Trivia questions with answers
306 questions across 9 topics, at three levels, and every answer has the source we checked it against right beside it. Run them as a quiz on one phone with team scores, or print a question sheet and a matching answer key.
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Funny trivia questions
True answers that sound made up. These get the biggest reaction when you read the answer out, so save one for the end of each round.
Which sea is called 'dead' because it is too salty for fish to live in?
Answer: The Dead Sea
Jupiter's moon Ganymede is larger than which planet?
Answer: Mercury
Which planet takes longer to spin once on its axis (243 Earth days) than to travel once around the Sun?
Answer: Venus
Which metal is liquid at standard room temperature and pressure?
Answer: Mercury
Which volcanic rock is so full of air bubbles that many samples float on water?
Answer: Pumice
What do we call the sound caused by lightning?
Answer: Thunder
How many arms does a typical snowflake grow, thanks to the hexagonal structure of ice?
Answer: Six
Roughly how many bones does a human have at birth, before some fuse together?
Answer: About 270
What is the name of the smallest bone in the human body, found in the middle ear?
Answer: Stapes
The inner ear part involved in hearing is named after the Latin word for what animal's shell?
Answer: Snail
What unusual shape are wombat droppings?
Answer: Cubes
Why is a wombat's pouch backward-facing?
Answer: So soil does not fill it when the wombat digs
What is a group of flamingos called, besides a stand?
Answer: A flamboyance
Flamingo parents feed their chicks a kind of what, produced in glands?
Answer: Crop milk
How many hearts does an octopus have?
Answer: Three
Octopus blood carries oxygen with a protein rich in which metal?
Answer: Copper
What colour is a giraffe's tongue?
Answer: Black
Which duck-billed Australian animal is a mammal that lays eggs?
Answer: The platypus
Male platypuses have a spur on each hind leg that can inject what?
Answer: Venom
How often do three-toed sloths come down to the ground to go to the toilet?
Answer: About once a week
What grows in a sloth's fur and helps camouflage it from predators?
Answer: Algae
About how many hours a day does a koala sleep?
Answer: 20 hours
What is a group of owls called?
Answer: A parliament
What is a group of crows called?
Answer: A murder
The word hippopotamus comes from Greek words meaning what?
Answer: River horse
A hippo's reddish skin secretion is sometimes nicknamed what?
Answer: Blood sweat
Which parent seahorse carries the eggs in a pouch?
Answer: The father (male)
What organ do seahorses lack, so they must eat constantly?
Answer: A stomach
Which ruminant regularly climbs trees?
Answer: The goat
Pigs can show what ability when looking at a mirror?
Answer: Self-recognition
What do honey bees perform to tell nestmates where food is?
Answer: A waggle dance
Besides a bloom, what is a group of jellyfish called?
Answer: A smack
What do a camel's humps mainly store?
Answer: Fat
What biting pests does the zebra's striped coat help deter?
Answer: Blood-sucking flies
Who discovered the Terracotta Army in China in 1974?
Answer: Local farmers
The word zipper was first used by a rubber company to describe the fastener on what type of footwear?
Answer: Rubber boots (galoshes)
Karaoke comes from Japanese words meaning 'empty' and what musical group?
Answer: Orchestra
Is the word emoji related to the English word emotion?
Answer: No, it is a coincidence
The word boycott comes from the name of which Irish land agent, Captain Charles who?
Answer: Boycott
What figure of speech joins opposite meanings, as in the phrase jumbo shrimp?
Answer: An oxymoron
What is the & symbol called, a name slurred from the old phrase 'and per se and'?
Answer: Ampersand
What is the word for a mishearing that gives a phrase a new meaning, coined by Sylvia Wright in 1954?
Answer: Mondegreen
The word muscle comes from a Latin word meaning which small animal?
Answer: Mouse
The dandelion's name comes from French words meaning the tooth of which animal?
Answer: A lion
The word jumbo, meaning very large, comes from the name of what animal?
Answer: An elephant (named Jumbo)
What was 'dord', a made-up word that appeared by mistake in a 1934 Merriam-Webster dictionary?
Answer: A ghost word, defined as 'density'
Botanically speaking, is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?
Answer: A fruit (a berry)
What looks like a banana plant's tree trunk but is actually a pseudo-what?
Answer: Pseudostem
The tiny 'seeds' on the outside of a strawberry are really what?
