75 Trivia Questions You’ve Never Heard Before

TL;DR: We raided years of Quiz Coconut podcast notes for the questions that make a room go quiet, then loud. Here are 75 of the best, sorted by category, with answers right underneath. No peeking. Okay, a little peeking.

You know the capital of France. You know how many legs a spider has. But do you know which came first, Cleopatra or Cleopatra’s Needle? Or which country invented the Hawaiian pizza? (Spoiler: it isn’t Hawaii.)

Every week on the Quiz Coconut podcast, we try to stump each other with questions that sound easy and absolutely aren’t. These are the ones that got the biggest groans, gasps and “wait, really?” moments. Grab a pen, round up your team, and keep score.

Weird History

1. Which came first: Cleopatra, or Cleopatra’s Needle in London?
   • Answer: Cleopatra’s Needle, by more than 1,000 years. The obelisk dates to around 1450 BC; Cleopatra was born in 69 BC.
2. Nicholas Breakspear was the only Englishman ever to hold which job?
   • Answer: Pope (Adrian IV, 1154 to 1159).
3. Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, is traditionally said to have died of which disease?
   • Answer: Leprosy.
4. The Penny Black was the world’s first postage stamp. What was the second?
   • Answer: The Two Penny Blue.
5. Put these in the order they were named, oldest first: the aircraft cockpit, the badminton shuttlecock, the toilet ballcock.
   • Answer: Shuttlecock, then ballcock, then cockpit.
6. In which century did the world’s population pass one billion?
   • Answer: The 19th century (around 1804).
7. Why might putting your head through a lunette be the last thing you ever do?
   • Answer: It’s the hole in a guillotine.
8. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin claims to have pioneered which modern craze back in 1966?
   • Answer: The selfie. He snapped one during a spacewalk on Gemini 12.
9. At 969 years old, who is the oldest person in the Bible?
   • Answer: Methuselah.
10. How many of Henry VIII’s six wives outlived him?
    • Answer: Two: Anne of Cleves and Catherine Parr.
11. In Jewish folklore, who was Adam’s first wife?
    • Answer: Lilith.

Geography and Travel

12. Which country’s name contains every vowel exactly once?
    • Answer: Mozambique.
13. What is the largest desert in the world?
    • Answer: Antarctica. A desert is about how little rain falls, not how hot it is.
14. Which capital city is closer to the Equator: Dakar in Senegal, or Dhaka in Bangladesh?
    • Answer: Dakar.
15. Which European country produces about half of the world’s cork?
    • Answer: Portugal.
16. In which country would you find the world’s best-selling English-language newspaper?
    • Answer: India (The Times of India).
17. Which letter of the alphabet do more of the world’s capital cities start with than any other?
    • Answer: B (Beijing, Berlin, Bogotá, Brussels and plenty more).
18. The River Danube flows through four European capitals. Name them.
    • Answer: Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade.
19. How many countries’ names end in “stan”? Bonus point for naming them all.
    • Answer: Seven: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
20. In which modern country are the ancient ruins of Carthage?
    • Answer: Tunisia.
21. Which English county has two separate coastlines?
    • Answer: Devon.
22. Which two months are the hottest on the Equator?
    • Answer: March and September, when the sun is directly overhead at the equinoxes.
23. How tall is Big Ben’s clock tower: 69 m, 96 m or 169 m?
    • Answer: 96 metres.

Science, Nature and the Human Body

24. Relative to its size, which is the strongest muscle in the human body?
    • Answer: The masseter, your jaw muscle.
25. Where on your body is your columella?
    • Answer: It’s the strip of skin between your nostrils.
26. What is a smolt?
    • Answer: A young salmon.
27. Which is better eyesight: 20/20 or 20/10?
    • Answer: 20/10. You can see at 20 feet what most people need to be 10 feet away to see.
28. True or false: the hottest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole was above 0°C.
    • Answer: False. The record is a balmy −12.3°C.
29. Which two gases make up about 98% of the Sun?
    • Answer: Hydrogen and helium.
30. Worldwide, which two organs are most commonly transplanted?
    • Answer: The kidney and the liver.
31. How many points does a snowflake have?
    • Answer: Six.
32. What is a Mexican hairless?
    • Answer: A breed of dog (the Xoloitzcuintli).
33. What is the technical name for orange peel?
    • Answer: The epicarp.
34. Which city gave its name to the Coma Scale used in hospitals around the world?
    • Answer: Glasgow.

