Pieces of Eight Trivia Quiz

Answer: weight

A sleigh (rhymes with WAY) is a horsedrawn wagon with runners for traveling along snowy ground. Magicians use sleight of hand (rhymes with WHITE) to perform tricks.

Answer: an octopus

The word root OCTO in OCTOPUS means "eight." A quadruped walks on four feet, while a biped walks on two. A centipede is an insect with many, many legs (but less than 100).

Answer: this shape: 8

Ice skaters sometimes skate in loops shaped like the number 8.

Answer: an octagon

A hexagon has six sides, a pentagon has five, and a decagon has ten.

Answer: a stop sign

In the U.S., stop signs are octagonal, or eight-sided.

Answer: a person in his or her eighties

An octogenarian is a person aged 80 to 89. A vegetarian is someone who does not eat meat. A nonagenarian is someone aged 90 to 99.

Answer: occupy

To occupy someone means to give that person something to do. OCTOPI means "more than one octopus." An octagonal shape has eight sides, and October was--according to an ancient Roman calendar--the eighth month of the year.

Answer: huit

This is how you count to ten in French: un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix.

Answer: VIII

In Roman numerals, a letter V means "five" and a letter I means "one." VIII means eight because it includes a five and three ones. IV means "four" because placing the I in front of the V tells you to subtract one from five, which equals four.

Answer: Spanish coins

Beginning in the late 1400s, the Spanish began to use silver from the Americas to make silver coins called REALES or "royals." These were divided into eight bits that could be cut apart. Pirates who lurked on the high seas often captured Spanish ships carrying pieces of eight.