Family Fortunes questions and answers for a party or work night

In short

• Below are 24 Family Fortunes questions for a work night, a party and Christmas, each with a list of likely answers.
• Most answer lists are illustrative: my best guess at what a British room would say. Five boards use real UK polls, and say so.
• The best Family Fortunes questions come from your own guests. A ten-minute online form sent round the office beats any made-up “100 people”.
• Score each answer by how many people gave it, drop answers only one person said, and keep the results secret until the night.
• This is my own Family Fortunes-style game, run on software I built. It is not the ITV show.

“We asked 100 people…” Everyone in Britain knows how that sentence ends: with a buzzer, a big red X and someone’s uncle insisting that “sausages” counts as a vegetable. That is why Family Fortunes questions work so well at a work night or a party. Nobody needs the rules explained.

The catch with most lists online is that they print points as if 100 people were really asked. Usually nobody was. So below I say which answers are guesses, which come from real polls, and how to survey your own room.

What are Family Fortunes questions?

Family Fortunes questions are survey questions: you score points for guessing what most people said, not for knowing the right answer. “Name something you take to the beach” has no correct answer, only popular ones.

The show began on ITV on 6 January 1980, with surveys of 100 members of the British public, often studio audience volunteers. It was based on the American show Family Feud, created by Mark Goodson, whose format now belongs to Fremantle.

The American team posted each week’s questions to 200 people, not 100, to make sure 100 replies came back.

I’ll say this plainly: what I run is my own Family Fortunes-style game, with my own questions, board and software. It isn’t the TV show, and it isn’t licensed by its makers.

Family Fortunes questions and answers for a work night

These are written for an office crowd. The answers are illustrative: what I’d expect a typical UK workplace to say, roughly in order. Use them to practise, or as the question list for your own survey.

1. Name something that always goes missing from the office kitchen. Suggested answers: milk, teaspoons, mugs, biscuits, someone’s lunch.
2. Name something people do on a video call when their camera is off. Suggested answers: check emails, eat, make a cup of tea, look at their phone, do the washing up.
3. Name a reason people give for being late to work. Suggested answers: traffic, the train, the school run, the alarm didn’t go off, couldn’t park.
4. Name something people bring back from holiday for the office. Suggested answers: sweets, fudge, biscuits, a fridge magnet, a tan.
5. Name something you’d find on a messy desk. Suggested answers: mugs, paperwork, sticky notes, crumbs, a tangle of chargers.
6. Name the first thing you do when you get to work. Suggested answers: make a drink, check emails, say good morning, switch the computer on, take your coat off.
7. Name something that gets passed round the office for signing. Suggested answers: a birthday card, a leaving card, a sweepstake, a collection envelope, a petition about the heating.

And one board that is not a guess. In a 2020 poll of the British public, Premier Inn ranked the most hated business jargon:

1. Name a piece of office jargon people can’t stand. Top five from the poll, in order: touch base, no-brainer, outside the box, going the extra mile, blue sky thinking.

The poll published a ranking, not counts, so set the points yourself or ask your own team. There are more game show ideas to build the rest of the night around.

Which funny Family Fortunes questions work at a party?

The funny Family Fortunes questions that work best are everyday ones with a daft answer hiding on the board. Keep the wording clean and let the room supply the cheek. These answers are illustrative too.

1. Name something you’d find in your nan’s handbag. Suggested answers: tissues, mints, her purse, glasses, a lipstick.
2. Name a word people use for the TV remote. Suggested answers: remote, clicker, zapper, doofer, “the thingy”.
3. Name something a dog eats that it shouldn’t. Suggested answers: socks, shoes, chocolate, the post, the remote.
4. Name an excuse for not going to the gym. Suggested answers: too tired, no time, it’s raining, an injury, busy at work.
5. Name something people do when they think nobody is watching. Suggested answers: sing, dance, talk to themselves, check themselves in the mirror, eat straight from the fridge.
6. Name something people photograph on holiday. Suggested answers: the view, the beach, their food, the pool, themselves.
7. Name something people do in the shower. Suggested answers: sing, wash their hair, think, shave, lose track of time.
8. Name something you do at a party when you don’t know anyone. Suggested answers: check your phone, head for the food, stand by the drinks, talk to the dog, leave early.

What are good Christmas Family Fortunes questions?

Good Christmas Family Fortunes questions are the ones every family argues about anyway: films, songs, food and what goes wrong on the day. Pollsters ask Britain these questions most years, so four boards use real results.

