True or false quiz questions with answers for a pub or work quiz

In short

• Here are 40 true or false quiz questions with answers, in five rounds of eight: general knowledge, history, UK, food and drink, and a funny round.
• Every answer has been checked against a source, and contested “myth” questions have been left out.
• True or false suits a big room because everyone can answer, even the people who swear they are hopeless at quizzes.
• Run it as a stand-up, sit-down knockout or as a quick-fire round on every guest’s phone.
• Finish on a tie-breaker with a number for an answer, because two options can’t split a draw.

True or false quiz questions are the easiest way I know to get a whole room playing. There’s no blank answer sheet to stare at and nothing to spell. You only have to decide whether you believe it, which is why the round works as well at a work social as it does in the pub.

The catch: a true or false question with a shaky answer falls apart the moment somebody checks their phone. So every answer below has been checked, and each comes with a one-line explanation to settle the argument on the spot.

What makes good true or false quiz questions?

Good true or false quiz questions sound plausible both ways and have one answer nobody can dispute. If half the room would bet on true and half on false, you’ve written a good one.

• Skip contested myths. Old favourites about goldfish memories and short emperors start rows, because the “correct” answer depends on which article you read.
• Write false statements carefully. Change one fact, like a date, a number or a name, rather than writing something silly that nobody would believe.
• Balance the round. Aim for roughly half true and half false, or the room spots the pattern.
• Keep them short. One clause. No double negatives.

How does a true or false round work in a big room?

A true or false round works in a big room because every person can play at once. Nobody needs a pen or a team captain, and for the first few questions a lucky guess is as good as knowing.

The classic version is the stand-up knockout. Everyone stands. Hands on heads for true, hands on bums for false. Read the statement, give the answer, and everyone who got it wrong sits down. Keep going until one person is left. It’s the same shape as Heads or Tails, my coin game, only with a question in place of the coin.

The other version is a quick-fire round inside a normal quiz: eight statements, one point each, read at pace between two longer rounds.

True or false quiz questions and answers: general knowledge

1. A day on Venus is longer than its year. True. One spin takes 243 Earth days and one orbit of the Sun takes 225, according to NASA.
2. Sound travels faster through water than through air. True. About four times faster: roughly 1,480 metres a second in fresh water against 343 in air.
3. A light year is a measure of time. False. It’s a distance: how far light travels in a year.
4. You can see the Great Wall of China from the Moon with the naked eye. False. NASA says it isn’t visible from the Moon, and it’s hard to spot even from orbit without a powerful lens.
5. Diamonds and the graphite in a pencil are made of the same element. True. Both are forms of carbon.
6. Koalas are a type of bear. False. They’re marsupials.
7. Lightning never strikes the same place twice. False. Tall buildings get hit again and again.
8. A giraffe has more bones in its neck than a human. False. Both have seven. A giraffe’s are just much longer.

Which true or false history quiz questions work best?

The best true or false history quiz questions play with time, because people are bad at judging how far apart events really are. Statements that sound impossible but turn out to be true get the loudest groans.

1. The University of Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire. True. There is evidence of teaching at Oxford as early as 1096. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, was founded in 1325.
2. Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid. True. The pyramid went up around 2600 BC. Cleopatra died in 30 BC, under 2,000 years before Apollo 11 landed in 1969.
3. Julius Caesar was the first Roman emperor. False. The first was Augustus, from 27 BC.
4. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built for Tutankhamun. False. It was the tomb of the pharaoh Khufu.
5. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. True. On 9 November 1989.
6. Henry VIII had seven wives. False. He had six.
7. The Great Fire of London started in a bakery. True. In Pudding Lane, in September 1666.
8. The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to every woman over 21. False. It covered women over 30 who met a property qualification.

True or false quiz questions: the UK round

A UK round catches out the people who are sure they know their own country.

