Here are 30 trivia questions with answers, in five rounds of six. Most are easy, a few are not. Read the question, say your answer out loud, then tap "Answer" to check. Keep score with a friend, or play it alone and be honest with yourself.
The questions come from the Open Trivia Database, the same bank of 5,247 questions behind the quiz games on Arena13. I picked these 30, checked every answer, and fixed the few that were wrong in the original bank.
Round 1: general knowledge
- A3, B1 and Legal are typical names of sizes for what?
Answer
Paper.
- What is the capital of the United States?
Answer
Washington, D.C.
- What is the Japanese art of folding paper into shapes called?
Answer
Origami.
- In snooker and billiards, what do you hit the white ball with?
Answer
A cue.
- Which country joined the European Union in 2013?
Answer
Croatia.
- Which country hosted the 2020 Summer Olympics, held a year late in 2021?
Answer
Japan, in Tokyo.
Round 2: science and maths
- About 71 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by what?
Answer
Water.
- Under extreme heat and pressure, which element becomes diamond?
Answer
Carbon.
- What is the speed of light in a vacuum, in metres per second?
Answer
299,792,458 m/s.
- How many degrees are there in a full circle?
Answer
360.
- What is the next prime number after 19?
Answer
23.
- Who proved Fermat's Last Theorem?
Answer
Andrew Wiles.
Round 3: art
- Who painted the Mona Lisa?
Answer
Leonardo da Vinci.
- Who sculpted the marble statue of David that stands in Florence?
Answer
Michelangelo.
- Who painted The Persistence of Memory, the one with the melting clocks?
Answer
Salvador Dali.
- Which painter is behind Nighthawks, the late-night diner scene?
Answer
Edward Hopper.
- Whose New York studio was known as The Factory?
Answer
Andy Warhol.
- Which famous painter designed the logo of the lollipop brand Chupa Chups?
Answer
Salvador Dali, again.
Round 4: myths and history
- The ankh is the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for what?
Answer
Life.
- Who was the king of the gods in ancient Greek mythology?
Answer
Zeus.
- What was the name of the Roman god of war?
Answer
Mars.
- Which Roman god, the two-faced god of doorways, has no Greek counterpart?
Answer
Janus.
- The Norse god Odin keeps two ravens, Huginn and Muninn. What do their names mean?
Answer
Thought and memory.
- The Vedas, collections of Sanskrit hymns, are sacred texts in which religion?
Answer
Hinduism.
Round 5: animals and sport
- Wombats are native to which country?
Answer
Australia.
- The Japanese dish fugu is made from which fish, poisonous if prepared badly?
Answer
Pufferfish.
- What is a male bee, hatched from an unfertilised egg, called?
Answer
A drone.
- What kind of animal is a natterjack?
Answer
A toad.
- Which English football club plays its home games at the Stadium of Light?
Answer
Sunderland.
- Of the 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20-sided dice used in tabletop games, which one is not a Platonic solid?
Answer
The 10-sided die.
How did you do?
- 25 to 30: you should be writing the questions.
- 18 to 24: a strong pub quiz team would want you.
- 10 to 17: respectable. The art round catches most people out.
- Under 10: the questions were unlucky, clearly.
More trivia, every day
If you want more, the same question bank runs two games here:
- Daily Trivia gives everyone the same 10 questions each day: four easy, four medium and two hard, 20 seconds each, one try. Answer fast and you score up to twice the points, and the next day brings a new set.
- Trivia Sprint keeps going until you lose three lives. It starts easy, mixes in medium questions after the first five, and turns medium and hard after question 12. A streak multiplies your points, up to one and a half times.
Both post to a leaderboard, so you can see how your score compares with everyone else's today.
Where the questions come from
All 30 questions are adapted from the Open Trivia Database, a free, community-written question bank shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. I reworded some for clarity, and I corrected the answers that were wrong in the bank (one "area of a sphere" question had the formula for its volume, so it is not here). This list is shared under the same licence.
How it was made
I wrote this with help from Claude, an AI assistant, and checked every answer myself. If you spot a mistake, tell me and I will fix it.
