Business Tense Review Trivia Quiz and Riddles

Which sets of tenses are these the general forms for?

1. be + past participle (e.g. gone) - Passive

2. have + past participle – Present perfect

3. be + ing - Progressive

  1. ‘Blue chip’ companies _______________ (name) after poker chips, but why are they called ‘blue’ chip?
  2. In which country _______________ (the Industrial Revolution start)?
  3. Which Italian fashion designer ________________ (work) as a bellboy in the Savoy in London?
  4. What _______________________ (originally call) ‘Brad’s drink’?
  5. Which company ___________________ (found) in the Austrian Empire and ____________________ (produce) cars for nearly a century?
  6. How _____________ (acetylsalicylic acid better know)?
  7. What _________________ (Henry Ford call) his first car?
  8. Who ______________________ (issue) the first US credit card?
  9. What ___________________________ (Nintendo produce) before computer games?
  10. What _________________________ (design) jointly by Daimler-Benz and Swatch?
  11. Which London institution __________________ (have) the motto ‘My word is my bond’ since 1801? 
  12. Which city ______ (be)  the HQ of the European Central Bank _______ (preposition)?
  13. What ____(be) special ________ (preposition) the domain name ‘www.symbolics.com’? 
  14. Which Shakespeare play _______(have) the line ‘Neither a borrower _____ a lender be’?
  15. In which country _____(do) the Industrial Revolution start?
ANSWERS:

  1. It’s the highest value poker chip
  2. England
  3. Gucci
  4. Pepsi
  5. Skoda
  6. Aspirin
  7. A quadricycle
  8. Diner’s Club
  9. Playing cards
  10. The SMART car
  11. The stock exchange
  12. Frankfurt
  13. It was the first domain name ever
  14. Hamlet
  15. England
15 Riddles for English language Students 

Easy riddles

Here are some riddles geared towards beginners. These riddles focus on spelling, pronunciation, specific groups of vocabulary, such as body parts, and how some English words have different meanings.

1. Riddle: How many letters are in the alphabet?

This riddle is ideal for getting students to think about spelling and to review the alphabet.

2. Riddle: What has a face and two hands but no arms or legs?

This riddle focuses in on specific vocabulary related to clocks. It can also encourage a discussion about the many uses or double meanings of English words. For example, “face” on a person and the “face” of a clock and “hands” of a person and the “hands” of a clock.

3. Riddle: There’s a house. One enters it blind and comes out seeing. What is it?

This riddle explores a rather common English idiom the relationship between “seeing” and being “enlightened” or “knowledgeable.”

4. Riddle:

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives?

– 18th Century England

This riddle is fun for the rhyming and pronunciation practice.

Medium and slightly hard riddles

For your more intermediate students, try some of the following riddles. These riddles will test your ESL students’ knowledge and understanding of different parts of speech, such as adverbs, and homonyms.

5. Riddle: What instrument can you hear but never see? 

You can explore the different senses with this riddle and look at adverbs such as “never.”

6. Riddle: What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment and never in one thousand years?

Reviewing words for time. Also, you can review the adverbs “once” and “twice,” which are common phrases used in English.

7. Riddle: Which letter of the alphabet has the most water? 

Here students must explore the idea of homonyms.

Difficult riddles

These riddles should be saved for your advanced students. The language skills needed to successfully solve them is more complex than the previous riddles mentioned. Students can use these riddles to practice and review grammar rules, as well as exercising their knowledge of vocabulary.

8. Riddle: What five-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?

Students must think about spelling to solve this riddle. Additionally, you could introduce a discussion about comparative adjectives such as “shorter” or “longer.”

9. Riddle: What word begins and ends with an E but only has one letter?

Again, another brain teaser that tests students’ range in vocabulary and spelling.

10. Riddle: I am a word. If you pronounce me rightly, it will be wrong. If you pronounce me wrong it is right. What word am I?

Students must think very carefully to analyze what word it could be.

Riddles from Literature

For your students who’re advanced or bookworms, try some of famous riddles from literature.

11. Riddle:

“What walks on four feet in the morning, 

two in the afternoon,

and three at night?”

– “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles

This riddle is useful for critical thinking and reviewing times of the day.

12. Riddle:

“This thing all things devours;

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats mountain down.”

– “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien

This is a great example of personification, one of the main literary devices used in English literature.

13. Riddle:

“Voiceless it cries,

Wingless flutters,

Toothless bites,

Mouthless mutters.”

– “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien

Again, personification is exhibited here. Your students will need to use their general critical thinking skills, and you can also look at the construction and meaning of a word’s root + “less” such as “wingless,” meaning “without wings.”

14. Riddle:

“If you break me, I’ll not stop working.

 If you can touch me, my work is done. 

If you lose me, you must find me with a ring soon after. What am I?”

– “Wizard and Glass” by Stephen King

A real brain teaser. You could look at words in different forms such as “working” (verb) and “my work” (noun).

15. Riddle:

“First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies,
Next tell me what’s always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?
And finally give me the sound often heard,
During the search for a hard-to-find word.
Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?”

– “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” by J.K. Rowling

ANSWERS:

  1.  11 ( t-h-e a-l-p-h-a-b-e-t).
  2.  A clock.
  3.  A school.
  4. One.
  5. Your voice.
  6. The letter “M.”
  7. C (sea).
  8. Short (Short-er).
  9. Envelope.
  10. Wind.
  11. Man.
  12. Time.
  13. Wind.
  14. The heart.
  15. Spider (spy – d – er).