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Trivia Questions
Curated by Ellie “The Player of Games” Lusk
Good trivia nights live and die on the questions, and this one’s stacked with the classics — history, geography, science, movies, music, food, and more. We start easy enough for anyone to get a few right, then climb all the way to the kind of questions that separate casual players from the walking encyclopedias.
Want to test yourself first? The widget above deals out 10 random questions and keeps score as you play. Once you’re done, scroll down for the full list of all 70 questions with answers — steal freely for your own trivia night, game night, or classroom quiz.
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👇 All 70 questions with answers below — tap a question to reveal the answer, steal freely for your own trivia night.
Easy Warm-Ups
1. Which ocean separates the Americas from Europe and Africa?
✅ Atlantic Ocean
💡 The Atlantic is still widening by a few centimeters every year as the seafloor spreads.
2. Who was the first President of the United States?
✅ George Washington
3. Which planet is the largest in our solar system?
✅ Jupiter
💡 Jupiter is so big that more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside it.
4. What is the main ingredient in guacamole?
✅ Avocado
5. Who wrote “Romeo and Juliet”?
✅ William Shakespeare
6. How many bones are in the adult human body?
✅ 206
💡 Babies are born with roughly 300 bones — many fuse together as we grow into adulthood.
7. Which 1975 film about a great white shark was directed by Steven Spielberg?
✅ Jaws
💡 Jaws is widely credited as the first true Hollywood “summer blockbuster.”
8. What gas do plants absorb from the atmosphere for photosynthesis?
✅ Carbon dioxide
9. Who is credited with inventing the telephone?
✅ Alexander Graham Bell
💡 Bell filed his telephone patent just hours before rival inventor Elisha Gray filed a strikingly similar claim.
10. Which composer continued writing music even after going almost completely deaf?
✅ Ludwig van Beethoven
💡 By the time his Ninth Symphony premiered in 1824, Beethoven had lost nearly all of his hearing.
11. Which country is home to the Great Barrier Reef?
✅ Australia
12. Roughly how long does light from the Sun take to reach Earth?
✅ About 8 minutes
13. What fruit is traditionally fermented to make wine?
✅ Grapes
14. In what year did World War II end?
✅ 1945
15. How many teeth does a typical adult human have, including wisdom teeth?
✅ 32
16. Who wrote the original “Sherlock Holmes” detective stories?
✅ Arthur Conan Doyle
17. What color are Dorothy’s magic slippers in “The Wizard of Oz”?
✅ Ruby red
💡 In L. Frank Baum’s original book, the slippers were silver — MGM changed them to ruby red to show off Technicolor.
18. What is the chemical formula for water?
✅ H2O
19. What instrument has 88 keys?
✅ Piano
💡 A standard piano keyboard has 52 white keys and 36 black keys — 88 in total.
20. Who is widely credited with inventing the modern incandescent light bulb?
✅ Thomas Edison
Medium Difficulty
21. Who was the first Roman Emperor?
✅ Augustus
22. Traditionally listed as the world’s longest river, which river flows north through Egypt into the Mediterranean?
✅ Nile River
💡 Explorers spent centuries searching for the Nile’s true source before tracing it to Lake Victoria in East Africa.
23. What is the hardest natural substance on Earth?
✅ Diamond
💡 Diamonds form under extreme heat and pressure roughly 100 miles beneath Earth’s surface.
24. Which composer wrote “The Four Seasons”?
✅ Antonio Vivaldi
25. Who wrote “Pride and Prejudice”?
✅ Jane Austen
26. What is the largest internal organ in the human body?
✅ Liver
27. What force keeps the planets in orbit around the Sun?
✅ Gravity
💡 Isaac Newton described gravity mathematically in 1687 — Einstein reframed it as curved spacetime over two centuries later.
28. Which spice, derived from the crocus flower, is the most expensive by weight?
✅ Saffron
💡 It takes around 75,000 hand-picked crocus flowers to produce just one pound of saffron.
29. Who directed the 1960 film “Psycho”?
✅ Alfred Hitchcock
30. Who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web?
✅ Tim Berners-Lee
💡 Berners-Lee built the World Wide Web in 1989 — the Internet it runs on had already existed for two decades.
31. Which desert is the largest hot desert in the world?
✅ Sahara Desert
32. In what year did the Berlin Wall fall?
✅ 1989
💡 East German guards opened the checkpoints on November 9, 1989, after a spokesman mistakenly announced new travel rules would take effect “immediately.”
33. What is the powerhouse of the cell, responsible for producing energy?
✅ Mitochondria
34. Roughly how many times does the average human heart beat in a day?
✅ 100,000
35. What was the first name of the composer Mozart?
✅ Wolfgang
36. In George Orwell’s “1984,” what is the name of the Party’s all-seeing leader?
✅ Big Brother
💡 The phrase “Big Brother is watching you” has become everyday shorthand for government surveillance.
37. What type of alcohol is the traditional base of a mojito?
✅ Rum
38. Which planet has the most prominent ring system?
✅ Saturn
39. What is the name of Humphrey Bogart’s nightclub in “Casablanca”?
✅ Rick’s Café Américain
💡 The famous line “Play it again, Sam” is never actually spoken word-for-word anywhere in the movie.