Answer: Achenes (tiny fruits, each with a seed inside)
Where do peanut pods grow: on branches, on vines, or underground?
Answer: Underground
The cacao tree's Latin genus name, Theobroma, means what in English?
Answer: Food of the gods
Honey found at ancient archaeological sites, thousands of years old, was still what?
Answer: Edible
The cashew nut hangs from the bottom of a fruit-like stalk. What is that stalk called?
Answer: Cashew apple
Roughly what percentage of a watermelon is water?
Answer: 91 percent
What color were carrots grown in West Asia, India and Europe in the 10th century?
Answer: Purple
On a traditional six-sided die, opposite faces always add up to what number?
Answer: 7
The very first basketball goal was what kind of everyday fruit container?
Answer: A peach basket
Volleyball was first called by what name, which came from badminton?
Answer: Mintonette
In golf, what is it called when a player sinks the ball on the first stroke from the tee?
Answer: A hole-in-one
In water polo, players cannot do what in the pool, which makes it very tiring?
Answer: Touch the bottom
What is another name for a badminton shuttlecock?
Answer: A birdie
Geography trivia questions
Easy (16)
What is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level?
Answer: Mount Everest
Which is the largest of Earth's five oceans?
Answer: Pacific Ocean
What is the capital city of Canada?
Answer: Ottawa
What is the world's largest hot desert?
Answer: The Sahara
On which continent is the Sahara Desert found?
Answer: Africa
Which is the largest US state by area?
Answer: Alaska
Which is the smallest US state by area?
Answer: Rhode Island
In which US state is the Grand Canyon?
Answer: Arizona
Which country gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States as a gift?
Answer: France
Which continent contains the geographic South Pole?
Answer: Antarctica
Which continent is, on average, the coldest, driest and windiest?
Answer: Antarctica
What is the smallest country in the world, an enclave inside the city of Rome?
Answer: Vatican City
Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in which country?
Answer: Japan
The Sydney Opera House sits on the foreshore of which harbour?
Answer: Sydney Harbour
What is the capital city of Hawaii?
Answer: Honolulu
What is the capital city of Japan?
Answer: Tokyo
Medium (16)
Mount Everest is part of which great mountain range?
Answer: The Himalayas
The Challenger Deep, the deepest known point on Earth, lies in which trench?
Answer: Mariana Trench
What is the capital city of Australia?
Answer: Canberra
The Nile flows north and empties into which sea?
Answer: Mediterranean Sea
The Nile flows past which Egyptian capital city on its way to the sea?
Answer: Cairo
What is the capital city of Rhode Island?
Answer: Providence
Which river carved the Grand Canyon?
Answer: Colorado River
In which African country is Mount Kilimanjaro?
Answer: Tanzania
What is the capital city of Brazil?
Answer: Brasília
Which island country lies off Africa's southeastern coast and is the world's fourth-largest island?
Answer: Madagascar
In which US state is Mount Rushmore, with its four carved presidents?
Answer: South Dakota
In which country is the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu?
Answer: Peru
In which Indian city is the Taj Mahal?
Answer: Agra
Niagara Falls spans the border between New York and which Canadian province?
Answer: Ontario
Which US state joined the union on August 21, 1959?
Answer: Hawaii
Which sea is called 'dead' because it is too salty for fish to live in?
Answer: The Dead Sea
Hard (4)
What is the capital of Alaska?
Answer: Juneau
The Statue of Liberty stands on which island in New York Harbor?
Answer: Liberty Island
The Taj Mahal sits on the bank of which river?
Answer: Yamuna
Which lake in southern Siberia is the deepest lake in the world?
Answer: Lake Baikal
Space trivia questions
Easy (11)
Which is the largest planet in our Solar System?
Answer: Jupiter
Which planet is best known for its system of rings?
Answer: Saturn
Which planet is the fourth from the Sun?
Answer: Mars
Which planet is the closest to the Sun?
Answer: Mercury
In what year did humans first land on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission?
Answer: 1969
Who was the first human to walk on the Moon?
Answer: Neil Armstrong
Pluto was reclassified in 2006 as what kind of object?
Answer: A dwarf planet
What is the star at the center of our Solar System?
Answer: The Sun
What was the name of the Soviet space dog that was the first animal to orbit Earth?
Answer: Laika
What is Earth's only natural satellite?
Answer: The Moon
What is the name of the galaxy that includes our Solar System?
