50 free Stand-Up Comedy trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Stand-up is one person, one microphone and a room that decides in real time whether you are funny. This quiz covers the art form from music-hall monologues to streaming specials. The easy questions ask what a tight five is, what it means to bomb or kill, what a heckler does, which comedian listed seven words you can't say on television and where the Comedy Store stands. From there it moves into the craft: openers, features and headliners, bringer shows, callbacks and closers, punching up and down, joke theft, the paraprosdokian and the strange fact that most people fear the stage more than death. The harder end is for comedy nerds: Artemus Ward, the 1911 Stage review that first used the term, Mort Sahl at the hungry i, Lenny Bruce's obscenity arrests and posthumous pardon, Carlin at the Gate of Horn, Pryor's Grammys and the freebasing fire, Mitzi Shore, Budd Friedman's coffee house, the Harvard of comedy clubs, Phyllis Diller's twelve laughs a minute, Bob Newhart's number-one album, Andy Kaufman lip-syncing Mighty Mouse, Bill Hicks cut from Letterman, the Cambridge Footlights winning the first Perrier, Just for Laughs' bankruptcy and Ricky Gervais's record night at the Hollywood Bowl. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on stand-up, its clubs and its comedians, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our comedy, Saturday Night Live and sitcoms quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In stand-up slang, what is a 'tight five'?
A polished short set of best material
It is used for auditions and is a stepping stone to a paid spot.
Q 02What does it mean when a comedian is 'bombing'?
Failing to get laughs
The opposite is killing, crushing or destroying.
Q 03What is a 'callback' in a comedy set?
A reference to an earlier joke
Sets are built from bits that lead to a 'closer' tying the themes together.
Q 04What Seth Meyers coinage describes applause for an opinion that isn't actually funny?
Clapter
Corpsing is when the comic laughs unintentionally; mugging is pulling faces for cheap laughs.
Q 05What is a 'bringer show'?
Amateurs must bring paying guests for stage time
Open mics are often bringer shows, but not all bringer shows are open mics.
Q 06In a typical club line-up, who performs immediately before the headliner?
The feature
The emcee warms up the room, then the opener, the feature and finally the headliner.
Q 07What is a 'paraprosdokian'?
A punchline that changes the meaning of the setup
Many jokes rely on premise, set-up and punchline, often with a topper or tag for an extra laugh.
Q 08Which comedian said 'punching up' and 'punching down' were terms 'not created by humorous people'?
Colin Quinn
The idea is that comedy should aim at the powerful rather than the marginalised.
Q 09What legal principle makes joke theft so hard to sue over?
The idea-expression distinction
Accused comics sometimes plead cryptomnesia or parallel thinking.
Q 10Whom do comedy historians consider America's first stand-up comedian?
Artemus Ward
Charles Farrar Browne performed under that pen name in the 1860s.
Q 11Whose 1866 show, Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands, is cited as an ancestor of stand-up?
Mark Twain
Vaudeville, minstrel stump speeches, music halls and medicine shows all fed into the form.
Q 12In which year did the term 'stand-up' first appear in print, in The Stage?
1911
It described Nellie Perrier's 'stand-up comic ditties', which were really comic songs.
Q 13What did research consistently find people fear more than dying?
Public speaking
Part of stand-up's appeal is watching someone do the thing most people dread.
Q 21What happened to Richard Pryor on 9 June 1980 during the making of Stir Crazy?
He set himself on fire while freebasing
He had just become the first black actor paid a million dollars for a film; he later joked about it on stage.
Q 22On which street was the Comedy Store opened in 1972, in the old Ciro's nightclub?
Sunset Boulevard
Sammy Shore and Rudy De Luca founded it in a 99-seat theatre.
Q 23Who ran the Comedy Store from 1973 and bought the building in 1976?
Mitzi Shore
Q 14Which comedian pioneered topical satire using only a newspaper as a prop?
Mort Sahl
He debuted at San Francisco's hungry i in 1953 and later wrote jokes for John F. Kennedy.
Q 15Where was Lenny Bruce arrested for obscenity in October 1961, over one word and a grammar lesson?
The Jazz Workshop, San Francisco
The jury acquitted him but police began monitoring his shows everywhere.
Q 16Why was George Carlin arrested alongside Lenny Bruce at Chicago's Gate of Horn in 1962?
He refused to show ID to police
He said he did not believe in government-issued identification.
Q 17Why was Lenny Bruce barred from entering the United Kingdom in 1963?
He was declared an 'undesirable alien'
He had played Peter Cook's Establishment club in London the year before.
Q 18How many words did George Carlin's 1972 monologue say you can never say on television?
7
The routine led to a Supreme Court case on broadcast indecency.
Q 19How many HBO stand-up specials did George Carlin make, starting in 1977?
14
He won five Grammys and hosted the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975.
Q 20Where did Lenny Bruce rank on Rolling Stone's 2017 list of the 50 best stand-ups of all time?
Third
Richard Pryor was first and George Carlin second.
She expanded it to include a 450-seat main room.
Q 24Who founded the Improv in New York's Hell's Kitchen in 1963?
Budd Friedman
It began as an after-hours coffee house where Broadway performers unwound after shows.
Q 25Which Greenwich Village venue is nicknamed 'the Harvard of comedy clubs'?
The Cellar
Comics hang out afterwards upstairs at the Olive Tree Cafe.
Q 26What was Rodney Dangerfield's catchphrase?
'I get no respect!'
He opened his own club, Dangerfield's, in New York in 1969.
Q 27How many laughs per minute earned Phyllis Diller a Guinness World Record?
12
She donated her 48-drawer gag file to the Smithsonian in 2003.
Q 28Who was Phyllis Diller's opening act at the Bon Soir in Greenwich Village around 1960?
Barbra Streisand
Diller's mentor Bob Hope called her 'a Warhol mobile of spare parts'.
Q 29Whose 1960 comedy album reached number one and won the Grammy for Album of the Year?
Bob Newhart
The Button-Down Mind came from a former accountant with a deadpan, stammering delivery.
Q 30Which host's Tonight Show established Joan Rivers's career after a 1965 guest spot?
Johnny Carson
She had started in Greenwich Village clubs alongside Carlin, Woody Allen and Pryor.