80 free Random trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Random trivia is trivia with no theme, and that is the point. One question is about the coldest capital city on Earth, the next is about a chess piece, then a Beethoven sonata, then a Thai chilli sauce. This set has 75 of them, drawn from geography, history, science, sport, film and TV, music, food and drink, animals, literature, art, technology and pop culture, and shuffled every time you play so no two runs feel the same. They run from easy warm-ups almost anyone can answer to a handful that will make a good pub team argue. Every question has one correct answer, three plausible wrong ones and a short explanation with one extra fact worth remembering. Each was checked against an encyclopaedia or primary source before publishing, and every question shows its source. Play the whole set solo, pull ten for a quiz night round, or use it to settle a family argument about who actually knows the most random stuff.
30 of 80 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which planet is nicknamed the Red Planet?
Mars
The colour comes from iron oxide, essentially rust, in the dust that covers its plains.
Q 02How many points is a touchdown worth in American football?
6
It has been six since 1912; the extra point or two-point conversion is what pushes a score to seven or eight.
Q 03What is the main ingredient of hummus?
Chickpeas
The word itself is simply Arabic for chickpeas; tahini, lemon juice and garlic do the rest.
Q 04Which fictional paper company employs the staff of the US version of The Office?
Dunder Mifflin
The Scranton, Pennsylvania branch is watched by a documentary crew that seems to film around the clock.
Q 05Which superhero's secret identity is Peter Parker?
Spider-Man
Parker got his powers from a radioactive spider bite in 1962, though the comic panel mistakenly called the spider an insect.
Q 06Who wrote The Hobbit?
J. R. R. Tolkien
He later made retrospective tweaks to the book so it would sit comfortably alongside The Lord of the Rings.
Q 07What is the name of Batman's butler?
Alfred
He first appeared in Batman #16 in 1943 and has since served as legal guardian, medic and surrogate father to Bruce Wayne.
Q 08Which capital city is the coldest in the world by average yearly temperature?
Ulaanbaatar
Mongolia's capital sits at about 1,350 metres in a valley that traps bitterly cold winter air.
Q 09On which planet are the strongest sustained winds in the Solar System, reaching around 2,100 km/h?
Neptune
It receives only about 40 percent of the sunlight Uranus gets, yet its internal heat still powers the fastest planetary winds known.
Q 10What is the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa?
Equatorial Guinea
The former colony of Spanish Guinea sits on the Gulf of Guinea; its name refers to its position near the Equator.
Q 11Which was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature?
Shrek
The 2001 DreamWorks film was also the first animated film ever placed on the American Film Institute's top-ten list for a year.
Q 12Which element has the symbol W, taken from its German name Wolfram?
Tungsten
Its ores scheelite and wolframite give it the highest melting point of any metal, which is why it worked in incandescent bulb filaments.
Q 13In which city were Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie assassinated in June 1914?
Sarajevo
The shooter, Gavrilo Princip, was a Bosnian Serb student; the killings set off the July Crisis and the First World War.
Q 21How many chromosomes does a typical human body cell contain?
46
That is 22 pairs of autosomes plus one pair of sex chromosomes; egg and sperm cells carry just one set of 23.
Q 22Which explosive, patented in 1867, made the founder of the Nobel Prizes his fortune?
Dynamite
Nobel's invention tamed nitroglycerin into a form that was easier and safer to handle, making him hugely rich.
Q 23Which team became the first to win 18 NBA championships, in 2024?
Boston Celtics
Boston's 2024 title took them to 18, one clear of the Lakers; eight of those came in a row between 1959 and 1966, the longest streak in league history.
Q 14Which sauce takes its name from a coastal town in Thailand where it was first produced in 1932?
Sriracha
La-Orr Suwanprasop, a native of Si Racha who had moved to Bangkok, began selling her chilli sauce that year.
Q 15What is the term for a group of owls?
A parliament
The name comes from the language of English venery, the medieval hunting vocabulary that gave animals their collective nouns.
Q 16Which programming language is named after a British comedy troupe?
Python
Its documentation carries on the joke, using 'spam' and 'eggs' as placeholder names instead of the usual 'foo' and 'bar'.
Q 17Which Italian island is the largest in the Mediterranean Sea?
Sicily
It is also the most populous island in the Mediterranean, with over 4.7 million people and Europe's largest active volcano, Etna.
Q 18Who was the first person to lead a party to the South Pole, arriving on 14 December 1911?
Roald Amundsen
He had picked up polar survival skills years earlier from the Netsilik Inuit while navigating the Northwest Passage.
Q 19Which Grand Slam tournament is played on clay courts?
French Open
It is the only major on clay, and its long rallies make it widely regarded as the most physically demanding tournament in tennis.
Q 20What is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 70 million copies sold?
Thriller
Sales took off after Michael Jackson debuted the moonwalk on the Motown 25 TV special in 1983.
Q 24Which post-impressionist painter severed part of his own left ear with a razor in December 1888?
Vincent van Gogh
The episode followed a confrontation with Paul Gauguin; in the decade that followed he produced around 2,100 artworks.
Q 25Besides Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest, which fourth national capital does the Danube flow through?
Belgrade
After leaving the Serbian capital the river forms much of the Romania-Bulgaria border before reaching the Black Sea.
Q 26Which Levantine or Turkish dessert is made from layers of filo pastry, chopped nuts and syrup or honey?
Baklava
Melted butter brushed between the paper-thin sheets is what gives it its distinctive crisp, layered texture.
Q 27What is the highest possible break in a normal frame of snooker?
147
It means potting all 15 reds with 15 blacks, then all the colours; a free ball can push a break to 155, which has happened only twice in professional play.
Q 28Which is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species?
Emperor
It lives only in Antarctica, where males incubate a single egg on their feet through the polar winter.
Q 29Which Canadian author wrote the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale?
Margaret Atwood
She has said nothing in Gilead was invented from scratch: every practice in the book had a real historical precedent somewhere.
Q 30Which sultan's 46-year reign, from 1520 to 1566, was the longest of any Ottoman ruler?
Suleiman the Magnificent
Under him the empire's population reached at least 25 million and its fleet dominated from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.