Answer: The Milky Way
Medium (14)
The Great Red Spot is a long-lasting storm on which planet?
Answer: Jupiter
Which is the largest of Jupiter's four Galilean moons?
Answer: Ganymede
Which planet in our Solar System is the hottest?
Answer: Venus
Which planet takes longer to spin once on its axis (243 Earth days) than to travel once around the Sun?
Answer: Venus
Which planet is the smallest in the Solar System?
Answer: Mercury
Which Apollo 11 astronaut was the Command Module Pilot, staying in orbit?
Answer: Michael Collins
Who became the first person to travel into outer space, in 1961?
Answer: Yuri Gagarin
What was the name of the spacecraft that carried Yuri Gagarin into orbit?
Answer: Vostok 1
Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, was launched in which year?
Answer: 1957
In which year was the Hubble Space Telescope launched?
Answer: 1990
Which planet is the eighth and farthest known planet orbiting the Sun?
Answer: Neptune
Who became the first American woman to fly in space, in 1983?
Answer: Sally Ride
What term describes the Moon's spin, which keeps the same side facing Earth?
Answer: Tidally locked
In which year was the first module of the International Space Station launched?
Answer: 1998
Hard (7)
Jupiter's moon Ganymede is larger than which planet?
Answer: Mercury
What are the names of Mars's two small moons?
Answer: Phobos and Deimos
What is the name of Pluto's largest moon?
Answer: Charon
Which astronomer first observed Uranus in 1781?
Answer: William Herschel
Which NASA space probe was the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space?
Answer: Voyager 1
In what year is Halley's Comet next expected to appear?
Answer: 2061
Which Mars rover landed in Jezero Crater in February 2021?
Answer: Perseverance
Science trivia questions
Easy (13)
What is the chemical symbol for gold?
Answer: Au
Which metal has the chemical symbol Fe?
Answer: Iron
What is the chemical symbol for silver?
Answer: Ag
Which element has the symbol He and atomic number 2?
Answer: Helium
Which chemical element, with the symbol H, is the lightest in the universe?
Answer: Hydrogen
What is the chemical symbol for oxygen?
Answer: O
What is the chemical formula of water?
Answer: H2O
At standard pressure, at what temperature in degrees Celsius does water freeze?
Answer: 0
On the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, which mineral defines the top rating of 10?
Answer: Diamond
Which gas do plants release as a byproduct of photosynthesis?
Answer: Oxygen
Which pigment gives most plants their green color?
Answer: Chlorophyll
What do we call the sound caused by lightning?
Answer: Thunder
In a primary rainbow, which color appears on the outer part of the arc?
Answer: Red
Medium (17)
Gold has what atomic number?
Answer: 79
Which element has the chemical symbol Na, taken from its Neo-Latin name natrium?
Answer: Sodium
What is the atomic number of iron?
Answer: 26
Which element has the symbol Pb, from the Latin word plumbum?
Answer: Lead
Which element has the symbol K, from the Neo-Latin word kalium?
Answer: Potassium
At standard sea level pressure, at what temperature in degrees Celsius does water boil?
Answer: 100
Which gas makes up the largest share of Earth's dry air, at about 78 percent?
Answer: Nitrogen
What is the speed of light in a vacuum, in metres per second, as defined in the SI system?
Answer: 299,792,458
Which instrument measures air pressure?
Answer: Barometer
Which weather instrument measures wind speed?
Answer: Anemometer
Which instrument detects ground shaking caused by earthquakes?
Answer: Seismometer
Granite and basalt belong to which rock type, formed when magma or lava cools and hardens?
Answer: Igneous
Which volcanic rock is so full of air bubbles that many samples float on water?
Answer: Pumice
Marble is a metamorphic rock that forms from which sedimentary rock, most commonly?
Answer: Limestone
Which scale, replacing the original Fujita Scale, rates tornadoes by the damage they cause?
Answer: Enhanced Fujita Scale
What do we call the balls or lumps of ice that fall from thunderstorm clouds?
Answer: Hailstones
How many arms does a typical snowflake grow, thanks to the hexagonal structure of ice?
Answer: Six
Hard (7)
Which metal is liquid at standard room temperature and pressure?
Answer: Mercury
Which German mineralogist introduced the Mohs hardness scale in 1812?
Answer: Friedrich Mohs
Which Russian chemist created the first generally accepted periodic table, in 1869?