1. Hadrian’s Wall marks the border between England and Scotland. False. It lies entirely within England.
2. The Battle of Hastings was fought in Hastings. False. It was fought about seven miles away, near the town now called Battle.
3. Wales is represented on the Union Flag. False. The flag combines the crosses of St George, St Andrew and St Patrick.
4. Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) is higher than any mountain in England. True. At 1,085 metres it’s the highest point in the British Isles outside Scotland.
5. The Isle of Man is part of the United Kingdom. False. It’s a Crown Dependency, and the Crown Dependencies are not part of the UK.
6. Edinburgh is Scotland’s biggest city. False. Glasgow has more people.
7. The world’s shortest scheduled passenger flight is in Scotland. True. As of October 2026 it’s Westray to Papa Westray in Orkney: 1.7 miles, scheduled at a minute and a half.
8. By population, the smallest city in the UK is St Davids in Pembrokeshire. True. Its wider community had 1,751 residents in 2021.

What are good true or false food and drink quiz questions?

Good true or false food and drink quiz questions take things everyone has eaten and turn out to be wrong about. Botany and tax law do most of the work here.

1. Bananas are berries. True. In botany, a berry is a fleshy fruit grown from a single flower with one ovary, and that includes bananas.
2. Strawberries are berries. False. Not by the same definition.
3. Peanuts are nuts. False. They’re legumes, grown in pods underground.
4. Worcestershire sauce contains anchovies. True.
5. Champagne can be made anywhere in France. False. It has to come from the Champagne region, under the appellation rules.
6. Jaffa Cakes are legally cakes in the UK. True. A 1991 VAT tribunal ruled they had enough characteristics of cakes.
7. Gin is flavoured with juniper berries. True.
8. Baked beans are made from broad beans. False. They’re usually haricot beans.

What are some funny true or false quiz questions?

Funny true or false quiz questions are the true ones that sound made up. This round leans towards true on purpose, so the room talks itself into false and gets it wrong.

1. Wombats produce cube-shaped poo. True. The research behind it won a 2019 Ig Nobel prize for physics.
2. Sharks have been around longer than trees. True. The Smithsonian’s natural history museum says so.
3. Bubble wrap was first designed as wallpaper. True. Its inventors were trying to make textured plastic wallpaper in 1957.
4. Nintendo started out making playing cards. True. Hanafuda cards, in Kyoto, from 1889.
5. Polar bears have white skin. False. Their skin is black under the fur.
6. Ostriches bury their heads in the sand when they’re scared. False. They don’t.
7. The dot on a lowercase “i” has a name. True. It’s called a tittle.
8. Some of the ashes of the man who designed the Pringles can were buried in one. True. Fredric Baur asked for it, and his family did it after he died in 2008.

How do you run a true or false pub quiz round?

To run a true or false pub quiz round, read each statement twice, give the room five seconds, then reveal the answer with its one-line explanation before moving on. The explanation is half the fun, so don’t rush it.

• One round, not five. True or false is a change of pace, so drop one round into a longer quiz rather than running the whole night on it.
• Shuffle the order so tables can’t guess from the pattern.
• Use a numeric tie-breaker. On average, how many times a year is the Empire State Building struck by lightning? The US National Weather Service puts it at 23.

There are more formats in my quiz round ideas, and a full guide to running a corporate quiz night.

How I run true or false rounds on my own software

At a work event I run quiz rounds on software I built myself, so every guest plays and I can switch games from the microphone without the room going flat.

• On every phone. Quiz Live takes a question with two answers as easily as four, so a true or false round lands on every guest’s phone with a countdown. Points go for being right and being quick, with a leaderboard after every question.
• On their feet. The stand-up knockout plays like my Heads or Tails game: the whole room standing, the noise going up as the numbers come down, until one person is left.
• As its cousin. Who’s Bluffing? turns the idea inside out: three stories, one of them true, and the room decides which.

I write the questions for the people in the room, so a true or false round can carry a few statements about your own company. Those are the ones nobody can look up, and the ones the room argues about at the bar afterwards.

More quiz guides

• Sports quiz questions with answers, sorted into rounds.
• Film quiz questions for every kind of film fan.
• Family quiz questions that work for all ages.

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