Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
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50 free Trivial Pursuit trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Trivial Pursuit is the board game that turned trivia into a living-room sport. Two Montreal journalists sketched it on the back of a cigarette carton in December 1979, researched the questions for a year, and by the mid-1980s it was selling tens of millions of copies and being bottled in plastic by the truckload in a small Wisconsin town. These 50 questions cover the whole story of the game: who the creators were and where they worked, the Scrabble argument that started it, the six wedge colours and what each one stands for, the exact-count rule at the hub, the Genus edition and its many spin-offs, and the two famous lawsuits, including the trivia author whose fake Columbo answer turned up in the box. There are questions on the arcade, home computer, console and mobile versions too, plus the parade of television hosts on both sides of the Atlantic. Easy questions ask about colours and categories; the expert tier goes to Dorset libraries, Soviet game shows and French magazine reviews. Every answer is cited and explained.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which country was Trivial Pursuit invented?
Canada
Two Montreal journalists came up with it in December 1979 and first released it there in 1981.
Q 02In which city was the game dreamed up on 15 December 1979?
Montreal
The creators worked for the city's newspaper and for The Canadian Press at the time.
Q 03Which co-creator was a photo editor at The Gazette newspaper?
Chris Haney
His brother John Haney and Ed Werner later helped finish development of the game.
Q 04Scott Abbott, the other co-creator, was a sports editor for which news agency?
The Canadian Press
A sports editor and a photo editor designed the game together in under an hour.
Q 05Most origin stories of the game involve an argument over which other board game?
Scrabble
The usual version has the pair deciding they could make a better game themselves.
Q 06The game was reportedly designed in 45 minutes on the back of what?
A cigarette carton
The questions then took all of 1980 to research and 1981 to test-market.
Q 07In which year was the game first released?
1981
It had sold 100,000 copies in its home market by the following year.
Q 08Some early question writing was done in Weymouth Library, in which English county?
Dorset
The Haney brothers were staying with family in the seaside town at the time.
Q 09In which year did sales begin in the United States?
1983
Between then and 1988 the original version sold 30 million copies.
Q 10Which company first licensed the rights in 1982?
Selchow and Righter
Selchow and Righter was the long-time U.S. publisher of Scrabble.
Q 11Which company turned the game down before Parker Brothers licensed it in 1988?
Virgin Group
Richard Branson's conglomerate passed on what became one of the best-selling games ever.
Q 12How much did Hasbro pay for the full rights in 2008?
$80 million
Hasbro had already controlled the game through Parker Brothers for two decades.
Q 13As of 2014, the game had been published in how many languages?
17
More than 100 million copies had been sold across 26 countries by then.
Q 14Northern Plastics, which moulded tens of millions of copies from 1983 to 1985, was in which state?
Q 21Orange wedges are earned in which category?
Sports & Leisure
Sports & Leisure is the category that trips up bookish players.
Q 22The small plastic scoring wedges are nicknamed what?
Cheese
The playing piece is round and divided into six sections like a pie.
Q 23What shape is the central hub space on the board?
Hexagonal
Six spokes radiate from the hub, one per category.
Q 24How many dice does a player roll to move?
Wisconsin
The factory was in Elroy, a town of fewer than 2,000 people.
Q 15Which magazine put the game in its Hall of Fame in December 1993?
Games
The same magazine had listed it in its Games 100 every year from 1982 to 1986.
Q 16In which year was it inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame?
2025
The Hall of Fame is housed at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.
Q 17How many question categories does the classic game have?
Six
Each category has its own colour, and each colour has its own headquarters space.
Q 18Which colour marks Geography in the classic edition?
Blue
The colours are printed on the board squares as well as on the wedges.
Q 19Pink wedges belong to which category?
Entertainment
Pink is the colour most players know best, since it is the pop-culture category.
Q 20Art & Literature was originally brown before changing to which colour?
Purple
The 1999 Millennium computer edition still used a brown wedge, but for Science & Nature.
One
A correct answer lets you roll again and keep going.
Q 25To attempt the winning question, a full playing piece must reach the hub how?
By exact count
A miss means leaving the hub next turn and coming back for another go.
Q 26Who picks the category for the final winning question?
The opponents
Naturally they choose the category the leader is worst at.
Q 27What is the original edition of the game known as?
Genus
Later general-knowledge sets were numbered Genus II and so on.
Q 28British players complained that which year's edition was "dumbed down"?
2006
The gripe was easier questions and too much celebrity and showbiz.
Q 29Which trivia-book author sued the game's distributors in October 1984?
Fred L. Worth
He had written The Trivia Encyclopedia, Super Trivia and Super Trivia II.
Q 30That 1984 lawsuit claimed more than what share of the original questions were copied?
A quarter
He said the copying even reproduced his typos and deliberately planted errors.