Q 01/05

The Soviet Union's Russian initials СССР, often misread as 'CCCP', spell out which Latin letters, letter for letter?

A) USSR

B) SSSR

C) KKKR

D) SSSP

Answer · why

B) SSSR

SSSR is the letter-for-letter reading, short for Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik. The Russian С is an S and Р is a rolled R, so nothing...

Q 02/05

Which classic video game often styled its name with a backwards-looking R, really the Russian letter that says 'ya'?

A) Tetris

B) Arkanoid

C) Frogger

D) Dr. Mario

Answer · why

A) Tetris

Tetris was written TETЯIS on many Western versions to play up its Russian origins. Read as real Russian, that logo would come out as something like 't...

Q 03/05

Because Russian has no 'h' sound, the English name Harry is traditionally spelled just like which other name?

A) Larry

B) Barry

C) Garry

D) Jerry

Answer · why

C) Garry

Garry is the result: Russian traditionally swaps a foreign 'h' for its hard 'g' letter, so a hamburger becomes a 'gamburger' and the composer Haydn be...

Q 04/05

Which soup's Russian name ends in the single letter Щ, written 'shch' when spelled out in English letters?

A) Shchi

B) Okroshka

C) Botvinya

D) Borscht

Answer · why

D) Borscht

Borscht has only four letters in Russian, and the last of them is romanised 'shch'. The English spelling with a final 't' arrived by way of Yiddish.

Q 05/05

The Russian letter Я, the very last of the alphabet, is also a complete one-letter word with which meaning?

A) I

B) We

C) He

D) It

Answer · why

A) I

I is all it means: я is the Russian first-person pronoun, a whole word in a single letter. Its shape looks like a Latin R turned backwards, but the so...