ZX Spectrum Trivia
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60 free ZX Spectrum trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The ZX Spectrum was launched on 23 April 1982 with a rubber keyboard that felt like dead flesh, a rainbow stripe and a price under £200, and it sold five million units and kick-started the British games industry. This quiz covers the machine itself: the Z80 at 3.5 MHz, the ULA that Richard Altwasser designed, the 8x8 attribute grid that gave us colour clash, the beeper, the 1500-baud cassette loading, the Microdrive and the Kempston interface. It also covers the people and the games. Sir Clive and his earlier calculators and watches, Rick Dickinson's case, Timex in Dundee, the mail-order backlog, the Spanish-built 128, the Amstrad takeover for £5 million and the +2 and +3. Then Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy, Ultimate Play the Game and Knight Lore, The Hobbit, Elite, Chuckie Egg, Skool Daze, Dizzy, Crash and Your Sinclair, right through to Micro Men, the Vega, the Next and Black Mirror's Bandersnatch. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Spectrum, Sinclair Research and the individual games and add-ons, so the dates, prices and kilobytes are correct.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On what date in 1982 was the ZX Spectrum first released in Britain?
23 April
The ZX Spectrum was launched on 23 April 1982, barely a year after the ZX81, in 16 KB and 48 KB versions.
Q 02Roughly how many ZX Spectrums were sold in total?
Over five million
It was Britain's top-selling computer until the Amstrad PCW overtook it in the 1990s.
Q 03The Spectrum was manufactured in Dundee by which company, better known for watches?
Timex
Timex director Fred Olsen wanted to diversify beyond mechanical watches.
Q 04Which industrial designer created the Spectrum's case, rainbow motif and rubber keyboard?
Rick Dickinson
Rick Dickinson, Sinclair's in-house industrial designer, also styled the ZX80 and ZX81; his ZX81 design won a Design Council award in 1981.
Q 05The name 'Spectrum' was chosen to emphasise what?
Its colour display
Its colour display set it apart from the black-and-white ZX81; during development the machine was called the ZX81 Colour or ZX82.
Q 06How was software loaded into a standard Spectrum?
From compact audio cassettes
From compact audio cassettes, with video sent to a television set rather than a dedicated monitor.
Q 07What was the launch price of the 16 KB Spectrum?
£125
The 16 KB Spectrum launched at £125 and the 48 KB at £175, undercutting the £335 BBC Micro Model B.
Q 08The Spectrum's rubber keys were famously said to feel like what?
Dead flesh
A reviewer's jibe that the rubber keys felt like 'dead flesh' stuck to the machine; Sinclair answered the complaint with the hard plastic keyboard of the 1984 Spectrum+.
Q 09Which processor, running at 3.5 MHz, powered the ZX Spectrum?
Zilog Z80
The Zilog Z80A ran at 3.5 MHz; its 16-bit address bus could reach only 64 KB directly, which is why the Spectrum 128 needed bank switching.
Q 10Which single chip integrating the ZX Spectrum's essential hardware did Richard Altwasser design?
The ULA
The uncommitted logic array also handled a graphics mode that used under 7 KB of memory.
Q 11Because colour was stored per 8x8 cell, the Spectrum suffered from what graphical limitation?
Attribute clash
Attribute clash arose because each 8x8 cell could hold only two colours, ink and paper, so a moving sprite recoloured the background it crossed; the Amstrad CPC's per-pixel colour avoided it.
Q 12Besides colour bits, each ZX Spectrum attribute byte held one bit for brightness and one for what?
Flashing
That gave the machine its 15-colour palette.
Q 13Who wrote most of the Spectrum's ROM code and Sinclair BASIC, working for Nine Tiles?
Steve Vickers
Steve Vickers of Nine Tiles wrote the 16 KB ROM, extending the ZX81 BASIC he had also written; he and Richard Altwasser then left to found Jupiter Cantab and build the Jupiter Ace.
Q 21The Spectrum's intended successor, announced in January 1984, was which flop?
