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97 free Trivia Questions and Answers trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This is our flagship set of trivia questions and answers: 100 multiple-choice miscellaneous trivia questions spread across history, geography, science, sport, film and TV, music, food and drink, animals, literature, pop culture and technology. They start with easy warm-ups everyone at the table can get, move through solid pub-quiz territory, and finish with a run of questions that will separate the trivia nerds from the casual players. Every question has one right answer, three plausible wrong ones and a short explanation that adds something you did not know. Nothing is filler: each fact was checked against an encyclopaedia or primary source before it went in, and every question shows its source. Use the set as a solo quiz, screen it for a family game night, lift ten trivia questions for your bar round, or keep it open as dinner trivia questions between courses. If you finish all 100, the daily challenge is new every day.
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Q 01Which continent is, on average, the coldest, driest and windiest on Earth?
Antarctica
Antarctica is a polar desert: some inland spots receive only 1 to 3 cm of precipitation a year, and Vostok Station recorded -89.2 °C in 1983, the lowest surface temperature ever measured.
Q 02What is the chemical formula of ordinary table salt?
NaCl
Table salt is sodium chloride, NaCl, sodium and chlorine in a 1:1 ratio. Around 250 million tonnes are produced each year, mostly for the chemical industry and road de-icing.
Q 03How many squares are there on a standard chessboard?
64
A standard chessboard has 64 squares: eight ranks by eight files, alternating light and dark, with 32 squares of each colour.
Q 04Which fashion doll did Ruth Handler introduce in March 1959?
Barbie
Barbie debuted at the New York Toy Fair on 9 March 1959; Handler modelled her on Bild Lilli, a German doll she had seen in Switzerland in 1956.
Q 05Which land animal is the fastest, reaching around 93 to 104 km/h?
Cheetah
The cheetah is the fastest land animal: in 2012 a Cincinnati Zoo cheetah named Sarah ran 100 m in 5.95 seconds, peaking at about 98 km/h.
Q 06What is the capital city of Australia?
Canberra
Canberra is Australia's capital, purpose-built as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne; the federal Parliament first sat there in 1927.
Q 07Who directed the 1975 shark thriller Jaws?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg directed Jaws (1975); with the mechanical sharks constantly failing, he kept the shark mostly offscreen and leaned on John Williams's two-note theme.
Q 08Which Swedish group won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with "Waterloo"?
ABBA
ABBA won Eurovision 1974 in Brighton with "Waterloo"; at the contest's 50th-anniversary show in 2005 it was voted the best entry in Eurovision history.
Q 09What gas makes up about 78 percent of dry air by volume?
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is 78 percent of dry air; oxygen is a distant second at just under 21 percent and argon third at under one percent.
Q 10Which mineral is a crystalline form of the element carbon?
Diamond
Graphite is actually the stable form of carbon at room conditions; diamond only survives because it converts to graphite at a negligible rate.
Q 11Which sport awards the Stanley Cup?
Ice hockey
The trophy was commissioned in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup and first awarded to Canada's amateur champion in 1893.
Q 12What is the largest organ of the human body?
Skin
The skin is the body's largest organ, roughly 16 percent of total body mass and about 2 square metres of surface area in an adult.
Q 13In which fictional town do the Simpsons live?
Springfield
The Simpsons live at 742 Evergreen Terrace in Springfield, a town whose state is deliberately never revealed; rival town Shelbyville sits next door.
Q 21What is the name of the coffee shop where the six friends hang out in Friends?
Central Perk
Central Perk is the Manhattan coffee house where the six friends meet; the sitcom was developed under the working title Insomnia Cafe and ran on NBC from 1994 to 2004.
Q 22Which Beatles album, released in September 1969, was the last one the band recorded?
Abbey Road
Abbey Road, released 26 September 1969, was the last album the Beatles recorded together; Let It Be came out in May 1970 but had been taped mostly in January 1969.
Q 23Who won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for 'new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition'?
Bob Dylan
Q 14Which superhero first appeared in Action Comics #1 in April 1938?
Superman
Superman debuted in Action Comics #1, on sale 18 April 1938 with a June cover date; creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had met at Cleveland's Glenville High School in 1932.
Q 15Which mammals are the only ones capable of true, sustained flight?
Bats
Bats are the only mammals capable of true, sustained flight; with more than 1,400 species they make up about a fifth of all mammal species.
Q 16Which nut-based confection is made mainly from sugar and ground almonds?
Marzipan
Marzipan is little more than sugar and almond meal, and in Toledo it is shaped into animals and sometimes filled with sweetened egg yolk.
Q 17What is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population?
Vatican City
Vatican City is the smallest sovereign state, covering about 0.49 square kilometres with a population under 1,000; it became independent under the 1929 Lateran Treaty.
Q 18Which Tom Hanks film of 1994 was directed by Robert Zemeckis?
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump (1994) was directed by Robert Zemeckis and won six Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Hanks.
Q 19How many keys does a standard modern piano have?
88
A standard modern piano has 88 keys, 52 white and 36 black, spanning A0 to C8; Bösendorfer's Imperial grand extends that to 97.
Q 20Which strait runs through Istanbul and separates Europe from Asia?
Bosporus
The Bosporus runs through Istanbul and links the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara; its Ancient Greek name was folk-etymologised as 'cattle crossing'.
Bob Dylan received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature and skipped the December ceremony in Stockholm; he had already been given a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 2008.
Q 24What did Alexander Fleming discover in 1928 on a contaminated culture plate?
Penicillin
Fleming found penicillin in 1928 when a Penicillium mould contaminated a staphylococcus plate at St Mary's Hospital, London; he shared the 1945 Nobel Prize with Florey and Chain.
Q 25Which mammal may be the longest-lived of all, with some individuals passing 200 years?
Bowhead whale
The bowhead whale is the longest-lived mammal known: a harpoon point made around 1880 was found in one killed in 2007, and eye-lens dating has put some at over 200 years.
Q 26Which national team won the World Cup in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002?
Brazil
Brazil won the World Cup in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002; Pelé was in the squad for the first three of those victories.
Q 27Which detective created by Agatha Christie is a retired Belgian police officer?
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot, the retired Belgian police officer with the famous moustache, appears in 33 Christie novels, two plays and more than 50 short stories published between 1920 and 1975.
Q 28Inferno and Paradiso are two parts of Dante's Divine Comedy; what is the third?
Purgatorio
Purgatorio is the middle cantica: Dante climbs the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory, guided by the Roman poet Virgil until Beatrice takes over at the summit.
Q 29Which country leads the world in cocoa bean production, supplying about 38 percent of the crop in 2024?
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast grew roughly two-fifths of the world's cocoa in 2024, ahead of neighbouring Ghana; cacao itself is native to the Amazon basin and was domesticated in South America over 5,000 years ago.
Q 30What year did the Berlin Wall fall, when East Germany announced its citizens could freely visit the West?
1989
The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989 after a botched East German press announcement on travel rules; German reunification formally followed on 3 October 1990.