Random Trivia
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127 free Random trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 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 127 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which planet is nicknamed the Red Planet?
Mars
Mars is the Red Planet: iron oxide, essentially rust, in the dust covering its surface gives it the reddish colour visible from Earth.
Q 02Which score is worth six points in American football?
Touchdown
Touchdown: in 1883 it was worth just two points while a field goal was worth five, and it only rose to six in 1912.
Q 03What is the main ingredient of hummus?
Chickpeas
Chickpeas: hummus is simply Arabic for chickpeas, and Lebanon and Israel fought a 'hummus war', trading Guinness records for the biggest plate.
Q 04Which fictional paper company employs the staff of the US version of The Office?
Dunder Mifflin
Dunder Mifflin became a real paper brand in 2011, when Staples' Quill.com licensed the name for copy paper.
Q 05Which superhero's secret identity is Peter Parker?
Spider-Man
Spider-Man got no book of his own at first: he debuted in the final issue of Amazing Fantasy, and it sold so well that he soon got his own title.
Q 06Who wrote The Hobbit?
J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937 and later revised the Gollum chapter so it sat comfortably alongside The Lord of the Rings.
Q 07What is the name of Batman's butler?
Alfred
Alfred began as a plump, clean-shaven butler, but after a trim, moustached actor played him in the 1943 Batman serial, the comics slimmed him down to match.
Q 08Which capital city is the coldest in the world by average yearly temperature?
Ulaanbaatar
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital, sits over 1,300 metres up in a mountain-ringed valley that traps bitterly cold air each winter.
Q 09On which planet are the strongest sustained winds in the Solar System, reaching over 2,000 km/h?
Neptune
Neptune has the fastest winds of any planet even though it is the farthest from the Sun and gets the least solar energy to drive them.
Q 10Which African country has Spanish as its main official language?
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea speaks Spanish because in 1778 Portugal handed its islands and coast there to Spain in exchange for land in South America.
Q 11Which film won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Animated Feature?
Shrek
Shrek was first voiced by Chris Farley, who had recorded almost all his lines before he died in 1997, so Mike Myers took over the role.
Q 12Which element has the symbol W, taken from its German name Wolfram?
Tungsten
Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal, which is why it was long used for the filaments of incandescent light bulbs.
Q 13In which city were Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie assassinated in June 1914?
Sarajevo
Sarajevo, capital of Austro-Hungarian-ruled Bosnia, was where Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student, shot the couple on 28 June 1914, setting off the July Crisis.
Q 21Which explosive, patented in 1867, made the fortune of the man who founded the Nobel Prizes?
Dynamite
Dynamite tamed nitroglycerin into a form easier and safer to handle, making Nobel hugely rich.
Q 22Which team became the first to win 18 NBA championships, in 2024?
Boston Celtics
The Boston Celtics won their 2024 title under Joe Mazzulla, an assistant thrust into the head coaching job in 2022 after Ime Udoka was suspended.
Q 23Which post-impressionist painter severed part of his own left ear with a razor in December 1888?
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh cut his ear after a blazing row with Paul Gauguin, then wrapped it in paper and handed it to a woman at a local brothel.
Q 14Which chilli sauce takes its name from a coastal town in Thailand?
Sriracha
Sriracha is named after the Thai seaside town of Si Racha, and a California city once sued its best-known US maker over the chilli fumes from its factory.
Q 15What is the term for a group of owls?
A parliament
A parliament of owls gathers in C. S. Lewis's Narnia book The Silver Chair to help two children search for a lost prince.
Q 16Which island is the largest in the Mediterranean Sea, and also its most populous?
Sicily
Sicily was the prize Rome and Carthage fought over in the First Punic War, and it then became Rome's first province beyond Italy.
Q 17Who was the first person to lead a party to the South Pole, arriving on 14 December 1911?
Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen reached the Pole over a month before Scott, relying on the sled dogs and fur clothing he had learned to use from Inuit in the Arctic.
Q 18Which Grand Slam tournament is played on clay courts?
French Open
The French Open is the only major played on clay today, yet the US Open also used clay courts from 1975 to 1977 before switching to hard courts.
Q 19What is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 70 million copies sold?
Thriller
Thriller's sales surged after Michael Jackson first did the moonwalk on the Motown 25 TV special in May 1983.
Q 20Which human cells carry just 23 chromosomes?
Sperm cells
Sperm cells, like egg cells, carry just 23 chromosomes, so when a sperm fertilises an egg the new embryo ends up with the usual 46.
Q 24Besides Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest, which fourth national capital does the Danube flow through?
Belgrade
Belgrade, the Serbian capital, stands where the Sava meets the Danube; downstream the river forms much of the Romania-Bulgaria border before reaching the Black Sea.
Q 25Which Levantine or Turkish dessert is made from layers of filo pastry, chopped nuts and sweet syrup?
Baklava
Baklava's paper-thin filo sheets are brushed with melted butter before baking, giving the crisp layered texture beneath the chopped nuts and syrup.
Q 26Which cue sport has a maximum break of 147?
Snooker
Snooker's usual maximum is 147, but a foul can leave a free ball that counts as an extra red, which let Jamie Burnett make a 148 in 2004.
Q 27Which is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species?
Emperor
The emperor penguin breeds in the Antarctic winter, when males huddle together for over two months with the egg on their feet, eating nothing.
Q 28Which Canadian author wrote the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale?
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood answered book bans with an 'unburnable' copy of The Handmaid's Tale, testing it herself with a flamethrower before it sold for $130,000.
Q 29Which sultan's 46-year reign, from 1520 to 1566, was the longest of any Ottoman ruler?
Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman the Magnificent died in his tent while besieging a Hungarian fortress, and his officials hid his death, faking doctors' visits so the army fought on.
Q 30Which company did Paul Allen co-found in 1975?
Microsoft
Microsoft began with a BASIC for the Altair computer that Gates and Allen wrote without owning an Altair, and it worked the first time Allen demonstrated it.