Pub quiz questions: 100 general knowledge questions with answers

In short

• Here are 100 pub quiz questions with answers, in eight rounds: general knowledge, UK, food and drink, geography, science, sport, a fun round, and film, TV and music.
• Every answer has been checked. Any question with two defensible answers was left out.
• Good questions have one answer, a fair pitch and nothing a phone could settle faster than a brain.
• Six to eight rounds of ten fills about two hours. A work quiz around a dinner needs far fewer.
• Finish on a tie-breaker with a number for an answer.

Most lists of pub quiz questions are written to be read, not played. These 100 are written for a live room: a work social, a charity night or the function room above the local, read out to tables that want to argue.

The modern pub quiz was popularised in the 1970s by Sharon Burns and Tom Porter, who set up quiz leagues to fill pubs on quiet nights. The job hasn’t changed: give every table a reason to stay for one more round.

What makes good pub quiz questions?

Good pub quiz questions have one clear answer, sit at a pitch most of the room can reach, and reward thinking over looking things up. A question only one person can answer is a lecture. One nobody can answer is a long pause. I’d rather a table argues over a question than stares at it.

• One answer. If two people could argue for two answers, it is a bad question. “How many continents are there?” depends on where you went to school, so it isn’t here.
• A fair pitch. Mix easy, medium and hard in every round, so every team scores early.
• No gotchas. A trick that hinges on wording makes the room feel cheated, not clever.
• No time to Google. Phones are on every table. Short questions read at pace leave little time to look anything up, and on my phone quiz a countdown runs on every question.

General knowledge pub quiz questions

Fifteen general knowledge quiz questions to open the night. Every team will get most of them, and a team that scores early stays for the rest.

1. How many sides does a hexagon have? Answer: six.
2. What is the capital of Australia? Answer: Canberra.
3. Which artist painted the Mona Lisa? Answer: Leonardo da Vinci.
4. How many players does one football team have on the pitch? Answer: eleven.
5. What is the largest ocean on Earth? Answer: the Pacific.
6. In which year did the Titanic sink? Answer: 1912.
7. Who wrote Romeo and Juliet? Answer: William Shakespeare.
8. How many stars are on the flag of the European Union? Answer: twelve.
9. How many minutes are there in a day? Answer: 1,440.
10. What is the name of the fairy in Peter Pan? Answer: Tinker Bell.
11. How many keys does a standard piano have? Answer: 88.
12. What is the Roman numeral for 50? Answer: L.
13. Who was the first person to walk on the Moon? Answer: Neil Armstrong, in 1969.
14. In which city is the Colosseum? Answer: Rome.
15. What do the letters BBC stand for? Answer: British Broadcasting Corporation.

What are some UK pub quiz questions and answers?

The best UK pub quiz questions and answers are about places and moments everyone in the room has a stake in: mountains, monarchs and motorways. In a British office, somebody always has strong views on the M6.

1. What is the highest mountain in the UK? Answer: Ben Nevis.
2. What is the longest river in Great Britain? Answer: the River Severn, at 220 miles.
3. How many MPs sit in the House of Commons? Answer: 650.
4. Big Ben is the nickname of a bell. What is the tower it hangs in called? Answer: the Elizabeth Tower, renamed in 2012.
5. Which saint’s day falls on 1 March? Answer: St David’s Day, for the patron saint of Wales.
6. In which town does the Angel of the North stand? Answer: Gateshead.
7. In which year did the UK hold its referendum on leaving the EU? Answer: 2016.
8. What is the capital of Northern Ireland? Answer: Belfast.
9. Who was the UK’s first female prime minister? Answer: Margaret Thatcher.
10. Which monarch reigned for 70 years until her death in 2022? Answer: Queen Elizabeth II.
11. Stonehenge stands in which English county? Answer: Wiltshire.
12. What is the largest lake in the British Isles by area? Answer: Lough Neagh, in Northern Ireland.
13. The Scottish Parliament stands in which area of Edinburgh? Answer: Holyrood.
14. Which is the longest motorway in the UK? Answer: the M6, at just over 230 miles.
15. On which island are the TT motorcycle races held? Answer: the Isle of Man.