Answer: Dmitri Mendeleev
By 2010, how many chemical elements had been discovered, completing the first seven rows of the periodic table?
Answer: 118
Which Italian scientist is usually credited with inventing the barometer in 1643?
Answer: Evangelista Torricelli
Among the three major rock types, fossils are most commonly found in which type?
Answer: Sedimentary
Which doctor invented the stethoscope in 1816?
Answer: René Laennec
Human body trivia questions
Easy (8)
Around how many bones does an adult human skeleton have?
Answer: About 206
Which bone in the thigh is the longest bone in the human body?
Answer: Femur
How many chambers does a human heart have?
Answer: Four
What is the largest organ of the human body?
Answer: Skin
How many permanent teeth do adults usually have?
Answer: 32
What are the two organs of the respiratory system that take in oxygen from the air called?
Answer: Lungs
How many pairs of ribs does a typical human have?
Answer: 12
What is the hole in the center of the iris that lets light into the eye?
Answer: Pupil
Medium (10)
Roughly how many bones does a human have at birth, before some fuse together?
Answer: About 270
What is the name of the smallest bone in the human body, found in the middle ear?
Answer: Stapes
How many baby teeth do children usually have?
Answer: 20
What is the hardest substance in the human body, covering the outside of teeth?
Answer: Enamel
Which protein in red blood cells carries oxygen and gives blood its red color?
Answer: Hemoglobin
Which part of the eye adjusts the size of the pupil?
Answer: Iris
What are the two types of light-sensing cells in the retina, one for dim light and one for color?
Answer: Rods and cones
Sweet, sour, salty, bitter and which fifth taste do our taste receptors sense?
Answer: Umami
Which organ is the largest internal organ in vertebrates and produces bile?
Answer: Liver
Which two bean-shaped organs filter blood to create urine?
Answer: Kidneys
Hard (3)
Which part of the brain, at the back of the skull, helps maintain balance?
Answer: Cerebellum
In which organ of the digestive tract does most nutrient absorption take place?
Answer: Small intestine
The inner ear part involved in hearing is named after the Latin word for what animal's shell?
Answer: Snail
Animal trivia questions
Easy (25)
What is a baby kangaroo called?
Answer: A joey
What unusual shape are wombat droppings?
Answer: Cubes
Wombats are marsupials native to which country?
Answer: Australia
What in a flamingo's diet gives it pink feathers?
Answer: Carotenoids (from plankton)
Flamingos usually rest standing on how many legs?
Answer: One
How many hearts does an octopus have?
Answer: Three
How many limbs does an octopus have?
Answer: Eight
Does every giraffe have its own unique coat pattern?
Answer: Yes
Which duck-billed Australian animal is a mammal that lays eggs?
Answer: The platypus
The koala is sometimes wrongly called a bear. What kind of mammal is it?
Answer: A marsupial
Koalas eat mostly the leaves of which kind of tree?
Answer: Eucalyptus
Penguins live almost entirely in which half of the world?
Answer: The Southern Hemisphere
What is a group of crows called?
Answer: A murder
Which parent seahorse carries the eggs in a pouch?
Answer: The father (male)
What is the largest living land animal?
Answer: The elephant
Resting sea otters may wrap themselves in what, so they do not drift out to sea?
Answer: Kelp
What is a young sheep called?
Answer: A lamb
What is a young goat called?
Answer: A kid
What is a young pig called?
Answer: A piglet
What is the largest animal known to have ever existed?
Answer: The blue whale
What is the fastest land animal?
Answer: The cheetah
What is the heaviest and largest living bird?
Answer: The ostrich
What is the only mammal capable of true, sustained flight?
Answer: The bat
What can many starfish regrow if they lose it?
Answer: Their arms
What is a baby zebra called?
Answer: A foal
Medium (20)
What is the name of the pouch a female kangaroo carries her young in?
Answer: Marsupium
Why is a wombat's pouch backward-facing?
Answer: So soil does not fill it when the wombat digs
What is a group of flamingos called, besides a stand?
Answer: A flamboyance
Octopus blood carries oxygen with a protein rich in which metal?
Answer: Copper
What colour is a giraffe's tongue?
Answer: Black
Male platypuses have a spur on each hind leg that can inject what?
Answer: Venom
How often do three-toed sloths come down to the ground to go to the toilet?
Answer: About once a week
What grows in a sloth's fur and helps camouflage it from predators?
