Trivia Questions: 150 Fun Questions and Answers (Printable)

Here are 150 trivia questions with answers, split into 11 rounds you can mix and match: general knowledge, geography, science, history, movies and TV, sports, food, animals, an easy round for kids, a hard round for adults and a multiple-choice round. Every answer was checked, nothing depends on this week's news, and the whole list comes as a free printable with a separate answer key and scorecard. Below the questions you'll find a step-by-step guide to hosting a trivia night, plus our holiday trivia collections for every season.

Our free Family Game Night board. Teams buzz in from their phones, and the board keeps score.

Jump to: General knowledge · Geography · Science · History · Movies and TV · Sports · Food · Animals · Kids · Hard · Multiple choice · How to host · Printable · Holiday trivia

Pick the right trivia questions for your crowd

You don't need all 150 in one night. A comfortable game is 30 to 40 questions, which runs about an hour with two to six teams once you add time for arguing and snacks. Use this table to build your game from the rounds below:

Every round below runs roughly easy to hard. If you're mixing ages, take the first few questions from each round and save the bottom of each list for the adults.

Fun general knowledge trivia questions

The warm-up round. Most people will know most of these, which is the point: early points get quiet players talking.

1. How many days are in a leap year? Answer: 366.
2. What color do you get when you mix blue and yellow paint? Answer: Green.
3. How many sides does a hexagon have? Answer: Six.
4. In a standard deck of playing cards, how many cards are there without the jokers? Answer: 52.
5. How many minutes are in a full day? Answer: 1,440.
6. What does the "www" at the start of a web address stand for? Answer: World Wide Web.
7. Who painted the Mona Lisa? Answer: Leonardo da Vinci.
8. How many strings does a standard guitar have? Answer: Six.
9. What is the Roman numeral for 50? Answer: L.
10. On the classic U.S. Monopoly board, what are the two most expensive properties? Answer: Boardwalk and Park Place.
11. Which Shakespeare play has a prince who asks, "To be, or not to be"? Answer: Hamlet.
12. How many keys does a standard piano have? Answer: 88.
13. In what year did Hungarian professor Ernő Rubik invent his famous cube puzzle? Answer: 1974.
14. What is the only letter of the alphabet that doesn't appear in the name of any U.S. state? Answer: Q.
15. How many colors are in a rainbow when you use the classic "ROY G BIV" list? Answer: Seven (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet).

Geography trivia questions

Good for a map on the wall and an argument about Australia.

16. What is the capital of Japan? Answer: Tokyo.
17. What is the largest ocean on Earth? Answer: The Pacific Ocean.
18. On which continent is the Sahara Desert? Answer: Africa.
19. What is the capital of Canada? Answer: Ottawa.
20. Which U.S. state is made up entirely of islands? Answer: Hawaii.
21. Which river flows through Paris? Answer: The Seine.
22. What is the capital of Australia? Answer: Canberra (not Sydney).
23. What is the main language spoken in Brazil? Answer: Portuguese.
24. What is the smallest country in the world by area? Answer: Vatican City.
25. Which two countries share the longest international border in the world? Answer: The United States and Canada.
26. The ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu is in which country? Answer: Peru.
27. Which U.S. state has the longest coastline? Answer: Alaska.
28. Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in which country? Answer: Tanzania.
29. What is the longest mountain range on any continent? Answer: The Andes, in South America.
30. What is the capital of Turkey? Answer: Ankara (not Istanbul).

Science trivia questions

31. Which planet is known as the Red Planet? Answer: Mars.
32. What is the largest planet in our solar system? Answer: Jupiter.
33. What gas do plants take in from the air to make their food? Answer: Carbon dioxide.
34. What is the closest star to Earth? Answer: The Sun.
35. What force keeps the planets in orbit around the Sun? Answer: Gravity.
36. What is the hardest natural substance on Earth? Answer: Diamond.
37. What is the largest organ of the human body? Answer: The skin.
38. How many bones are in the adult human body? Answer: 206.
39. At sea level, what temperature in Fahrenheit does water boil at? Answer: 212°F.
40. What is the chemical symbol for gold? Answer: Au.
41. Which part of a cell is often called its "powerhouse"? Answer: The mitochondria.
42. What gas makes up most of Earth's atmosphere? Answer: Nitrogen (about 78 percent).
43. Which scientist developed the theory of general relativity? Answer: Albert Einstein.
44. Which blood type is known as the universal donor for red blood cells? Answer: O negative.
45. What is the smallest bone in the human body? Answer: The stapes, in the middle ear.

