Blankety Blank questions: fill in the blank prompts for a party or work do

In short

• Here are 40 Blankety Blank questions for a party or work do: 15 office prompts, 10 funny ones, 6 for grown-ups and 9 for Christmas.
• Every prompt is original and clean. Nothing crude, and nothing about anyone’s looks.
• A prompt only works if most of the room is thinking the same word.
• Agree the matching rules before the first prompt, so nobody argues about “mug” and “mugs” for ten minutes.
• On the night I run my own take on the format, What the Blank, on the big screen.

Blankety Blank questions are fill in the blank prompts: a sentence with one word missing, where you score by giving the same answer as everyone else. The best ones aren’t clever. They’re obvious, and that’s the point. Here are 40 for a work do or a party, with the rules and the scoring.

Blankety Blank first aired on BBC1 in 1979, and it was based on an American show, Match Game, which started on NBC in 1962. In July 2026 the BBC confirmed it was ending the show as part of a round of cuts. The game is doing fine without the telly.

What is the Blankety Blank game?

The Blankety Blank game is a comedy panel show where contestants try to match the answers of a panel to fill in the blank statements. On TV, two contestants faced six celebrity panellists, and every match scored a point.

The winner went through to the Supermatch, trying to match the top answer from a studio audience survey. The top answers paid 150, 100 or 50 “Blanks”. Prizes were famously modest. Losers went home with a chequebook and pen.

From 1973, Match Game’s questions were often double entendres. That’s the bit I’d leave at home for a work do.

How do you play Blankety Blank at a party?

To play Blankety Blank at a party, pick one contestant and a panel of four to six people, read a prompt aloud and have the panel write their answers in secret. The contestant then answers out loud and scores a point for every panellist who wrote the same word.

1. Give the panel cards or paper and pens.
2. Read the prompt twice, slowly.
3. Panel writes, face down. No conferring.
4. Contestant answers.
5. Panel reveals, one at a time. That’s where the laughs are.
6. Swap contestants every two or three prompts.

For a bigger room, I’d make every table a team. Each table writes one answer and scores a point for every other table that wrote the same thing.

Why matching answers is funnier than it looks

Most quizzes reward knowing things. This one rewards knowing the people around you. The economist Thomas Schelling called the answer everyone drifts to without talking a focal point: ask people where they would meet a stranger in New York, with no way to arrange it, and the most common answer is noon at Grand Central.

Our brains also like closing a gap. The fill-in-the-blank reading test, first described in 1953, is a cloze test, named after Gestalt “closure”. Its party cousin, Mad Libs, was invented the same year, but players fill its blanks without seeing the story. Blankety Blank flips that. You see everything, and you guess what everyone else is thinking.

And the laughing matters. One study found laughter is 30 times more likely in company than alone, and suggests it helps people bond.

Blankety Blank questions for a work do

Likely matches are in brackets, for the host’s eyes only.

1. “Sorry, you’re on ____.” (mute)
2. “Let’s take this ____.” (offline)
3. The out-of-office says I’ll have limited access to ____. (email)
4. The most stolen thing in any office is the ____. (stapler, pen)
5. The biggest row of the year was about the ____. (thermostat, air con)
6. The fire drill always happens when it’s ____. (raining)
7. Nobody ever refills the ____. (printer, water jug)
8. The note on the fridge says “Please do not touch my ____.” (milk, lunch)
9. Every video call starts with “Can everyone ____ me?” (hear, see)
10. The quickest way to empty a meeting room is to say “Let’s do a ____.” (role play, icebreaker)
11. The word on every slide in the strategy deck is ____. (growth)
12. The secret Santa budget was £10, but someone still bought a ____. (mug)
13. The first thing anyone does after a long meeting is ____. (coffee, email)
14. Every team has one person who replies all with ____. (thanks)
15. The real reason people come into the office on a Friday is the ____. (cake, pub)

What are some funny fill in the blank questions?

Funny fill in the blank questions have one answer the whole room can see coming, and a second that someone will definitely write instead. That split is the joke.