Answer: Algae
About how many hours a day does a koala sleep?
Answer: 20 hours
What is a group of owls called?
Answer: A parliament
The word hippopotamus comes from Greek words meaning what?
Answer: River horse
A hippo's reddish skin secretion is sometimes nicknamed what?
Answer: Blood sweat
The axolotl, native to Mexico, is what kind of amphibian?
Answer: A salamander
The narwhal's long spiral tusk is really which kind of body part?
Answer: A tooth
A resting group of sea otters is called what?
Answer: A raft
Which ruminant regularly climbs trees?
Answer: The goat
What do honey bees perform to tell nestmates where food is?
Answer: A waggle dance
What do a camel's humps mainly store?
Answer: Fat
What biting pests does the zebra's striped coat help deter?
Answer: Blood-sucking flies
How many compartments does a cow's stomach have?
Answer: Four
Hard (10)
Flamingo parents feed their chicks a kind of what, produced in glands?
Answer: Crop milk
What are the horn-like structures on a giraffe's head called?
Answer: Ossicones
The platypus and echidnas belong to which group of egg-laying mammals?
Answer: Monotremes
How many toes do all sloths have on each rear limb?
Answer: Three
Hippos gather in groups called what?
Answer: Pods
What organ do seahorses lack, so they must eat constantly?
Answer: A stomach
An elephant's tusks are modified versions of which kind of tooth?
Answer: Incisors
Pigs can show what ability when looking at a mirror?
Answer: Self-recognition
Besides a bloom, what is a group of jellyfish called?
Answer: A smack
After the capybara, which rodent is the second largest living?
Answer: The beaver
History and inventions trivia
Easy (8)
Who was granted the first US patent for a telephone in 1876?
Answer: Alexander Graham Bell
In what year did the Wright brothers make the first powered airplane flight at Kitty Hawk?
Answer: 1903
Which British computer scientist invented the World Wide Web?
Answer: Tim Berners-Lee
Which ancient civilization built the mountaintop citadel of Machu Picchu in Peru?
Answer: The Inca
Only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still stands today. Which one?
Answer: The Great Pyramid of Giza
The teddy bear was named after which US president?
Answer: Theodore Roosevelt
In which Greek place were the ancient Olympic Games held?
Answer: Olympia
Pasteurization is named after which French microbiologist?
Answer: Louis Pasteur
Medium (15)
Johannes Gutenberg brought the movable-type printing press to Europe. What was his nationality?
Answer: German
The Wright brothers made their first flights near Kitty Hawk in which US state?
Answer: North Carolina
Which Scottish physician showed in 1928 that the mold Penicillium kills bacteria, leading to penicillin?
Answer: Alexander Fleming
Which French scholar announced in 1822 that he had worked out the Egyptian scripts on the Rosetta Stone?
Answer: Jean-Francois Champollion
How many raised dots are in a single braille cell?
Answer: Six
Which Swedish chemist invented dynamite in 1866?
Answer: Alfred Nobel
In 1796 which British physician showed that cowpox gave protection against smallpox?
Answer: Edward Jenner
The Eiffel Tower was built as the centrepiece of which 1889 event in Paris?
Answer: The 1889 World's Fair
Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for which of his wives?
Answer: Mumtaz Mahal
Which English king sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?
Answer: King John
Who discovered the Terracotta Army in China in 1974?
Answer: Local farmers
Which inventor created the phonograph in 1877?
Answer: Thomas Edison
In which English county is Stonehenge found?
Answer: Wiltshire
In what year was the Panama Canal formally opened?
Answer: 1914
Which American inventor patented the cotton gin in 1794?
Answer: Eli Whitney
Hard (10)
The Rosetta Stone has Greek text plus Egyptian hieroglyphs and which other Egyptian script?
Answer: Demotic
The hook-and-loop fastener Velcro was conceived in 1941 by an engineer from which country?
Answer: Switzerland
The modern ballpoint pen was patented in 1938 by a newspaper editor from which country?
Answer: Hungary
Which Roman emperor began building the Colosseum?
Answer: Vespasian
The Great Pyramid of Giza served as the tomb of which pharaoh?
Answer: Khufu
Which French sculptor designed the Statue of Liberty?
Answer: Frederic Auguste Bartholdi
Which Han dynasty court official is credited with the pulp papermaking process?
Answer: Cai Lun
The word zipper was first used by a rubber company to describe the fastener on what type of footwear?
