Q 01/05

Which playing card earns a 'suicide' nickname because its figure seems to drive a sword into his own head?

A) King of hearts

B) King of spades

C) King of clubs

D) King of diamonds

Answer · why

A) King of hearts

The King of hearts looks doomed only by accident: centuries of sloppy copying by English card makers wiped out the head of the axe he once carried.

Q 02/05

Which video game giant began in Kyoto in 1889 as a maker of handmade hanafuda playing cards?

A) Capcom

B) Nintendo

C) Konami

D) Bandai Namco

Answer · why

B) Nintendo

Nintendo was founded by the craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi, whose flower-patterned decks caught on after Japan banned most gambling in 1882 but tolerated...

Q 03/05

Microsoft's Solitaire, bundled with Windows from 1990, helped nervous new users practise which skill?

A) Touch typing

B) Saving files

C) Opening menus

D) Using a mouse

Answer · why

D) Using a mouse

Using a mouse was unfamiliar to many people in 1990, and dragging cards between piles taught drag-and-drop without feeling like a lesson. An intern, W...

Q 04/05

In World War II, playing cards sent to Allied prisoners of war peeled apart when wet to reveal what?

A) Radio codes

B) Forged passes

C) Escape maps

D) Compass parts

Answer · why

C) Escape maps

Escape maps were hidden between the layers of decks that the United States Playing Card Company made in secret with the government for captured servic...

Q 05/05

Poker's 'dead man's hand' of aces and eights is linked to which gunfighter, shot in Deadwood in 1876?

A) Jesse James

B) Doc Holliday

C) John Wesley Hardin

D) Wild Bill Hickok

Answer · why

D) Wild Bill Hickok

Wild Bill Hickok was shot from behind by Jack McCall during a game in a saloon, yet nobody linked the hand to him in print until the 1920s.