What Do They Have in Common?
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50 free What Do They Have in Common? trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A zebra, a barcode and a referee's shirt: what do they have in common? Stripes. That small click, when a few unrelated things suddenly line up, is the whole pleasure of this kind of question. You do not need to be an expert in anything. You need to look at a short list and ask what on earth could tie it together. This quiz gives you three things at a time, sometimes two, and four possible connections to choose from. The lists are drawn from films, sport, geography, nature, language, the night sky and the kitchen cupboard, so everyone gets a turn at being the one who knows. Some links are hiding in plain sight. Others turn on a fact you half remember from school. Every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra detail worth passing on. It works well as a warm-up round for a quiz night, a classroom starter, a car-journey game or a quick solo test of lateral thinking. Play it online, or print the questions with their answers for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do Mars, Milky Way and Galaxy have in common on a sweet shop shelf, far from any telescope?
Chocolate bars
Chocolate bars carry all three names, and each is made by Mars Inc., whose founder Frank Mars launched the Milky Way in Minneapolis in 1923.
Q 02What do Python, Java and Ruby have in common in computing, besides a snake, an island and a gemstone?
Programming languages
Programming languages share all three names, and Python honours the British comedy troupe Monty Python rather than the reptile.
Q 03What do Mustang, Bronco and Pinto have in common on American roads, besides all being words for horses?
Ford models
Ford models wore all three names, and the Mustang sold so well that sporty rivals built in its image became known as pony cars.
Q 04What do John Adams and Thomas Jefferson have in common on 4 July 1826, fifty years after American independence?
Both died that day
Both died that day, Jefferson at Monticello a few hours before Adams, whose last words claimed that his old rival still lived.
Q 05What do Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin have in common, despite both appearing on United States banknotes?
Neither was president
Neither was president: Hamilton was the first Treasury Secretary and Franklin a diplomat and inventor, yet they front the $10 and $100 bills.
Q 06What do giraffes, humans and mice have in common just below the skull, despite the obvious difference in length?
Seven neck bones
Seven neck bones is the rule for nearly every mammal, so a giraffe's neck is long because each bone is stretched, not because there are more of them.
Q 07What do the words racecar, level and kayak have in common with the names Hannah and Otto?
Palindromes
Palindromes read the same backwards as forwards, and the trick stretches to whole sentences and even to dates such as 22/02/2022.
Q 08What do tomatoes, potatoes and chili peppers have in common, despite starring in Italian, Irish and Indian cooking?
Native to the Americas
Native to the Americas, all three reached the rest of the world only after 1492, and Portuguese traders carried chili peppers on to India.
Q 09What do bats, dolphins and sperm whales have in common when hunting in darkness or murky water?
They use echolocation
They use echolocation, calling out and reading the returning echoes, a sense that was not properly described in toothed whales until 1956.
Q 10What do Mark Twain, George Orwell and Lewis Carroll have in common on the covers of their famous books?
They are pen names
They are pen names: Samuel Clemens took Mark Twain from a riverboat cry meaning two fathoms deep, which was safe water for a steamboat.
Q 11What do Boardwalk, Park Place and Marvin Gardens have in common, besides echoing real places around Atlantic City?
Spaces in Monopoly
Spaces in Monopoly borrowed these names from New Jersey, and Marvin Gardens misspells the real Marven Gardens, an error Parker Brothers admitted in 1995.
Q 12What do Dasher, Vixen and Cupid have in common in a Christmas poem first published in 1823?
Santa's reindeer
Santa's reindeer were first named in that poem, where the last two were called Dunder and Blixem, from a Dutch oath meaning thunder and lightning.
Q 13What do Scar, Jafar and Ursula have in common in Disney animated films released between 1989 and 1994?
The villains
Q 21What do the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes have in common for three-year-old racehorses?
The Triple Crown
The Triple Crown is so hard to sweep that the record times Secretariat set in all three races in 1973 stood for more than 50 years.
Q 22What do Monza, Silverstone and Monaco have in common on a world championship calendar dating from 1950?
Formula One circuits
Formula One circuits come and go, but all three staged races in the first championship season of 1950, which opened at Silverstone.
Q 23What do Uruguay, England and France have in common in the history of the men's football World Cup?
Won it as hosts
The villains of The Lion King, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, they include Scar, who was loosely based on King Claudius in Hamlet.
Q 14What do Tatooine, Hoth and Alderaan have in common in a film saga that began in 1977?
Planets in Star Wars
Planets in Star Wars run from desert Tatooine to icy Hoth, and Tatooine's rocky canyon scenes were shot in Tunisia and in Death Valley.
Q 15What do Merry, Pippin and Bilbo have in common in the Middle-earth stories of J. R. R. Tolkien?
They are hobbits
They are hobbits, a people Tolkien described as between two and four feet tall, with feet covered in brown hairy fur.
Q 16What do actors Michael Keaton, Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson have in common in superhero cinema?
Played Batman
Each played Batman: Keaton for director Tim Burton, Bale across a trilogy that began in 2005, and Pattinson in a 2022 reboot.
Q 17What do the blockbusters Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park have in common behind the camera?
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Directed by Steven Spielberg, the three span 18 years, and Jurassic Park became the highest-grossing film of its time.
Q 18What do the animated features Toy Story, Up and Coco have in common in their studio of origin?
Pixar made them
Pixar made them, and its Toy Story of 1995 was the first feature film animated entirely by computer.
Q 19What do Athos, Porthos and Aramis have in common in a French adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas?
They are musketeers
They are musketeers, the three of the novel's title, yet the hero of the story is d'Artagnan, a young outsider who hopes to join their corps.
Q 20What do the foil, the épée and the sabre have in common, each with its own blade and rules?
Weapons in fencing
Weapons in fencing differ in more than shape, and the sabre is the only one of the three to feature at every Summer Olympics.
Won it as hosts in 1930, 1966 and 1998, they share the feat with Italy, West Germany and Argentina, who also lifted the trophy on home soil.
Q 24What do Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt have in common at Olympic Games held decades apart?
Won the 100 metres
Each won the 100 metres, then added the 200 metres and a sprint relay gold at the same Games, a treble Owens first managed in 1936.
Q 25What do the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España have in common in road cycling?
The three Grand Tours
The three Grand Tours are cycling's great stage races, and the French one, first held in 1903, is the oldest by six years.
Q 26What do the capital cities Canberra, Brasília and Washington, D.C. have in common in how they came into being?
Planned from scratch
Planned from scratch as capitals, they include Canberra, which was designed by the American architect Walter Burley Griffin.
Q 27What do Russia, Turkey and Kazakhstan have in common on a map of the world?
Land in Europe and Asia
Land in Europe and Asia can be lopsided: Turkey's European side, Eastern Thrace, covers about 3% of its area yet holds more than a tenth of its people.
Q 28What do Niagara, Victoria and Angel have in common on maps of North America, Africa and Venezuela?
They are waterfalls
They are waterfalls, and Angel Falls is the world's tallest uninterrupted one, with a height of 979 metres.
Q 29What do Mount Fuji, Mount Etna and Mount Kilimanjaro have in common beneath their famous summits?
They are volcanoes
They are volcanoes: Fuji and Etna are active, while Kilimanjaro, the highest volcano in the Eastern Hemisphere, is dormant.
Q 30What do Marie Curie, Frédéric Chopin and Nicolaus Copernicus have in common in their place of birth?
Born in modern Poland
Born in modern Poland: Curie in Warsaw, Chopin in a village to its west, and Copernicus centuries earlier in the city of Toruń.