronx is the only borough joined to the North American mainland. Manhattan and Staten Island are islands, while Brooklyn and Queens sit on the western end of Long Island.
Q 02Which animal joins the lion, leopard, elephant and rhinoceros in Africa's 'Big Five' game animals?
African buffalo
African buffalo complete a list that has nothing to do with size. Big-game hunters coined the term for the five animals they found hardest to hunt on foot.
Q 03Which of the five Great Lakes is the only one lying entirely inside the United States?
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake wholly inside the US, since the other four are shared with Canada. That makes it the largest lake by area lying within a single country.
Q 04Which party drink's name is said to come from a Hindi word for five, after its five ingredients?
Punch
Punch is commonly said to take its name from the Hindi panch, a nod to a recipe of five ingredients. East India Company employees brought the drink back from India to England in the 17th century.
Q 05Which of the five Golden Ticket winners in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory falls into the chocolate river?
Augustus Gloop
Augustus Gloop is the first child to leave the tour, sucked up a pipe after tumbling in. The other three badly behaved winners follow, each undone by ignoring Willy Wonka's warnings.
Q 06Which of the world's five named oceans is both the smallest and the shallowest?
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean keeps some sea ice all year and is almost completely covered in winter. Some oceanographers class it as a sea rather than a true ocean.
Q 07Which humorous five-line verse form, rhyming AABBA, was popularised by the nonsense poet Edward Lear?
Limerick
Limerick is a word Edward Lear never used, even though his 1846 Book of Nonsense made the form famous. Lines one, two and five rhyme, as do the shorter third and fourth.
Q 08Which author's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels were billed as a trilogy in five parts?
Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams kept writing after book three, so the series was sold as a trilogy in four parts and then five. The fifth book's US cover joked that the label was growing ever less accurate.
Q 09Which pair of organs has five lobes in total, three on the right side and two on the left?
Lungs
The lungs are not a matching pair. The left one shares its side of the chest with the heart and has a dent, the cardiac notch, to make room for it.
Q 10Which fifth basic taste did Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda identify alongside sweet, sour, salty and bitter?
Umami
Umami comes from glutamate, the compound Ikeda traced the savoury taste to in 1908. A year later it went on sale in Japan as Ajinomoto, the first umami seasoning, better known as MSG.
Q 11Which of the Five Pillars of Islam is the pilgrimage to Mecca, required once in a lifetime?
Hajj
Hajj falls in Dhu'l-Hijja, the twelfth and last month of the Islamic calendar. The duty applies only to Muslims who are physically fit and can afford the journey.
Q 12Which of the five stages of grief comes first in the model Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced in 1969?
Denial
Denial opens a model that Kübler-Ross drew from her work with terminally ill patients. Her book On Death and Dying described people facing their own death, and the stages were only later applied to mourners.
Q 13Which country holds a permanent UN Security Council seat alongside China, Russia, the UK and the US?
France
France has held its permanent seat since the United Nations was founded in 1945. Any one of the five can veto a substantive resolution, however much support it has.
Q 21Which book closes the five books of the Torah, following Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers?
Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy takes its name from the Greek for second law. It is framed as a series of speeches by Moses and ends with his death on Mount Nebo.
Q 22Which English author created the Famous Five: Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog?
Enid Blyton
Enid Blyton planned only six or eight adventures for the group. Sales were so strong that she ended up writing 21 full-length novels about them.
Q 23Which is by far the largest of Central Asia's five former Soviet republics, often called the 'stans'?
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country and the ninth-largest overall. Its area roughly matches that of Western Europe.
Q 14Which member quit the Spice Girls in 1998, cutting the five-piece pop group to four?
Geri Halliwell
Geri Halliwell, the red-haired Ginger of the group, announced through her solicitor that she had left in the middle of a world tour. She returned for the reunion tours of 2007 and 2019.
Q 15Which poker hand of five cards outranks every other when no wild cards are in play?
Royal flush
A royal flush is simply the highest straight flush: ace, king, queen, jack and ten of one suit. Only a wild card can beat it, by making five of a kind possible.
Q 16Which John Hughes film follows five teenagers from different cliques through a Saturday detention?
The Breakfast Club
The Breakfast Club shuts a nerd, a jock, a loner, a popular girl and a delinquent in together for a whole day. Hughes wrote, produced and directed the 1985 film.
Q 17Which of basketball's five positions, known as the one, is usually the shortest player on court?
Point guard
Point guard is the most specialised of the five roles, often described as a coach on the floor. At 5 ft 3 in, Muggsy Bogues spent 14 NBA seasons playing it.
Q 18Which biblical opponent did David face after picking five stones from a brook for his sling?
Goliath
Goliath was felled by a single slung stone, so David never needed the other four. He then beheaded the fallen giant with the man's own sword.
Q 19Which of the five US Army officers promoted to five-star general later served two terms as president?
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight Eisenhower was one of four generals raised to five stars in December 1944. Omar Bradley became the fifth and last when he was promoted in 1950.
Q 20Which baron, the father of the modern Olympic Games, created the symbol of five interlocking rings?
Pierre de Coubertin
Pierre de Coubertin drew the rings in 1913 in blue, yellow, black, green and red on white. He said those six colours could reproduce the flag of every country then competing.
Q 24Which of the five Marx Brothers never spoke on screen, honking a horn or whistling instead?
Harpo
Harpo wore a curly reddish-blond wig in every one of his movie appearances and was the second-oldest of the brothers. Off screen he was an accomplished harpist.
Q 25The Pentagon, which has five sides, five floors and five ring corridors, stands in which US state?
Virginia
Virginia hosts the Pentagon in Arlington County, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Its corridors run for 17.5 miles around a five-acre plaza in the middle.
Q 26Which of the five Nordic countries is the only one to use the euro as its currency?
Finland
Finland joined the eurozone when it launched in 1999. Denmark, Norway and Sweden each kept a krone or krona of their own, and Iceland its króna.
Q 27Which country completes the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with Australia, Canada, the UK and the US?
New Zealand
New Zealand and its four partners are bound by the UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.
Q 28Which religion's initiated members wear the Five Ks, including uncut hair, a comb and a steel bracelet?
Sikhism
Sikhism has asked this of its Khalsa since 1699, when Guru Gobind Singh commanded them to wear all five at all times. The other two are an undergarment and a small curved sword.
Q 29Which country joined rugby union's Five Nations Championship in 2000, turning it into the Six Nations?
Italy
Italy made the tournament six strong, its second growth spurt. It began in 1883 as the four-team Home Nations Championship, the first international rugby union tournament.
Q 30Which poetic metre of five feet per line did Shakespeare use in his plays and sonnets?
Iambic pentameter
Iambic pentameter also carries Milton's Paradise Lost and Wordsworth's The Prelude. Each of its five feet is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.