Answer: Rubber boots (galoshes)
Early walls were joined together into one Great Wall of China during which dynasty?
Answer: The Qin dynasty
In what year did Sholes and Glidden typewriters establish the QWERTY key layout?
Answer: 1874
Word and language trivia
Easy (7)
The word alphabet is made from the names of the first two letters of which alphabet?
Answer: The Greek alphabet (alpha and beta)
How many letters are in the modern English alphabet?
Answer: 26
Which of these words reads the same backward as forward: planet, racecar, garden, window?
Answer: Racecar
Karaoke comes from Japanese words meaning 'empty' and what musical group?
Answer: Orchestra
The word dinosaur comes from Greek words meaning 'terrible' and which animal type?
Answer: Lizard
The word jumbo, meaning very large, comes from the name of what animal?
Answer: An elephant (named Jumbo)
The German word kindergarten literally means 'garden of' what?
Answer: Children
Medium (12)
The word robot was first used in a play by which Czech author?
Answer: Karel Capek
The word quarantine comes from a Venetian term meaning how many days?
Answer: Forty
How many letters are in the official Hawaiian alphabet?
Answer: 13
What is a sentence called that uses every letter of the alphabet at least once?
Answer: A pangram
The word tsunami comes from Japanese and literally means what kind of wave?
Answer: Harbour wave
Is the word emoji related to the English word emotion?
Answer: No, it is a coincidence
The word boycott comes from the name of which Irish land agent, Captain Charles who?
Answer: Boycott
What is a word like buzz or sizzle called, because it imitates a sound?
Answer: Onomatopoeia
What figure of speech joins opposite meanings, as in the phrase jumbo shrimp?
Answer: An oxymoron
What is the & symbol called, a name slurred from the old phrase 'and per se and'?
Answer: Ampersand
The word muscle comes from a Latin word meaning which small animal?
Answer: Mouse
The dandelion's name comes from French words meaning the tooth of which animal?
Answer: A lion
Hard (4)
What is the word for a mishearing that gives a phrase a new meaning, coined by Sylvia Wright in 1954?
Answer: Mondegreen
What was 'dord', a made-up word that appeared by mistake in a 1934 Merriam-Webster dictionary?
Answer: A ghost word, defined as 'density'
The word mile comes from a Latin phrase for the Roman mile, which was how many paces?
Answer: One thousand
The word ketchup comes from a Hokkien word for the brine of pickled what?
Answer: Fish or shellfish
Food trivia questions
Easy (10)
Botanically speaking, is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?
Answer: A fruit (a berry)
Botanically, what kind of fruit is a banana?
Answer: A berry
Where do peanut pods grow: on branches, on vines, or underground?
Answer: Underground
Chocolate is made from roasted and ground what?
Answer: Cocoa beans
Bees make honey mainly from the nectar of what?
Answer: Flowers
Maple syrup is made from the sap of what?
Answer: Maple trees
Popcorn pops because water inside the kernel turns into what?
Answer: Steam
A raisin is a dried version of which fruit?
Answer: Grape
Pumpkin pie is a traditional staple of which Canadian and American holidays, in one word?
Answer: Thanksgiving
Which cereal grain is the staple food of over half of the world's population?
Answer: Rice
Medium (13)
Tomatoes are native to which continent?
Answer: South America
What looks like a banana plant's tree trunk but is actually a pseudo-what?
Answer: Pseudostem
The tiny 'seeds' on the outside of a strawberry are really what?
Answer: Achenes (tiny fruits, each with a seed inside)
The peanut plant's wild relatives are native to which continent?
Answer: South America
The wax cells in a honeycomb have what shape?
Answer: Hexagons
Honey found at ancient archaeological sites, thousands of years old, was still what?
Answer: Edible
The potato belongs to the same plant family as the tomato. What is the family called?
Answer: Nightshade family
Vanilla comes from the seed pods of which family of flowering plants?
Answer: Orchids
Tofu is made by pressing the curds of what kind of milk?
Answer: Soy milk
The cashew nut hangs from the bottom of a fruit-like stalk. What is that stalk called?
Answer: Cashew apple
Butter is made by churning what dairy product?
Answer: Cream
Roughly what percentage of a watermelon is water?
Answer: 91 percent
What color were carrots grown in West Asia, India and Europe in the 10th century?