1. At the self-service till, the machine said “Unexpected item in the ____.” (bagging area)
2. The dog ate my ____. (homework)
3. A meal deal isn’t complete without a ____. (packet of crisps)
4. You know a party is over when someone puts on the ____. (lights, big light)
5. The worst thing to find in your sandwich is a ____. (hair, slug)
6. The sat nav said turn left, so I drove into a ____. (lake, river)
7. My nan’s texts always end with ____. (love nan, kisses)
8. The strangest thing to pack for a holiday is a ____. (kettle)
9. The ice cream van tune sounds like ____. (Greensleeves)
10. The one thing you can never find when you need it is the ____. (remote, keys)

What makes good Blankety Blank questions for adults?

Good Blankety Blank questions for adults are about grown-up life, not crude jokes. Mortgages, back pain and the school run get bigger laughs than innuendo, because everyone recognises them.

1. The most grown-up thing I’ve ever bought is a ____. (lawnmower)
2. My idea of a wild Friday night now is ____. (bed, a takeaway)
3. The best thing about working from home is never having to ____. (commute)
4. The bill that always lands at the worst moment is the ____. (car)
5. I only joined the gym for the ____. (sauna, café)
6. The noise I now make getting off the sofa is ____. (oof)

Before you write any more, set the line. Mine is simple: keep every prompt off colleagues’ looks, weight, age and relationships, and off anything touching the characteristics in section 26 of the Equality Act, which defines harassment.

Acas warns that what some call joking or banter can still be sexual harassment, and from 30 October 2026 employers must take all reasonable steps to prevent it. Nobody wants to be the host who read the crude answer aloud at the company party.

Blankety Blank Christmas questions

The show has had 12 Christmas specials, and a work Christmas party is a room full of shared traditions to match on. For more festive rounds, try these Christmas party games.

1. Nobody ever eats the ____ at Christmas dinner. (sprouts)
2. The first thing to go from the selection box is the ____. (biggest bar)
3. The worst part of a cracker is the ____. (joke)
4. On Boxing Day the fridge is full of leftover ____. (turkey)
5. Christmas jumper day: someone always has a jumper that ____. (lights up, flashes)
6. The office tree is decorated with ____. (tinsel)
7. The secret Santa present nobody wants is a ____. (mug)
8. The last chocolate left in the tin is always the ____. (coffee one)
9. The Christmas party always ends with someone losing their ____. (voice, coat)

How do you score a Blankety Blank round fairly?

To score a Blankety Blank round fairly, agree what counts as a match before you start and give the host the final say. Most arguments come from plurals and near-misses.

• Plurals count. “Mug” matches “mugs”.
• Same thing, different word. “Air con” and “air conditioning” match. “Heating” and “thermostat” are the host’s call. Be generous: a table that feels robbed stops writing.
• Spelling never matters.
• No changing an answer once the reveal starts.
• Ties go to one last prompt, as on TV.

For a Supermatch, survey your guests a week before, on a short form, and use the three most common answers to each prompt.

How I run fill in the blank on my own software

At a work do, I run this as What the Blank, on software I built myself. It is my own take on the fill-in-the-blank format, not the licensed TV show. The difference is the scoring: you match a ranked list rather than a celebrity panel.

A prompt goes up on the big screen with a word missing, and five ranked answers sit hidden behind it. Every team writes its best fill. The answers reveal top to bottom, and matching one scores its points, up to fifty for the top spot. A leaderboard between rounds keeps up to ten teams honest.

There are a hundred puzzles built in, and I write new prompts around your company. A graduate intake might get “The worst thing to hear on your first day is ____.” A board gets something sharper, with the hidden answers gathered from staff before the night. That’s the idea behind my personalised game shows, and only people happy to be featured get featured.

It plays three ways. As a show, two or three teams play at the front. At the tables, the version it was made for, every table writes, I read the best ones out, then the board reveals. On phones, everyone votes for the funniest fill through Common Ground.

Is What the Blank the same as the TV show?

No. What the Blank is my own game, built on the fill-in-the-blank idea, and it has nothing to do with the BBC programme. No celebrity panel, no chequebook. There’s no wrong answer either, only a less popular one. That’s why the shy tables come alive.

It sits best mid-evening, once the room is relaxed. Each puzzle takes three or four minutes, so four puzzles makes a fifteen-minute block. It pairs well with other corporate game show rounds for a night with a bit of everything.

More party game ideas

• Family Fortunes questions and answers for a party or work night.
• Millionaire quiz questions: 15 rounds for a quiz night.
• Higher or lower: how to run it at a party or work event.

Nobody remembers a normal night. Call me on 07596 851647 and tell me about the room.