Middle Ages Jeopardy

Knights, castles, feudalism, and the Black Death: a Middle Ages review for 7th grade world history, free to copy and played with phone buzzers.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

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Every clue on this board

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Feudalism

$200
At the very top of the feudal system sat this ruler.
Who was the king?
$400
Farmers who were tied to a lord's land and could not leave without permission were called these.
Who were serfs?
$600
Land a lord granted to a lesser noble in exchange for loyalty and military service was called this.
What is a fief?
$800
A noble who received land from a lord and promised him loyalty and service was the lord's this.
What is a vassal?
$1,000
A knight or noble swore this pledge of loyalty to his lord in a special ceremony.
What is fealty?

Knights and Castles

$200
This deep ditch, often filled with water, surrounded many castles.
What is a moat?
$400
In this contest, two knights on horseback charge at each other with long lances.
What is jousting?
$600
A boy training to be a knight served first as a page and then as this.
What is a squire?
$800
This code of behavior asked knights to be brave, loyal, and to protect the weak.
What is chivalry?
$1,000
The strongest tower of a castle, used as a last line of defense, was called this.
What is the keep?

Life on the Manor

$200
Most people in medieval Europe were these poor farmers.
Who were peasants?
$400
Serfs owed the lord part of their harvest and many days each year of this, working his fields.
What is labor?
$600
Serfs had to pay to grind their grain into flour at this building, owned by the lord.
What is the mill?
$800
This farming method rotated crops through three fields, leaving one to rest each year.
What is the three-field system?
$1,000
A manor aimed to be this, producing nearly everything its people needed.
What is self-sufficient?

The Medieval Church

$200
This leader of the Catholic Church lived in Rome.
Who was the pope?
$400
These men lived in monasteries and copied books by hand.
Who were monks?
$600
These huge churches, like Notre-Dame in Paris, had tall spires and stained-glass windows.
What are Gothic cathedrals?
$800
People paid this church tax, equal to one-tenth of their income or harvest.
What is a tithe?
$1,000
The Church's harshest punishment cut a person off from the Church and its sacraments.
What is excommunication?

The Crusades

$200
Crusaders fought to control this city, holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims.
What is Jerusalem?
$400
One lasting result of the Crusades was more of this between Europe and the Middle East.
What is trade?
$600
Nicknamed for his courage, this English king led an army in the Third Crusade.
Who was Richard I (the Lionheart)?
$800
In 1187, this Muslim sultan recaptured Jerusalem from the crusaders.
Who was Saladin?
$1,000
In 1095, this pope called for the First Crusade.
Who was Pope Urban II?

The Black Death

$200
The disease was spread by fleas that lived on these animals.
What are rats?
$400
In 1347, the disease reached Europe aboard these, arriving at ports in Sicily.
What are ships?
$600
Historians believe the Black Death was mostly this disease, named for painful swellings.
What is bubonic plague?
$800
So many people died that there was a shortage of these, letting survivors demand higher wages.
What are workers?
$1,000
Ports made arriving ships wait 40 days before landing, giving us this word from the Italian for forty.
What is quarantine?

Final Jeopardy — Limits on the King

Sealed by King John of England in 1215, this document said that even the king had to follow the law.

What is the Magna Carta?

How to run this board

This board covers medieval Europe from the ground up: how feudalism tied kings, lords, knights, and peasants together, life inside a castle and on a manor, the power of the Church, the Crusades, and the Black Death.

A quick feudal pyramid drawn on the board before play gives students something to point at during the first column, and it pays off again in the Life on the Manor clues when the question is who owed what to whom.

Medieval history invites a little theater. Name the teams after houses or kingdoms and let the leading team be the king's court until someone takes the lead from them. It costs nothing and middle schoolers play harder for it.

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