Answer: Purple
Hard (7)
Strawberries belong to the same plant family as roses. What is that family's Latin name?
Answer: Rosaceae
The cacao tree's Latin genus name, Theobroma, means what in English?
Answer: Food of the gods
Pineapple is the most economically important member of which plant family, whose name starts with 'Brome'?
Answer: Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads)
By weight, vanilla is the second most expensive spice. Which spice is the most expensive?
Answer: Saffron
About how many volumes of maple sap are boiled to make 1 volume of syrup?
Answer: Between 20 and 50
In which part of the world did the apple tree originate?
Answer: Central Asia
Botanically, a cucumber is classified as what type of berry, starting with 'p'?
Answer: A pepo
Sports and games trivia
Easy (14)
How many cards are in the most popular deck of playing cards, not counting jokers?
Answer: 52
How many pawns does each chess player start with?
Answer: 8
How many squares are on a chessboard?
Answer: 64
How many interlocking rings are in the Olympic symbol?
Answer: Five
How many players from each basketball team may be on the court at one time?
Answer: Five
How many players are on each team in a standard soccer match?
Answer: 11
In soccer, which player is allowed to use their hands during play?
Answer: The goalkeeper
How many players are on each team in baseball?
Answer: Nine
In baseball, how many strikes make a batter strike out?
Answer: Three
In golf, what is it called when a player sinks the ball on the first stroke from the tee?
Answer: A hole-in-one
In bowling, what is it called when you knock down all ten pins on your first roll?
Answer: A strike
What is another name for a badminton shuttlecock?
Answer: A birdie
With perfect play by both sides, how does a game of tic-tac-toe end?
Answer: In a draw
How many points is a touchdown worth in American football?
Answer: Six
Medium (19)
In a 52-card deck, how many ranks (ace, 2, 3 and so on) are in each suit?
Answer: 13
In chess, which color moves first?
Answer: White
How many pieces does each player have at the start of a game of American checkers?
Answer: 12
On a traditional six-sided die, opposite faces always add up to what number?
Answer: 7
How high above the court is a basketball rim, in feet?
Answer: 10 feet
The very first basketball goal was what kind of everyday fruit container?
Answer: A peach basket
How many players per team are on the ice at once in ice hockey, counting the goaltender?
Answer: Six
How many periods are in a professional ice hockey game?
Answer: Three
Volleyball was first called by what name, which came from badminton?
Answer: Mintonette
How many players per team are on the court in indoor volleyball?
Answer: Six
In rugby union, how many players are on each team?
Answer: 15
How many points is a try worth in rugby union?
Answer: Five
How many stumps are in a cricket wicket?
Answer: Three
How many balls are bowled in a standard over of cricket?
Answer: Six
What is the maximum number of clubs a golfer may carry during a round?
Answer: 14
How many strikes in a row make a perfect 300 game in tenpin bowling?
Answer: 12
What are curling stones made of?
Answer: Granite
What is the highest score possible with three darts?
Answer: 180
In table tennis, a game is won by the first player to reach how many points, unless it is tied at 10 all?
Answer: 11
Hard (6)
In water polo, players cannot do what in the pool, which makes it very tiring?
Answer: Touch the bottom
What is the official marathon distance in kilometres?
Answer: 42.195 km
How many tiles are in a standard double-six domino set?
Answer: 28
How many checkers does each player have in backgammon?
Answer: 15
Traditionally, how many feathers does a badminton shuttlecock have?
Answer: Sixteen
In darts, how many points is the inner bullseye worth?
Answer: 50
Printable trivia question sheet
Questions with an answer line for each, one sheet per team. The sheet uses the topics, levels and funny choice from the quiz above. Tap Make new sheets for a fresh set; the answer key below always matches.
This is what prints: the question sheet, sized for US Letter. Use your browser's Print (Ctrl+P, Cmd+P on a Mac, or Share then Print on a phone).Another sheet on this page is set to print.
The first 20 questions are on the sheet until you make a new set.
Trivia Team: ______________________
- What is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level?
- Mount Everest is part of which great mountain range?
- Which is the largest of Earth's five oceans?
- The Challenger Deep, the deepest known point on Earth, lies in which trench?
- What is the capital city of Australia?
- What is the capital city of Canada?
- What is the world's largest hot desert?
- On which continent is the Sahara Desert found?
- The Nile flows north and empties into which sea?
- The Nile flows past which Egyptian capital city on its way to the sea?