Food and drink quiz questions

A food round lands well straight after the meal, when everybody has an opinion.

1. Feta cheese comes from which country? Answer: Greece.
2. Which Leicestershire town gives its name to a protected pork pie? Answer: Melton Mowbray.
3. What is the main ingredient of guacamole? Answer: avocado.
4. Which spirit is the base of a mojito? Answer: rum.
5. Stilton can only be made in three counties. Name all three. Answer: Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire.
6. Borscht is a soup made mainly from which vegetable? Answer: beetroot.
7. A prune is the dried form of which fruit? Answer: the plum.
8. Marzipan is made mainly from which nut? Answer: almonds.
9. Paella comes from which country? Answer: Spain, and the Valencia region in particular.
10. Cider is made by fermenting the juice of which fruit? Answer: apples.

What are good geography quiz questions?

The good ones are about places people have been to or seen on the news, plus a couple that catch out the confident.

1. Which is the smallest country in the world? Answer: Vatican City.
2. What is the capital of Canada? Answer: Ottawa.
3. What is the largest hot desert in the world? Answer: the Sahara. Keep the word “hot” in, or the answer becomes Antarctica.
4. Mount Everest sits on the border between Nepal and which other country? Answer: China (accept Tibet).
5. Which river flows through Paris? Answer: the Seine.
6. Which is the largest country in the world by area? Answer: Russia.
7. What is the capital of New Zealand? Answer: Wellington.
8. In which country is the city of Marrakech? Answer: Morocco.
9. Which strait separates Spain from Morocco? Answer: the Strait of Gibraltar.
10. Which US state is nicknamed the Sunshine State? Answer: Florida.
11. In which country is the city of Kraków? Answer: Poland.
12. Which mountain range runs along the border between France and Spain? Answer: the Pyrenees.
13. What is the capital of Turkey? Answer: Ankara.
14. The Great Barrier Reef lies off the coast of which country? Answer: Australia.
15. What is the capital of Iceland? Answer: Reykjavik.

Which science quiz questions work in a pub quiz?

Science quiz questions work in a pub when the answer is something people half-remember from school, not a formula.

1. What is the chemical symbol for gold? Answer: Au.
2. Which planet is closest to the Sun? Answer: Mercury.
3. Which is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature? Answer: mercury, which makes a nice pair with question 2.
4. How many bones are there in the adult human body? Answer: 206.
5. Which gas do plants take in from the air to make their food? Answer: carbon dioxide.
6. How many hearts does an octopus have? Answer: three.
7. Which is the largest planet in our solar system? Answer: Jupiter.
8. At what temperature in Celsius does water boil at sea level? Answer: 100°C.
9. Which element has the chemical symbol Fe? Answer: iron.
10. What does DNA stand for? Answer: deoxyribonucleic acid.
11. Which naturalist wrote On the Origin of Species? Answer: Charles Darwin.
12. What is the fastest land animal? Answer: the cheetah.
13. At what temperature in Fahrenheit does water freeze? Answer: 32°F.
14. Which scientist came up with the theory of general relativity? Answer: Albert Einstein.
15. How many legs does an insect have? Answer: six.

What are some pub quiz questions on sport?

Pub quiz questions on sport should stick to the big moments and the rules everyone knows. That way the people who never watch can still have a go.

1. In which year did England win the men’s football World Cup? Answer: 1966.
2. How many players does a rugby union team have on the pitch? Answer: 15.
3. In 2013, who became the first British man to win the Wimbledon singles title since Fred Perry in 1936? Answer: Andy Murray.
4. In snooker, how many points is the black ball worth? Answer: seven.
5. And how many red balls are on the table at the start of a frame? Answer: 15.
6. Which city hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics? Answer: London.
7. How many holes are played in a standard round of golf? Answer: 18.
8. In which sport would you hear the scores “love” and “deuce”? Answer: tennis.
9. At which racecourse is the Grand National run? Answer: Aintree.
10. Which country hosted the 2022 men’s football World Cup? Answer: Qatar.

What are some fun pub quiz questions?

Fun pub quiz questions are the quick ones anybody can shout out, from the games cupboard and the children’s bookshelf. Use them to warm up a quiet room or while the scores go up.

