Guess the Famous Personality
Clues, achievements and life events — work out who the person is. A 30-question quiz that describes a famous personality and asks you to name them.
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Portraits in the photo round come from Wikimedia Commons, freely licensed — full attribution for each portrait is on that person's biography page.
Questions and answers
The full question bank, with the correct answer for each question — read it before you play, or use it to check yourself afterwards.
- This leader founded Pakistan in 1947, became its first Governor-General, and is honoured with the title 'Quaid-e-Azam'. Who is this person?
Answer: Muhammad Ali Jinnah - This South African leader spent 27 years in prison, most of them on Robben Island, and in 1994 became his country's first democratically elected president. Who is this person?
Answer: Nelson Mandela - This leader of India's independence movement led the Salt March in 1930 and was assassinated in 1948. Who is this person?
Answer: Mahatma Gandhi - This American president led the United States through the Civil War, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and was assassinated in 1865. Who is this person?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln - This physicist developed the theory of relativity, wrote the equation E=mc², and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. Who is this person?
Answer: Albert Einstein - This scientist won Nobel Prizes in two different sciences — Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911 — for work on radioactivity. Who is this person?
Answer: Marie Curie - This inventor created the phonograph in 1877 and a practical incandescent light bulb in 1879 at his Menlo Park laboratory. Who is this person?
Answer: Thomas Edison - This astronaut became the first person to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Who is this person?
Answer: Neil Armstrong - This Pakistani education activist survived an attack in 2012 and became the youngest-ever Nobel laureate when she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. Who is this person?
Answer: Malala Yousafzai - This singer, known as the 'King of Pop', released the album Thriller in 1982 and popularised the moonwalk. Who is this person?
Answer: Michael Jackson - This British prime minister led the country through most of the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. Who is this person?
Answer: Winston Churchill - This ruler was the last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt, spoke several languages, and allied with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Who is this person?
Answer: Cleopatra VII - This entrepreneur co-founded Apple in 1976, later bought the animation studio Pixar, and returned to lead Apple until 2011. Who is this person?
Answer: Steve Jobs - This entrepreneur co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and later devoted himself to global health philanthropy. Who is this person?
Answer: Bill Gates - This entrepreneur founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore and later founded the space company Blue Origin. Who is this person?
Answer: Jeff Bezos - This naturalist sailed on HMS Beagle and published On the Origin of Species in 1859, proposing evolution by natural selection. Who is this person?
Answer: Charles Darwin - This physicist wrote A Brief History of Time (1988), worked on black holes, and lived for decades with motor neurone disease (ALS). Who is this person?
Answer: Stephen Hawking - This English playwright wrote Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, and was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. Who is this person?
Answer: William Shakespeare - This German composer wrote nine symphonies, including the 'Ode to Joy', despite losing his hearing. Who is this person?
Answer: Ludwig van Beethoven - This Italian Renaissance artist painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and filled notebooks with designs for flying machines. Who is this person?
Answer: Leonardo da Vinci - Born Temujin, this conqueror united the Mongol tribes and in 1206 founded the largest contiguous land empire in history. Who is this person?
Answer: Genghis Khan - This French peasant girl helped lift the siege of Orléans in 1429, was burned at the stake in 1431, and was canonized as a saint in 1920. Who is this person?
Answer: Joan of Arc - This Pakistani physicist shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for electroweak unification — Pakistan's only Nobel laureate in science. Who is this person?
Answer: Abdus Salam - This 19th-century mathematician worked with Charles Babbage and published the first algorithm intended for a machine, the Analytical Engine. Who is this person?
Answer: Ada Lovelace - This 13th-century Sufi poet wrote the Masnavi, lived in Konya, and is one of the world's most widely read poets. Who is this person?
Answer: Jalaluddin Rumi - This philosopher-poet, Pakistan's national poet, delivered the Allahabad Address in 1930 calling for a separate Muslim state. Who is this person?
Answer: Allama Muhammad Iqbal - This Urdu poet wrote the famous poem 'Hum Dekhenge', spent years in prison for his political beliefs, and is Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet. Who is this person?
Answer: Faiz Ahmed Faiz - This entrepreneur launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room in 2004 and renamed its parent company Meta in 2021. Who is this person?
Answer: Mark Zuckerberg - Born in India, this executive joined Google in 2004 and became its CEO in 2015, later also leading Alphabet. Who is this person?
Answer: Sundar Pichai - This Jamaican sprinter won eight Olympic gold medals and set the 100 metres world record of 9.58 seconds in 2009. Who is this person?
Answer: Usain Bolt - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: Abdul Sattar Edhi - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: Abdus Salam - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: Ada Lovelace - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: Alan Turing - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: Albert Einstein - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: Alexander the Great - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: Muhammad Iqbal - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: A. P. J. Abdul Kalam - Photo question: who is the person in this
portrait?
Answer: Babar Azam
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