- Which is the largest US state by area?
- What is the capital of Alaska?
- Which is the smallest US state by area?
- What is the capital city of Rhode Island?
- In which US state is the Grand Canyon?
- Which river carved the Grand Canyon?
- Which country gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States as a gift?
- The Statue of Liberty stands on which island in New York Harbor?
- In which African country is Mount Kilimanjaro?
- Which continent contains the geographic South Pole?
Printable answer key
The answers in the same order as the question sheet, with the source for each. Keep score on the trivia night score sheet.
This is what prints: the answer key, sized for US Letter. Use your browser's Print (Ctrl+P, Cmd+P on a Mac, or Share then Print on a phone).Another sheet on this page is set to print.
Trivia: answer key
- Mount Everest (Wikipedia: Mount Everest)
- The Himalayas (Wikipedia: Mount Everest)
- Pacific Ocean (Wikipedia: Pacific Ocean)
- Mariana Trench (Wikipedia: Pacific Ocean)
- Canberra (Wikipedia: Canberra)
- Ottawa (Wikipedia: Ottawa)
- The Sahara (Wikipedia: Sahara)
- Africa (Wikipedia: Sahara)
- Mediterranean Sea (Wikipedia: Nile)
- Cairo (Wikipedia: Nile)
- Alaska (Wikipedia: Alaska)
- Juneau (Wikipedia: Alaska)
- Rhode Island (Wikipedia: Rhode Island)
- Providence (Wikipedia: Rhode Island)
- Arizona (Wikipedia: Grand Canyon)
- Colorado River (Wikipedia: Grand Canyon)
- France (Wikipedia: Statue of Liberty)
- Liberty Island (Wikipedia: Statue of Liberty)
- Tanzania (Wikipedia: Mount Kilimanjaro)
- Antarctica (Wikipedia: Antarctica)
Answers checked 2 October 2026. tallyandtable.com/trivia-questions
How we checked every answer
A wrong answer read out at a trivia night starts an argument nobody can settle. So every question here follows three rules:
- The source must say it. Each answer was checked on 2 October 2026 against the page linked beside it, and the page states the answer in its own words. The check was repeated by script against the live article text, and any question whose supporting sentence could not be found was cut.
- One fair answer only. We left out records that keep changing (sports records, tallest buildings, current title holders), "firsts" that historians argue about, and anything where the answer depends on how you count. After launch, a second reviewer re-opened the sources, rewrote three questions to make them tighter and replaced or dropped two whose source did not say enough.
- Family-friendly. No questions about wars, disasters or deaths, nothing political, and no song lyrics.
Spot something wrong? Use the suggestion box at the bottom of the page and we will check it again. Planning a December party? Try our Christmas trivia, checked the same way.
Running a trivia round at home
- Mix the levels. Seven medium, two easy and one hard per round keeps every team in it.
- Even teams. Deal people into teams with the team generator and give them names with the team name generator.
- One reader. The host reads each question twice and holds the phone, so nobody sees the answer early.
- Settle disputes with the source. Tap Show answer and the source appears under it.
- New group? Start with a five-minute icebreaker game before the first round.
Trivia questions about this page
What are some good trivia questions with answers?
Ones with a single answer nobody can argue with. Three from this page: What is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level? (Mount Everest) What is the chemical symbol for gold? (Au) What is a baby kangaroo called? (A joey)
What are some funny trivia questions?
Questions where the true answer sounds made up. Which sea is called 'dead' because it is too salty for fish to live in? (The Dead Sea) Jupiter's moon Ganymede is larger than which planet? (Mercury) Which planet takes longer to spin once on its axis (243 Earth days) than to travel once around the Sun? (Venus) Tick "Funny ones only" in the quiz for all 61.
What are easy trivia questions for kids?
What is a baby kangaroo called? (A joey) What unusual shape are wombat droppings? (Cubes) Turn off Medium and Hard in the quiz to play only the 112 easy questions.
How were the answers checked?
Each answer was checked on 2 October 2026 against the page linked next to it, and that page had to state the answer. Anything we could not confirm, or that had more than one fair answer, was dropped.
How do you host a trivia night?
Split into teams of three to five, play rounds of ten, and let teams write answers on paper. Read the answers out after each round, mark the sheets and keep score. Our trivia night score sheet makes printable answer sheets and keeps a running scoreboard with double-points and wager rounds.