History trivia questions

46. Who was the first president of the United States? Answer: George Washington.
47. In what year did Christopher Columbus first reach the Americas? Answer: 1492.
48. Which ancient civilization built the pyramids of Giza? Answer: The ancient Egyptians.
49. Which country gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States? Answer: France.
50. In what year did the Titanic sink? Answer: 1912.
51. Who was the first person to walk on the Moon? Answer: Neil Armstrong.
52. In what year did that first Moon landing happen? Answer: 1969.
53. In what year did World War II end? Answer: 1945.
54. Which wall, dividing a German city, came down in 1989? Answer: The Berlin Wall.
55. Which founding document of the United States begins with the words "We the People"? Answer: The U.S. Constitution.
56. Who gave the "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington? Answer: Martin Luther King Jr.
57. Who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, in 1932? Answer: Amelia Earhart.
58. Which British monarch reigned for more than 70 years, the longest of any in British history? Answer: Queen Elizabeth II.
59. Which explorer led the first expedition to sail all the way around the world, though he died before it finished? Answer: Ferdinand Magellan.
60. Which 1919 treaty formally ended World War I between Germany and the Allied Powers? Answer: The Treaty of Versailles.

Movie and TV trivia questions

All family-friendly, so this round works for any table.

61. What is the name of the cowboy doll in "Toy Story"? Answer: Woody.
62. In "Finding Nemo," what kind of fish is Nemo? Answer: A clownfish.
63. What is the name of the snowman in "Frozen"? Answer: Olaf.
64. What is the name of the lion cub who grows up to be king in "The Lion King"? Answer: Simba.
65. Which school of witchcraft and wizardry does Harry Potter attend? Answer: Hogwarts.
66. What color are Dorothy's magic slippers in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz"? Answer: Ruby red.
67. Which cartoon family lives at 742 Evergreen Terrace? Answer: The Simpsons.
68. In the original "Star Wars" trilogy, who turns out to be Luke Skywalker's father? Answer: Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker).
69. What is the name of the coffee shop where the gang hangs out on "Friends"? Answer: Central Perk.
70. In "Back to the Future," what kind of car does Doc Brown turn into a time machine? Answer: A DeLorean.
71. Which TV comedy is set at the Scranton branch of the Dunder Mifflin paper company? Answer: "The Office."
72. In "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," which candy does Elliott use to lure E.T.? Answer: Reese's Pieces.
73. What is the name of the hidden African nation in "Black Panther"? Answer: Wakanda.
74. What was Walt Disney's first full-length animated feature film, released in 1937? Answer: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
75. Which movie won the very first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, in 2002? Answer: "Shrek."

Sports trivia questions

76. In which sport would you see a slam dunk? Answer: Basketball.
77. How many points is a touchdown worth in American football? Answer: Six.
78. How many players does each soccer team have on the field at once? Answer: 11.
79. How many holes are in a standard round of golf? Answer: 18.
80. In bowling, what is it called when you knock down all ten pins with your first ball? Answer: A strike.
81. How many defensive players does a baseball team have on the field? Answer: Nine.
82. How often are the Summer Olympic Games held? Answer: Every four years.
83. In tennis, what word means a score of zero? Answer: Love.
84. How long is a marathon, in miles? Answer: 26.2 miles.
85. In hockey and soccer, what is it called when one player scores three goals in a single game? Answer: A hat trick.
86. Which Winter Olympic sport combines cross-country skiing with rifle shooting? Answer: Biathlon.
87. Which American swimmer won 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold, at the Games from 2004 to 2016? Answer: Michael Phelps.