The QL
The Sinclair QL, a 68008-based business machine, shipped late and buggy; only about 139,000 units were made before Amstrad dropped it in 1986.
Q 22The ZX Spectrum 128 launched in September 1985 in which country, financed by local distributor Investrónica?
Spain
Spain got it first, partly thanks to a Spanish tax on computers with 64 KB or less; the UK launch waited until January 1986.
Q 23Which chip gave the Spectrum 128 three-channel sound and MIDI compatibility?
AY-3-8912
The General Instrument AY-3-8912 gave three square-wave channels plus noise and drove the MIDI output; the 128 also had 32 KB of ROM and an RS-232 port but no internal speaker.
Q 14What was distinctive about how BASIC keywords were typed on the Spectrum?
Each keyword was entered with a single keystroke
Each keyword was entered with a single keystroke: pressing P in command mode produced PRINT, with shifted modes adding more, so nearly 200 functions fitted on 40 rubber keys.
Q 15What data rate did the Spectrum's cassette interface achieve, beating the target of 1000?
1500 baud
Unlike the ZX81, it could keep the display up while loading, so games could show a loading screen.
Q 16The original Spectrum's sound came from what?
A single-channel beeper
A single-channel beeper, and the BEEP command tied up the processor until the note finished.
Q 17How was the Spectrum initially sold, leading to a backlog of 40,000 orders by summer 1982?
By mail order
The Spectrum was sold by mail order only at first, with Sinclair promising 28-day delivery it could not meet; a public apology followed in September 1982 and supply normalised by Christmas.
Q 18Under what name was an enhanced Spectrum sold in the United States from 1983?
Timex Sinclair 2068
The Timex Sinclair 2068 added a sound chip, a cartridge port and extra screen modes, but it sold poorly and Timex left the computer market in 1984.
Q 19Which magazine's gossip columnist is credited with creating the 'Uncle Clive' persona for Sinclair?
Personal Computer World
The Sun called him the most prodigious inventor since Leonardo da Vinci.
Q 20Clive Sinclair was knighted in the 1983 Birthday Honours on the recommendation of which prime minister?
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher, keen to champion British high-tech enterprise, recommended the knighthood; Sinclair Research reported a £14 million profit on £54 million turnover that year.
Q 24In April 1986 Sinclair sold its computer range and brand name to Alan Sugar's Amstrad for how much?
£5 million
Amstrad paid £5 million on 7 April 1986 for the Spectrum range, the QL stock and the Sinclair name, then released the +2, +3 and +2A models.
Q 25Amstrad's ZX Spectrum +2 came with what built in?
A cassette recorder
The grey +2 had a built-in cassette recorder, branded Datacorder, echoing the Amstrad CPC 464, plus two joystick ports and a proper keyboard.
Q 26The 1987 ZX Spectrum +3 replaced the cassette deck with a floppy drive of what size?
3-inch
The +3 used Amstrad's 3-inch disks, the same format as the CPC 6128 and PCW; it was incompatible with the Interface 1, so Microdrives could not be used.
Q 27In which year was the ZX Spectrum officially discontinued?
1992
Amstrad ended production in 1992, ten years after launch, by which time over 24,000 software titles had been released for the Spectrum.
Q 28The ZX Microdrive, launched in July 1983, stored data on what?
A continuous loop of magnetic tape
Each Microdrive cartridge held a continuous loop of magnetic tape storing at least 85 KB; the drive cost £49.95 and cartridges £4.95, and it needed the Interface 1 to connect.
Q 29The Kempston joystick interface reported joystick state at which Z80 I/O address, read in BASIC with IN?
31
Port 31 returned the five joystick bits, read in BASIC with IN 31; the Kempston interface let Atari-standard sticks plug into the Spectrum's rear edge connector.
Q 30Fans affectionately call the ZX Spectrum by what nickname?
The Speccy
The Speccy's rivals were the Commodore 64, BBC Micro, Dragon 32 and Amstrad CPC.