Common Sense Trivia
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9correct to beat the crowd
140 free Common Sense trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
88 free Common sense trivia questions with answers. Common sense trivia is the stuff you are supposed to have picked up by the age of twelve: how many days are in a leap year, which way clocks go in spring, how many bones you have, why ice floats. It is also where the most stubborn myths live, so this quiz mixes the basics with the traps: the Great Wall you cannot see from space, the goldfish that remembers for months, the carrot that never helped anyone see in the dark, the peanut that is a bean and the banana that is a berry. It is built for family game night, a classroom warm-up or a bar quiz round where everyone thinks they will get 100% and nobody does. Difficulty starts very easy and climbs to a handful of genuinely tricky ones about inventors and calendars. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's article on the subject, and each question shows its source once you have answered, so you can settle the argument at the table.
30 of 140 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many days are there in a leap year?
366
February gets a 29th day to keep the calendar in step with the seasons; a person born on it usually celebrates on 1 March otherwise.
Q 02How many sides does a standard stop sign have?
Eight
The octagon was chosen in 1922 so drivers could recognise it from the back or at night, before signs were reflective.
Q 03How many teaspoons make one tablespoon in most countries?
Three
Australia is the odd one out with four teaspoons to the tablespoon.
Q 04Which mountain is the tallest in the world when measured from its base rather than from sea level?
Mauna Kea
Most of the Hawaiian volcano is underwater; its dry prominence beats Everest's 8,849 m above sea level.
Q 05How many continents do most English-speaking countries recognise?
Seven
From largest to smallest: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australia; other traditions count as few as four.
Q 06Roughly what share of people worldwide are right-handed?
90%
Left-handers make up about 10%, which is why so many everyday tools are awkward for them.
Q 07How many bones does an adult human skeleton have?
206
Babies start with about 270, and many fuse together as they grow.
Q 08How many strings does a standard violin have?
Four
They are tuned in perfect fifths, G, D, A and E; the earliest pictured violins, around 1530, had only three.
Q 09Which is the longest river in the world by most measures?
The Nile
It carries only about 1% of the Amazon's water, so the Amazon wins on volume.
Q 10Which is the largest country in the world by area?
Russia
It spans eleven time zones and borders fourteen countries.
Q 11Which is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceans?
Pacific
It covers about 46% of the planet's water surface, roughly a third of the whole globe.
Q 12Botanically speaking, what is a tomato?
A berry
It is a fruit eaten as a vegetable; the US Supreme Court still ruled it a vegetable for tariff purposes in 1893.
Q 13A peanut is not really a nut. What is it?
A legume
It belongs to the pea and bean family and grows its pods underground, which is why Linnaeus named it hypogaea, 'under the earth'.
Q 14Which of these fruits is botanically a berry?
Q 21Which is the largest living bird?
Ostrich
It also lays the largest eggs of any land animal and can run at 70 km/h.
Q 22Which is the longest bone in the human body?
Femur
It is the only bone in the upper leg, and by some measures also the strongest.
Q 23Which continent is, on average, the coldest, driest and windiest?
Antarctica
Its annual precipitation is only 1-3 cm, which is why it also counts as the world's largest desert.
Q 24A light-year is a unit of what?
Banana
Strawberries are aggregate accessory fruits, and the 'seeds' on their outside are each a tiny fruit called an achene.
Q 15Which structure is falsely said to be visible to the naked eye from space?
The Great Wall of China
Even from low Earth orbit the wall is hard to make out; you would need to know exactly where to look.
Q 16The Canary Islands are named after which animal?
Dogs
The Latin Canariae Insulae means 'Islands of the Dogs'; the birds were named after the islands, not the other way round.
Q 17How many colours did Isaac Newton settle on for the rainbow?
Seven
He started with five in 1672, then added orange and indigo to match the seven notes of a musical scale.
Q 18Which planet is closest to the Sun?
Mercury
Despite that, it is only the second-hottest planet, because it has no atmosphere to trap heat.
Q 19Which food, properly stored, essentially never spoils?
Honey
Its high sugar and acidity stop microbes growing; ancient samples have proved edible, though the 'edible honey in Egyptian tombs' story is itself a myth.
Q 20How many hearts does an octopus have?
Three
One main heart circulates blood around the body and two branchial hearts pump it through the gills.
Distance
It is the distance light travels in a Julian year, about 9.46 trillion kilometres.
Q 25Roughly how hot does the air around a lightning bolt get?
30,000 °C
That is about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
Q 26Roughly what fraction of an iceberg is above the water?
One-tenth
Pure ice is about 920 kg per cubic metre against seawater's 1,025, so Archimedes does the rest.
Q 27What is the fastest land animal?
Cheetah
Its reliably measured top speed is about 104 km/h; the often-quoted 114 km/h came from a faulty measurement.
Q 28Which are the only mammals capable of true, sustained flight?
Bats
The others merely glide; vampire bats are also the only mammals that sense infrared.
Q 29How many permanent teeth does an adult human normally have?
32
Children start with 20 baby teeth, which begin appearing around six months of age.
Q 30What is the largest organ of the human body?
The skin
It makes up roughly 16% of body mass.