1. What colour do you get by mixing blue and yellow paint? Answer: green.
2. How many sides does a 50p coin have? Answer: seven.
3. Which is the most expensive property on a UK Monopoly board? Answer: Mayfair.
4. Add up every dot on a standard six-sided dice. What is the total? Answer: 21.
5. What is a baby kangaroo called? Answer: a joey.
6. What is the name of Winnie-the-Pooh’s gloomy donkey friend? Answer: Eeyore.
7. How many squares are there on a chessboard? Answer: 64.
8. What is the name of Fred Flintstone’s wife? Answer: Wilma.
9. Which bear comes from “darkest Peru”? Answer: Paddington.
10. How many strings does a standard guitar have? Answer: six.

Film, TV and music quiz questions

The round every table is sure it will win.

1. Which band released “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 1975? Answer: Queen.
2. Who played Jack Dawson in Titanic (1997)? Answer: Leonardo DiCaprio.
3. Which BBC soap is set in the fictional borough of Walford? Answer: EastEnders.
4. Who sang “Rolling in the Deep”? Answer: Adele.
5. What is the name of the school of witchcraft and wizardry in Harry Potter? Answer: Hogwarts.
6. Which band had a hit with “Hey Jude” in 1968? Answer: The Beatles.
7. Which film won the first Oscar for Best Animated Feature? Answer: Shrek, at the 2002 ceremony.
8. Who directed Jaws (1975)? Answer: Steven Spielberg.
9. Which Swedish group won Eurovision in 1974 with “Waterloo”? Answer: ABBA.
10. What is the name of the coffee shop in Friends? Answer: Central Perk.

What is a good pub quiz tie-breaker?

A good tie-breaker has a number for an answer, so the closest team wins outright and nobody shares first place. Try this one: how tall is Ben Nevis, in metres?

The answer is 1,345 metres. It gained a metre on paper in 2016, when Ordnance Survey re-measured the summit with better technology, so accept 1,344 too if you want to be kind.

How do you write pub quiz questions?

To write pub quiz questions that work, start from an answer you can check in a reliable source, then write the shortest question that leads to it.

1. Check every answer. Anything with two defensible answers goes in the bin. “Which is the longest river in the world?” depends on how you measure the Amazon, so it isn’t here.
2. Put the key words at the end. “Which planet is closest to the Sun?” lets people think while you are still reading.
3. Decide what you will accept. If “China” and “Tibet” both score, write it on the answer sheet before the night, not during the row.
4. Avoid “currently” and “the most”. Records and office-holders change.
5. Read it aloud. If you trip over it, so will the room.
6. Write a round for the room. Questions about the company or the year the team has had are the ones nobody can look up.

How many questions are in a pub quiz?

A typical pub quiz has six to eight rounds of ten questions, which fills about two hours. That is the guide PTA UK gives for a fundraising quiz, and it suits a pub where the quiz is the whole night.

A work quiz around a dinner is different. Two or three rounds between courses is plenty, and six sharp questions beat ten that drag, so keep the best of each round here and drop the rest.

For picture rounds, wipeouts and jokers, there are more quiz round ideas, and a guide to running a corporate quiz night.

How I run a pub quiz on my own software

A pub quiz read from a sheet works because the people who turn up chose to come to a quiz. A work crowd didn’t, and when one person on each table holds the pen, the rest drift. So I run quizzes as a show, on software I built myself, played at the front, at the tables or on every guest’s phone.

Here is how I’d play this list:

• On every phone. With Quiz Live, each guest answers on their own phone, with four colour answer tiles and a countdown. Points reward being right and being quick, and the leaderboard comes up after every question.
• On a Quiz Show board. Five of the rounds become five categories, easiest at the lowest values. Teams pick, buzz in and steal each other’s misses, and picture questions go straight on the big screen.
• As a knockout. The Cut puts the whole room in, and the lowest scores drop out each round until one player is left standing.

I write the questions for the people in front of me. A graduate intake gets a different quiz from a board of directors, and the company round comes out of the briefing. The night is won in the briefing, not on the stage.

If you would rather hand the whole night over, I’ll write the rounds, run the software and host it as your quiz master. One host, the whole evening. Call me on 07596 851647 and tell me about the room.