40. What invention is Johannes Gutenberg best known for?
✅ Printing press
Hard Mode
41. Which ancient civilization built Machu Picchu?
✅ Inca
💡 Machu Picchu sits so high in the Andes — nearly 8,000 feet up — that Spanish conquistadors never found it.
42. Which sea has no coastline at all, bordered instead by ocean currents?
✅ Sargasso Sea
43. What is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature?
✅ Mercury
💡 Mercury is so dense that a steel ball bearing will actually float on top of it.
44. Which composer was born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756?
✅ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
45. Which 1941 film, directed by and starring Orson Welles, is often ranked among the greatest movies ever made?
✅ Citizen Kane
💡 Citizen Kane’s tycoon character was widely seen as a thinly veiled portrait of real-life publisher William Randolph Hearst.
46. Which Russian author wrote “War and Peace”?
✅ Leo Tolstoy
47. What is the smallest bone in the human body?
✅ Stapes
💡 The stapes lives deep in the middle ear and is roughly the size of a grain of rice.
48. What is the name of the boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape?
✅ Event horizon
49. What is the name of the fiery compound that gives chili peppers their heat?
✅ Capsaicin
50. In what year was the Magna Carta signed?
✅ 1215
💡 The Magna Carta was written in Latin and annulled by the Pope just weeks after King John sealed it.
51. Which African country was formerly known as Abyssinia?
✅ Ethiopia
52. Which blood type is known as the universal donor?
✅ O negative
53. Which Beethoven symphony is nicknamed the “Choral” for its use of vocal soloists and a choir in the final movement?
✅ Symphony No. 9
54. In Greek mythology, who was condemned to push a boulder up a hill forever, only to watch it roll back down?
✅ Sisyphus
💡 His endless, pointless task gave the English language the word “Sisyphean.”
55. Which Scottish inventor is credited with the steam engine improvements that helped power the Industrial Revolution?
✅ James Watt
Almost Impossible
56. Which Byzantine emperor commissioned the Hagia Sophia, completed in 537 AD?
✅ Justinian I
💡 For nearly a thousand years after it was built, Hagia Sophia’s dome was the largest cathedral dome in the world.
57. What is the name of the deepest known point in the ocean, located in the Mariana Trench?
✅ Challenger Deep
💡 Challenger Deep sits deeper below sea level than Mount Everest stands above it — by more than a mile.
58. What do we call the process in which a solid turns directly into a gas without passing through a liquid state?
✅ Sublimation
59. Which 1920 German silent film, directed by Robert Wiene, is considered a landmark of Expressionist horror?
✅ The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
60. In Dante’s “Inferno,” how many circles of Hell does Dante travel through?
✅ Nine
💡 Dante placed the very center of Hell — reserved for history’s worst traitors — as frozen solid rather than fiery.
61. Which cranial nerve is responsible for the sense of smell?
✅ Olfactory nerve
62. Which mold is responsible for fermenting soybeans into traditional Japanese miso paste?
✅ Koji
💡 That same mold, Aspergillus oryzae, is also essential to brewing soy sauce and sake.
63. What is the name of the theoretical cloud of icy debris believed to surround the outer edge of our solar system?
✅ Oort Cloud
64. What was the name of the treaty that formally ended World War I in 1919?
✅ Treaty of Versailles
65. Which small kingdom is entirely surrounded by South Africa?
✅ Lesotho
💡 Lesotho is one of only three countries on Earth fully enclosed within a single other country, alongside San Marino and Vatican City.
66. Which chemical element has the symbol “W”?
✅ Tungsten
67. Who directed the 1925 Soviet silent film “Battleship Potemkin,” famous for its Odessa Steps sequence?
✅ Sergei Eisenstein
68. Which classic Russian novel opens with the famous line that all happy families are alike?
✅ Anna Karenina
69. Which Baroque composer wrote the six “Brandenburg Concertos”?
✅ Johann Sebastian Bach
70. Which Hungarian-born inventor patented the modern ballpoint pen in the late 1930s?
✅ László Bíró
💡 Bíró later fled Europe for Argentina, where ballpoints are still called “birome” in his honor.
FAQ
What makes a good trivia question?
A good trivia question has exactly one defensible correct answer — no “well, technically” arguments allowed. It should be specific enough to reward real knowledge but not so obscure that nobody in the room has a shot. The best questions also teach you something, so you walk away knowing a fact you didn’t know going in.
How do I host a trivia night with this list?
Split players into teams of three to five, hand out paper and pens, and work through one section at a time, starting with Easy Warm-Ups to get everyone warmed up. Award a point per correct answer, read the fun facts out loud between rounds, and tally scores after Almost Impossible to crown a winner. For bigger groups, print the questions and run it as a written quiz instead of calling them out loud.
What makes a trivia question hard?
Difficulty usually comes from specificity — asking for an exact date, a technical term, or a lesser-known detail instead of a headline-famous fact. Hard questions also pair the answer with close, plausible wrong options that force real recall instead of a lucky guess. That’s why the Almost Impossible section leans on precise numbers and figures who never made it into the history-class highlight reel.
How many questions do I need for a game night?
For a casual hangout, 20 to 30 questions is usually enough to fill 30 to 45 minutes without losing anyone’s attention. A full trivia night with team scoring and multiple rounds works well with 40 to 70 questions split into themed sets. This page’s 70 questions are already organized into four difficulty rounds, so you can run the whole set or just pick the sections you need.