Food trivia questions

88. What fruit is guacamole made from? Answer: Avocado.
89. Which country is the home of pizza? Answer: Italy (it was born in Naples).
90. Which fruit wears its seeds on the outside? Answer: The strawberry.
91. What is the main ingredient in hummus? Answer: Chickpeas.
92. Which vegetable is fermented to make sauerkraut? Answer: Cabbage.
93. What is sushi often wrapped in? Answer: Nori, a type of dried seaweed.
94. Which nut is ground up to make marzipan? Answer: Almonds.
95. Which Swiss cheese is famous for its big holes? Answer: Emmental (often sold in the U.S. simply as "Swiss cheese").
96. What bean is fermented to make Japanese miso? Answer: The soybean.
97. Which pasta's name means "little tongues" in Italian? Answer: Linguine.
98. Which spice, picked by hand from a crocus flower, is the most expensive spice by weight? Answer: Saffron.
99. Mozzarella di bufala is made from the milk of which animal? Answer: The water buffalo.

Animal trivia questions

100. What is the fastest land animal? Answer: The cheetah.
101. What is the tallest animal in the world? Answer: The giraffe.
102. What do giant pandas eat almost all day? Answer: Bamboo.
103. What is a baby kangaroo called? Answer: A joey.
104. What is a group of lions called? Answer: A pride.
105. What is the national bird of the United States? Answer: The bald eagle.
106. What is the largest animal known to have ever lived? Answer: The blue whale.
107. What is the only mammal that can truly fly? Answer: The bat.
108. Which living bird lays the biggest eggs? Answer: The ostrich.
109. How many hearts does an octopus have? Answer: Three.
110. What is a group of crows called? Answer: A murder.
111. How many legs does a spider have? Answer: Eight.

Easy trivia questions for kids

These work for ages 5 and up. Let the youngest player on each team answer first, and give a bonus point for the first kid who shouts the answer with their hand up.

112. What color is a ripe banana? Answer: Yellow.
113. What do bees make? Answer: Honey.
114. What is frozen water called? Answer: Ice.
115. What do you call a baby dog? Answer: A puppy.
116. Which planet do we live on? Answer: Earth.
117. What shape has three sides? Answer: A triangle.
118. What do caterpillars turn into? Answer: Butterflies (or moths).
119. How many legs does an insect have? Answer: Six.
120. What is the name of Mickey Mouse's girlfriend? Answer: Minnie Mouse.
121. In "Frozen," which sister has icy powers? Answer: Elsa.
122. What kind of sea creature is SpongeBob's best friend, Patrick? Answer: A starfish (also called a sea star).
123. How many continents are there? Answer: Seven.
124. What does a thermometer measure? Answer: Temperature.
125. What are the three primary colors in painting? Answer: Red, yellow and blue.
126. Which planet is closest to the Sun? Answer: Mercury.

Hard trivia questions for adults

For the person at the party who reads encyclopedias for fun. We score these at 2 points each.

127. Who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Answer: Michelangelo.
128. Which composer kept writing symphonies after going almost completely deaf, including his famous Ninth? Answer: Ludwig van Beethoven.
129. What is the capital of Mongolia? Answer: Ulaanbaatar.
130. What is the capital of the Canadian province of British Columbia? Answer: Victoria (not Vancouver).
131. What is the longest river in Asia? Answer: The Yangtze.
132. What is the deepest known point in Earth's oceans? Answer: The Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench.
133. Which chemical element has the symbol W? Answer: Tungsten.
134. Which planet takes longer to spin once on its axis than to travel once around the Sun? Answer: Venus.
135. In what year did Constantinople fall to the Ottoman Empire? Answer: 1453.
136. Who wrote the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude"? Answer: Gabriel García Márquez.

Multiple-choice trivia questions

Great for big groups and offices. Read all four choices, let everyone answer at once (fingers up for a, b, c or d works fine), then reveal.

