Bar Trivia Questions
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8correct to beat the crowd
100 free Bar trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Bar trivia has a particular register: harder than a kids' quiz, easier than Jeopardy, and built so that a table of four with different jobs can each answer a few. This set is written to that level. It moves through the pub-quiz staples in turn: capitals that people get wrong (Canberra, Ottawa, Bern), the planets, the highest and largest of things, and the dates a host can lean on: 1912, 1889, 1937, 44 BC. The second half is where a bar quiz earns its keep. Which album gave us Bohemian Rhapsody, how many Oscars Titanic took home, why the wireless standard is called Bluetooth, which grain bourbon is made from, what Nintendo made in 1889 and where Monopoly's streets come from. Every question has four options and a one-line explanation, and every answer is cited to its source. Use it however you like: play it here on a phone, start a room so a group plays the same questions with a live scoreboard, or download the PDF with an answer key and read it out at your own trivia night.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city became Australia's capital as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne?
Canberra
Canberra's site followed a constitutional deal: the capital had to be in New South Wales, but at least 100 miles from Sydney.
Q 02Which mountain is the highest on Earth above sea level?
Everest
Everest, called Qomolangma in Tibet, is the highest point above sea level. K2 is second.
Q 03Which is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population?
Vatican City
Vatican City covers 44 hectares and had a population of about 882 in 2024, making it the smallest by both measures.
Q 04Which planet is the largest in the Solar System?
Jupiter
Jupiter is so massive that it and the Sun orbit a shared point just outside the Sun's surface.
Q 05The chemical symbol Au stands for which element?
Gold
Au comes from the Latin word aurum, meaning gold. Silver is Ag, aluminium is Al and argon is Ar.
Q 06Roughly how many bones does an adult human skeleton have?
206
Babies are born with around 270 bones, which fuse to about 206 by adulthood, not counting accessory bones.
Q 07Who painted the Mona Lisa?
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa owes part of its fame to a 1911 theft by a Louvre worker, and it was not recovered for over two years.
Q 08Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?
Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong commanded Apollo 11 and stepped onto the Moon first; Buzz Aldrin followed him about 20 minutes later.
Q 09William Shakespeare was born and raised in which English town?
Stratford-upon-Avon
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and is buried there, under a gravestone that curses anyone who moves his bones.
Q 10The Beatles were formed in which city?
Liverpool
Liverpool's Cavern Club hosted the Beatles nearly 300 times before fame; the band formed in the city in 1960.
Q 11What did the Titanic hit on its maiden voyage?
Iceberg
The Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in 2 hours 40 minutes; her sister ship Britannic was later sunk by a German mine.
Q 12Which city's wall opened after an official mistakenly announced new travel rules took effect immediately?
Berlin
Berlin's crowds reached the checkpoints within hours of Günter Schabowski's slip on 9 November 1989, and outnumbered guards opened the gates.
Q 13Which footballer was the first man to win three World Cups as a player?
Pelé
Pelé won in 1958, 1962 and 1970, though an injury against Czechoslovakia in 1962 kept him out of the rest of that tournament.
Q 21Rather than relativity, Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize honoured his work on which effect?
The photoelectric effect
The photoelectric effect was cited in Albert Einstein's 1921 prize, while relativity went unmentioned because some physicists still doubted it.
Q 22Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?
Marie Curie
Marie Curie shared the 1903 physics prize, though the first nomination named only Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel until Pierre objected.
Q 23Which antibiotic came from mould on a lab dish left out over a holiday?
Penicillin
Penicillin was so hard to purify that it drew little notice until Howard Florey and Ernst Chain's Oxford team showed in 1940 that it could treat infections.
Q 14Which swimmer has won more Olympic medals than any other athlete?
Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps won 23 golds among his 28 medals, including eight at Beijing 2008 alone.
Q 15Who designed the Sydney Opera House?
Jørn Utzon
Jørn Utzon left the project in 1966 after a dispute with the New South Wales government and never returned to Australia to see it finished.
Q 16The Inca citadel of Machu Picchu is in which country?
Peru
Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel on a mountain ridge in southern Peru, about 2,430 metres up.
Q 17What is the largest hot desert in the world?
The Sahara
At about 9.2 million square kilometres, the Sahara is the largest hot desert.
Q 18Which ocean is the largest and deepest on Earth?
Pacific
The Pacific covers more of Earth than all the land combined, and its Mariana Trench holds the deepest known point in the oceans.
Q 19Which planet is closest to the Sun?
Mercury
Mercury is the first planet from the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System.
Q 20Which chemical element is the most abundant in the universe?
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the lightest element and makes up about 75% of all normal matter in the universe.
Q 24Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in which city?
Salzburg
Mozart was born in Salzburg but stayed in Vienna after 1781, when, by his own account, the archbishop's steward dismissed him with a kick.
Q 25Which Harry Potter book became two films?
Deathly Hallows
Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final novel, was split into two films, which is why eight movies adapt seven books.
Q 26Who wrote the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four?
George Orwell
George Orwell wrote it on the Scottish island of Jura while dying of tuberculosis; it was published in June 1949, seven months before his death.
Q 27Who directed The Godfather?
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola directed The Godfather and wrote its script with Mario Puzo, adapting Puzo's own novel.
Q 28Which 2003 film matched Titanic's 11 Academy Awards?
Return of the King
Return of the King won all 11 Oscars it was nominated for, a clean sweep, while Titanic needed 14 nominations to reach 11.
Q 29In the sitcom Friends, Rachel's first job is waitressing at which Manhattan coffee house?
Central Perk
Central Perk is where Rachel waits tables before moving on to Bloomingdale's and Ralph Lauren; Cafe Nervosa is the Frasier coffee shop.
Q 30The Simpsons is set in which fictional town?
Springfield
The show is set in the fictional town of Springfield, in an unspecified US location. Quahog is Family Guy; South Park is its own show.