Food and Drink

35. In which country was the Hawaiian pizza invented?
    • Answer: Canada. Sam Panopoulos first topped a pizza with ham and pineapple in Chatham, Ontario, in 1962.
36. Which dried fruit is a key ingredient in HP Sauce?
    • Answer: Dates.
37. Name the drink: vodka and orange juice over ice, with Galliano floated on top.
    • Answer: A Harvey Wallbanger.
38. Name the shot: coffee liqueur, then Irish cream, then orange liqueur, layered in a shot glass.
    • Answer: A B-52.
39. Which has fewer calories: a 25 ml shot of Jack Daniel’s, or a banana?
    • Answer: The Jack Daniel’s (about 64 calories, versus about 90 for the banana).
40. Four of the world’s 10 best-selling beers come from which country?
    • Answer: China.
41. What kind of vegetable is a Crimson Globe?
    • Answer: A beetroot.
42. What is the main vegetable in a classic moussaka?
    • Answer: Eggplant (aubergine, if you’re in the UK).
43. Ouzo is the national drink of which country?
    • Answer: Greece.
44. Which spirit gets its signature flavour from juniper?
    • Answer: Gin.

Music, Movies and TV

45. Which three artists have sold over 100 million albums both as solo acts and, separately, as members of a group?
    • Answer: Paul McCartney (The Beatles), Michael Jackson (The Jackson 5) and Phil Collins (Genesis).
46. “The Sound of Silence”, “Mrs. Robinson” and “Scarborough Fair” all feature in which film?
    • Answer: The Graduate.
47. Which actor links Schindler’s List, The Hurt Locker and Skyfall?
    • Answer: Ralph Fiennes.
48. Archibald Leach is the real name of which Hollywood legend?
    • Answer: Cary Grant.
49. True or false: Walt Disney is his real name.
    • Answer: True. He was born Walter Elias Disney.
50. Which Disney film was the first commercial film released in stereophonic sound?
    • Answer: Fantasia (1940).
51. In Frozen, how many brothers does Prince Hans have?
    • Answer: Twelve.
52. Which of Donald Duck’s nephews wears green?
    • Answer: Louie.
53. What is WALL-E’s favourite musical?
    • Answer: Hello, Dolly!
54. In Doctor Who, what does the R in TARDIS stand for?
    • Answer: Relative (Time And Relative Dimension In Space).
55. In Wacky Races, who drove the Compact Pussycat?
    • Answer: Penelope Pitstop.

Sport and Games

56. In which sport are left-handed players banned for safety reasons?
    • Answer: Polo.
57. Put these games in order of how many pieces each player starts with, most to least: backgammon, chess, checkers.
    • Answer: Chess (16), backgammon (15), checkers (12).
58. On a standard dartboard, which numbers sit at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock?
    • Answer: 11 and 6.
59. Which boxing stance means the fighter jabs with their right hand?
    • Answer: Southpaw.
60. Which is the northernmost city ever to host the Summer Olympics?
    • Answer: Helsinki (1952).
61. Which sporting legend lit the Olympic cauldron at the 1996 Atlanta Games?
    • Answer: Muhammad Ali.
62. Ice-dancing icons Torvill and Dean: who is older, Jayne Torvill or Christopher Dean?
    • Answer: Jayne Torvill.
63. In cricket, what nickname is given to a score of 111?
    • Answer: A Nelson.

Words, Numbers and Brain Teasers

64. Which word, meaning “things of little importance”, comes from the Latin for “three ways”?
    • Answer: Trivia. (We take that personally.)
65. Which word turns from a verb into a nationality when you give it a capital letter?
    • Answer: Polish.
66. What was the last year that reads the same when written down and turned upside down?
    • Answer: 1961. The next one is 6009.
67. How many times does the digit 7 appear in the numbers from 1 to 100?
    • Answer: 20. Most people say 19 and forget that 77 has two.
68. Your sock drawer has 6 black, 4 blue, 8 brown and 2 red socks. In the dark, how many do you need to pull out to be sure of a matching pair?
    • Answer: Five. With four colours, the fifth sock has to match one of the first four.
69. What does the online retailer ASOS’s name originally stand for?
    • Answer: As Seen On Screen.
70. What does a cooper make?
    • Answer: Barrels.
71. What is the ball on top of a flagpole called?
    • Answer: The truck.
72. Which musical instrument’s name means “soft” or “quiet” in Italian?
    • Answer: The piano.
73. Whose name means “son of the dragon” (or “son of the devil”) in Romanian?
    • Answer: Dracula.
74. Which letter key sits furthest to the bottom right of a standard keyboard?
    • Answer: M.
75. Which car brand’s slogan translates as “progress through technology”?
    • Answer: Audi (Vorsprung durch Technik).

How Did You Score?

• 60 to 75: You’re a trivia machine. Your friends have stopped inviting you to pub quizzes, and frankly, that’s fair.
• 40 to 59: Seriously impressive. You know a polo rule most polo fans don’t.
• 20 to 39: Respectable. You’ve learned what a columella is, and you’ll never forget it.
• Under 20: That’s the beauty of trivia. You now know 55+ things you didn’t this morning.

Want more questions like these? New ones drop every episode on the Quiz Coconut podcast.

And if you’d rather have us bring the questions (and the host, and the scoreboard, and the bragging rights) to your team, book a Quiz Coconut trivia event for your next team social, holiday party or offsite.