137. Which planet is closest in size to Earth? (a) Mars (b) Venus (c) Mercury (d) Neptune. Answer: (b) Venus.
138. What is the capital of New Zealand? (a) Auckland (b) Wellington (c) Christchurch (d) Queenstown. Answer: (b) Wellington.
139. In which city is the Colosseum? (a) Athens (b) Rome (c) Istanbul (d) Naples. Answer: (b) Rome.
140. Which is the largest country by land area? (a) Canada (b) China (c) Russia (d) The United States. Answer: (c) Russia.
141. What is the main language spoken in Argentina? (a) Portuguese (b) Spanish (c) Italian (d) English. Answer: (b) Spanish.
142. Who wrote "Pride and Prejudice"? (a) Charlotte Brontë (b) Jane Austen (c) Emily Dickinson (d) Louisa May Alcott. Answer: (b) Jane Austen.
143. What is the longest bone in the human body? (a) Femur (b) Tibia (c) Humerus (d) Spine. Answer: (a) Femur.
144. Which metal is a liquid at room temperature? (a) Lead (b) Tin (c) Mercury (d) Zinc. Answer: (c) Mercury.
145. How many players from each team are on the court in indoor volleyball? (a) Four (b) Five (c) Six (d) Seven. Answer: (c) Six.
146. How many teeth does a full set of adult human teeth have, including wisdom teeth? (a) 24 (b) 28 (c) 32 (d) 36. Answer: (c) 32.
147. In what year did the first iPhone go on sale? (a) 2005 (b) 2007 (c) 2009 (d) 2010. Answer: (b) 2007.
148. Which instrument does a concert musician play with 47 strings and seven foot pedals? (a) Cello (b) Harp (c) Piano (d) Sitar. Answer: (b) Harp.
149. Which of these is NOT one of the five Great Lakes? (a) Lake Erie (b) Lake Huron (c) Lake Champlain (d) Lake Ontario. Answer: (c) Lake Champlain.
150. Which of these animals is a marsupial that carries its baby in a pouch? (a) Koala (b) Giant panda (c) Sloth (d) Lemur. Answer: (a) Koala.

How to host a trivia night

A trivia night lives or dies on the host, not the questions. Here's the setup that runs smoothly with six people or sixty.

Before the night

• Pick 30 to 40 questions. Use the crowd table above. Four rounds of eight to ten questions is a good rhythm: long enough to build drama, short enough that nobody checks their phone.
• Make teams of two to six people. Bigger teams mean one person answers and five people watch. If you're at home, split families up so the know-it-all uncle and his know-it-all daughter are on different sides.
• Read every question out loud once before the party. You'll catch tongue-twisters and any answer you can't pronounce (Ulaanbaatar trips everyone up).
• Print the answer key separately. Hosts who read from a phone end up scrolling past the answer in front of everyone.
• Prepare a tie-breaker. Use a number question so the closest guess wins, like "In what year was the first Super Bowl played?" (1967).

During the game

• Read each question twice, slowly. Then give a set time, usually 30 seconds, before you take answers.
• Decide on spelling and "close enough" rules up front. We accept any answer that clearly names the right thing. "Da Vinci" for Leonardo da Vinci counts. "A tiny bone in your ear" for the stapes doesn't.
• Score as you go, out loud and on a board everyone can see. A visible score keeps last-place teams trying.
• Give the hard round double points. It keeps the game open until the end.
• Take a break after round two for food and drinks. People think better with a snack, and it gives you a minute to tally.

Formats that work

What to do when someone argues an answer

It will happen. The fix is to name one judge (that's you) before the first question and stick to it. If a team makes a good case, give both teams the point and move on. A two-minute debate kills more trivia nights than bad questions do.

Free printable trivia questions

The PDF has all 150 questions in 11 rounds with blank lines for answers, so you can hand pages to each team. The answer key is on separate pages for the host, and there's a scorecard for up to six teams on the last page. Print single-sided so nobody reads the answers through the paper.

• Hand out one round at a time. Teams that get the whole packet race ahead and lose interest.
• Fold the answer key into your back pocket. Not on the table next to the chips.
• Put the scorecard on a clipboard and read the totals out loud after each round.