From real polls. YouGov’s Big Survey, published in November 2025, asked Britons for their favourites. Use YouGov’s percentages as points:

1. Name a favourite Christmas film. Home Alone (19%), Die Hard (11%), Elf (9%).
2. Name a favourite Christmas song. Fairytale of New York (19%), Last Christmas (13%), All I Want for Christmas Is You (7%).
3. Name a favourite Christmas carol. Silent Night (28%), Hark the Herald Angels Sing (7%), Away in a Manger (6%).

In December 2020, YouGov asked what Britons actually eat at Christmas dinner. People could pick everything on their plate, so the figures overlap:

1. Name something on a British Christmas dinner plate. Roast potatoes (88%), gravy (80%), carrots (74%), sprouts (66%), parsnips (59%), turkey (54%).

Only just over half have turkey, which makes a lovely trap.

Illustrative. These last three are my guesses, not poll results:

1. Name something you find in a Christmas cracker. Suggested answers: a paper hat, a joke, a small toy, the snap.
2. Name a present people regift. Suggested answers: toiletries, chocolates, socks, candles, wine.
3. Name something that goes wrong on Christmas Day. Suggested answers: dinner burns, the lights don’t work, no batteries, a family row, someone falls asleep.

For more festive ideas, see these Christmas party games for adults.

How do you make your own Family Fortunes questions?

You make your own Family Fortunes questions by asking your guests first, then building the board from what they said. It takes ten minutes to set up, and nobody can look the answers up.

1. Write eight to twelve open questions. Start each one “Name something…” and keep it to one line. Google Forms’ short answer type gives people one line for it.
2. Build the form. Google Forms can save replies straight into a spreadsheet. If your office runs on Microsoft 365, Microsoft Forms has a Text question that does the same job.
3. Leave names off. A name and a work email address count as personal data under UK GDPR. You don’t need either to count answers, and people answer more honestly when they can’t be traced.
4. Send it to more people than you need. The American show posted twice as many surveys as it needed.
5. Merge and count. “Cuppa”, “tea” and “brew” are one answer. Score each answer by how many people gave it. With 40 replies, you can say “we asked 40 of you”, which is funnier than 100 strangers.
6. Drop the one-offs. Feud’s fast-money round only counted answers that at least two people gave. Do the same, or the board fills with one person’s joke.
7. Keep the results secret. Whoever builds the board shouldn’t play on it.

How do you score and play a Family Fortunes quiz?

To play a Family Fortunes quiz, two teams take turns at the board, and each answer scores the number of people who gave it. On TV, families of five players competed, and three wrong guesses let the other family steal the round.

• Face-off. One player from each team buzzes in. Higher answer wins control of the board.
• Three strikes. The playing team guesses in turn until the board is full or they hit three wrong answers.
• The steal. After three strikes, the other team confers and gets one guess. Right answer, they take the points.
• Fast money. Two players answer five quick questions each, the second out of earshot. On TV the target was 200 points combined, with 15 seconds for the first player and 20 for the second in the original version.

For a work night, four or five rounds and a fast-money finish is plenty.

How I run Family Fortunes on my own software

This game lives or dies on pace. Leave a gap between a guess and the reveal and the room drifts back to the bar. So I run Family Fortunes on my own software, on the big screen, from the microphone in among the tables. The strike lands the second the room shouts.

I write the surveys for the room in front of me: your departments, your year, your in-jokes. A graduate intake gets quick, cheeky questions about themselves. A board of directors gets something drier, like what your customers really say about you. Then I pick one of three ways to play:

• As a show. Two teams at the board, three strikes and a fast-money finale with a live 30-second clock. I split the room into two sides and rotate the players every round, so nearly everyone gets a go at the front.
• At the tables. Every table writes its top three answers before the reveal, and the leaderboard runs by table.
• On the app. On phones it becomes Common Ground: everyone votes, and you score for matching the room. The survey is the people sitting around you, not a hundred strangers.

A full game with fast money runs twenty to thirty minutes, and a single round makes a five-minute filler between courses. It works for 20 guests or 300. For a whole night of games, see corporate game show hire.

More party game ideas

• Higher or lower: how to run it at a party or work event.
• Family quiz questions that work for all ages.

One host, the whole evening, and a board nobody else could have written. Send me your stories and I’ll build it. Call me on 07596 851647 and tell me about the room.