Trivia for 12 Year Olds
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50 free Trivia for 12 Year Olds trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Twelve is the age when trivia gets interesting. A 12 year old has enough school behind them to reason out an answer, and enough curiosity to enjoy being surprised by it. These questions are pitched for that middle ground: harder than a little kid's quiz, but fair to a sixth or seventh grader who pays attention in class and reads for fun. The quiz ranges across what 10 to 12 year olds actually meet: planets and elements, the human body, world capitals and record-breaking places, ancient rulers and modern heroes, myths, novels and plays, numbers, strange animals, inventors, and the stories behind a few favorite toys and video games. Every question is multiple choice, and every answer comes with a short explanation that adds something worth repeating. It works for boys and girls alike, at a birthday party, on a road trip, as a classroom pop quiz or for family game night. Play on screen for a score, or print the questions with answers and read them aloud.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which planet, the hottest in the solar system, has a day that lasts longer than its year?
Venus
Venus is the hottest planet because its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere traps heat, holding the surface near 464 °C. One spin takes 243 Earth days, but one orbit of the Sun takes about 225.
Q 02Which Japanese video game company began in 1889 as a maker of handmade playing cards?
Nintendo
Nintendo was founded in Kyoto by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi to sell hanafuda, or flower cards. Its arcade hit Donkey Kong did not arrive until 1981.
Q 03Which reading system of raised dots was developed in 1824 by a blind French fifteen-year-old?
Braille
Braille grew out of a twelve-dot code by Charles Barbier, which Louis Braille cut down to six dots. He had been blinded as a small child by an accident with a tool in his father's harness workshop.
Q 04Which Himalayan country flies the only national flag in the world that is not rectangular?
Nepal
Nepal's crimson flag joins two pennants, one showing a crescent moon and the other a sun. It is also the only national flag that is taller than it is wide.
Q 05Which egg-laying Australian mammal has a duck-like bill and a venomous spur on the male's hind foot?
Platypus
The platypus looked so strange that the first scientists to examine one in 1799 judged it a fake sewn together from several animals. It finds prey underwater by sensing electric signals.
Q 06Which city became Australia's capital as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne?
Canberra
Canberra was planned from scratch on a site that had to be at least 100 miles from Sydney. Melbourne served as the temporary seat of government while it was built.
Q 07Which number, named by a mathematician's nine-year-old nephew, is a 1 followed by 100 zeros?
Googol
A googol was named by young Milton Sirotta, whose uncle was the American mathematician Edward Kasner. The search engine Google takes its name from a misspelling of it.
Q 08Which gas, used to keep packaged food fresh, makes up about 78 percent of Earth's air?
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is nearly four times as plentiful in dry air as oxygen, which makes up only about 21 percent. Argon comes a distant third at just under 1 percent.
Q 09Which puzzle was invented in 1974 by a Hungarian professor who then needed a month to solve it?
Rubik's Cube
The Rubik's Cube first went on sale in Budapest toy shops as the Magic Cube, and was renamed after inventor Ernő Rubik in 1980.
Q 10Which U.S. state, the largest by area, has a longer coastline than all the other states combined?
Alaska
Alaska covers more ground than Texas, California and Montana put together. The United States bought it in 1867 for $7.2 million.
Q 11Which chemical element, the lightest of all, makes up most of the Sun and other stars?
Hydrogen
Hydrogen accounts for about 75 percent of all normal matter in the universe. Every second, the Sun's core fuses about 600 billion kilograms of it into helium.
Q 12Which scientist set out three laws of motion in 1687 and often told a story about a falling apple?
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton published the laws in his book Principia, together with his theory of universal gravitation. He said the idea came to him while watching fruit drop from a tree.
Q 13Which scientist, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, named polonium after her homeland?
Marie Curie
Q 21Which African river flows north through Sudan and Egypt before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea?
Nile
The Nile is fed by two great branches, the White and the Blue, which meet at Khartoum. The Blue branch supplies over twice as much water as the White.
Q 22Which country, the smallest in the world, lies entirely inside the capital of Italy?
Vatican City
Vatican City covers only 44 hectares, and its gardens take up about half of that. It is the administrative centre of the Catholic Church.
Q 23Which salt lake on Jordan's western border has shores that are the lowest land on Earth?
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea is nearly ten times as salty as the ocean, which makes its water so dense that swimming there feels like floating.
Marie Curie is still the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, physics and chemistry. Born in Warsaw, she chose the name polonium to honour Poland.
Q 14Which naturalist spent five years aboard HMS Beagle before publishing On the Origin of Species?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin brought back Galápagos birds that an expert found were twelve separate species of finch. Clues like that fed his theory of evolution by natural selection.
Q 15Which unit of distance, often used to say how far away stars are, equals about 9.46 trillion kilometres?
Light-year
A light-year is the distance light covers in one year, so despite the name it measures length. Professional astronomers more often use the parsec, which is about 3.26 of them.
Q 16Which molecule, coiled into a double helix, carries the genetic instructions of all living things?
DNA
DNA had its shape worked out in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick, who drew on X-ray images such as Photo 51, taken in Rosalind Franklin's lab.
Q 17Which metal has the chemical symbol Au, taken from its Latin name aurum?
Gold
Gold is the most malleable metal of all: a single gram can be beaten into a sheet covering one square metre.
Q 18Which organ, the heaviest inside the human body, can grow back after part of it is removed?
Liver
The liver is the only human internal organ that can naturally rebuild lost tissue, even from as little as a quarter of itself. It also makes bile, a fluid that helps break up fat in food.
Q 19Which chemist's 1869 periodic table predicted three elements that nobody had yet discovered?
Dmitri Mendeleev
Dmitri Mendeleev used his table to describe gallium, scandium and germanium before anyone had found them. He is said to have seen the arrangement in a dream.
Q 20Which unit of electrical power is named after the Scottish engineer who improved the steam engine?
Watt
The watt honours James Watt, whose 1776 steam engine became fundamental to the Industrial Revolution. One watt equals one joule of energy per second.
Q 24Which island, the largest in the world, is a self-governing territory of Denmark?
Greenland
Greenland lies under an ice sheet that covers about 81 percent of its surface. The coldest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, −69.6 °C, was measured near the top of that ice.
Q 25Which city, once called Constantinople, is split between Europe and Asia by the Bosporus strait?
Istanbul
Istanbul has about two-thirds of its people living on the European side. Under its older name it was the capital of the Byzantine and later the Ottoman empires.
Q 26Which Pacific Ocean trench holds Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of the seabed?
Mariana
The Mariana Trench plunges so far that its deepest point lies more than 2 km farther from sea level than the peak of Mount Everest.
Q 27Which reptile, found only on a few Indonesian islands, is the largest living species of lizard?
Komodo dragon
The Komodo dragon can grow 3 metres long and weigh up to 150 kg. Its slashing bite also delivers a dose of venom.
Q 28Which Mexican salamander keeps its external gills as an adult and can regrow lost limbs?
Axolotl
The axolotl can regrow not only limbs but gills and even parts of its eyes and brain, which is why it is used so widely in scientific research.
Q 29Which South American animal, a close relative of the guinea pig, is the largest living rodent?
Capybara
The capybara is semiaquatic, with slightly webbed feet for a life spent in and around rivers and swamps. Adults typically weigh between 35 and 66 kg.
Q 30Which eight-legged micro-animal, nicknamed the water bear, has survived exposure to outer space?
Tardigrade
The tardigrade can dry out into a dormant state that endures cold as deep as −272 °C. Its nickname comes from the way it walks, which reminded early observers of a lumbering bear.