Play trivia on your TV instead

Paper works fine. A game board on the big screen is more fun, especially for a family or an office party. Our free Family Game Night board puts 25 questions on your TV in five categories, from Movie Night to Wild World. You pick a tile, the question appears large enough to read from the couch, and the board keeps score for every team.

Players join from their phones with a room code. No app needed.

• Phones become buzzers. Players scan the QR code on the TV or type the room code. No app, no account.
• No phones? Play anyway. Switch to "take turns" or "hands up" and run the whole game with zero devices.
• The Bonus Wager tile lets the team in last place bet big and catch up.

To put it on the TV, plug a laptop in with an HDMI cable, use AirPlay from a Mac, or open gameshowly.com in your smart TV's browser. Our how to play page walks through each setup.

Make your own trivia board in a minute

Want trivia on a topic that isn't here? Instant Board builds a full board from a short description. Type something like "90s music trivia for adults" or "ocean animals for second graders" and you get 25 questions in five categories, ordered easiest to hardest, ready to review and edit before you play. Teachers can drop in a lesson plan instead, and our classroom review game page explains how that works for test prep.

For a party where the questions are about the guests themselves, try Know Your Crew: everyone answers a few fun questions about themselves before the party, then teams guess who said what.

Holiday and seasonal trivia questions

Every holiday gets its own collection, written for that day and checked the same way as this list. Each one has answers, and most come with a free printable.

• Thanksgiving trivia questions: 100 questions on the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag, the parade, football and the feast, with a kids' round and a printable.
• Christmas trivia questions: traditions, Santa, movies and holiday food, with an easy round for kids.
• Christmas music trivia: the singers, songwriters and chart history behind holiday hits, plus a guess-the-song game.
• Christmas movie quotes game: famous lines from holiday classics to guess, with the movie, year and character for each.
• Holiday trivia questions: a mixed list for December parties and office gatherings, when you want more than just Christmas.
• Winter trivia questions: cold-weather questions that work any day from December to March, long after the decorations come down.
• New Year's trivia questions: countdown traditions and New Year customs, to fill the hour before midnight.
• Super Bowl trivia: big-game history for your watch party, from the first kickoff to famous moments.
• Valentine's Day trivia: the history and traditions behind February 14, for classrooms, couples and parties.
• Presidents' Day trivia: 100 nonpartisan questions on Washington, Lincoln, the White House and presidential firsts, built for classrooms.

Sources

We checked each answer against primary or long-standing references, including NASA Space Place (Venus and planetary facts), Encyclopaedia Britannica (history, geography and science), the Royal Family (Queen Elizabeth II's reign), Olympics.com (Michael Phelps's medal count) and the National Park Service (the Statue of Liberty).

Trivia questions FAQ

What are 10 good trivia questions?

A good set of 10 mixes easy openers with a couple of surprises. Try these from the list above: the only letter not in any state name (Q), the capital of Australia (Canberra), how many hearts an octopus has (three), the candy in "E.T." (Reese's Pieces), what "linguine" means (little tongues), the first Best Animated Feature winner ("Shrek"), the smallest country (Vatican City), the planet that takes longer to spin once than to circle the Sun (Venus), the hardest natural substance (diamond) and the longest coastline in the U.S. (Alaska).

What are some fun trivia questions for adults?

The best adult trivia questions have answers people think they know but don't. Capital cities are reliable: most people guess Sydney for Australia, Istanbul for Turkey and Vancouver for British Columbia. The Hard round above is built from questions like these, scored at 2 points each.

What makes a trivia question unique?

A unique trivia question has a surprising answer that's still easy to check. "A group of crows is called a murder" and "a strawberry wears its seeds on the outside" both get a reaction because they sound made up. Avoid questions about records or current events, which go out of date fast.

How many questions should a trivia night have?

Plan on 30 to 40 questions for about an hour of play with two to six teams. Four rounds of eight to ten questions keeps the pace up, with a break in the middle and a tie-breaker ready at the end.

Can I print these trivia questions?

Yes. The free PDF has all 150 questions with answer lines, a separate answer key and a scorecard for up to six teams. If you'd rather skip the paper, the Family Game Night board runs a trivia game on your TV.