60 funny quiz questions and answers (all true)

If you're hunting for funny quiz questions and answers, here's the catch: a joke only works once, and a question has to survive being read out to a room of people who are trying to win. So this list takes a different route. Every one of these 60 fun trivia questions has a real, checkable answer, and the humour comes from the fact that the answer is true.

Use them as a standalone round, or as a palate cleanser in the middle of a serious night. They also double as funny pub quiz questions, because the arguments after the reveal tend to be louder than the ones about capital cities. If you want to run them properly, you can turn them into a quiz with a big-screen scoreboard in a few minutes.

What makes funny quiz questions work?

We've read out a lot of questions to a lot of pubs, and the funny ones share a few traits.

The absurd truth beats the joke. "What do you call a fish with no eyes?" gets a groan. "Which country fought a war against emus, and lost?" gets a gasp, then a laugh, then someone googling it under the table. The reveal is the punchline, and it only lands because it's real.

Read it with a straight face. Don't announce that a question is funny. Ask it like it's a normal history question and let the answer do the work. Teams will take it seriously, which is half the fun.

Keep the answer guessable. A funny question nobody can answer just makes people grumpy. Every question below has an answer a sensible team could reach by reasoning, or at least recognise instantly when they hear it.

Add the context. The short follow-up after the answer is where the second laugh lives, so don't skip it when you read these out.

The rounds run from gentle to cheeky. If you want other flavours, badly described movies are another reliable way to get a room laughing, and our true or false questions are good for settling arguments.

Round 1: Weird but true fun trivia questions

1Which Australian animal has fingerprints so similar to a human's that they're very hard to tell apart under a microscope?Use in quizUse

Answer:The koala. It's a rare case of evolution arriving at the same answer twice.(click to reveal)

2Which Australian animal produces cube-shaped droppings?Use in quizUse

Answer:The wombat. Scientists worked out in 2018 that the shape comes from the way the intestine stretches, and the cubes stack neatly so other wombats can find them.(click to reveal)

3Which common yellow fruit is very slightly radioactive?Use in quizUse

Answer:The banana. It's rich in potassium, a small fraction of which is a radioactive isotope. You'd need an absurd number of them for it to matter.(click to reveal)

4What is Scotland's national animal?Use in quizUse

Answer:The unicorn. It's been on the Scottish royal coat of arms since the 1300s.(click to reveal)

5Sea otters are known to do what to each other while they sleep, so they don't drift apart?Use in quizUse

Answer:Hold hands (accept paws). Groups of them, called rafts, sometimes wrap themselves in kelp as well.(click to reveal)

6Which is older: the University of Oxford or the Aztec Empire?Use in quizUse

Answer:The University of Oxford. Teaching was going on there by 1096, while the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325.(click to reveal)

7Which are older: sharks or trees?Use in quizUse

Answer:Sharks. They've been around for roughly 450 million years, and the first trees appeared a good while after that.(click to reveal)

8On Venus, which is longer: a day or a year?Use in quizUse

Answer:A day. Venus spins so slowly that one rotation takes about 243 Earth days, while its trip around the Sun takes about 225.(click to reveal)

9Which African country has more pyramids than Egypt?Use in quizUse

Answer:Sudan. The Nubian kings built them, and they're smaller and steeper than the famous ones further north.(click to reveal)

10Which European country has the most time zones, once you count its overseas territories?Use in quizUse

Answer:France. Its territories from the Caribbean to the Pacific bring the total to about a dozen.(click to reveal)

Round 2: Ridiculous history

11In 1859, Britain and the United States nearly went to war over the death of which farm animal?Use in quizUse

Answer:A pig. A settler shot it for trespassing in his garden on one of the San Juan Islands. The pig was the only casualty, and the standoff was eventually settled by arbitration in 1872.(click to reveal)

12Which country's army was famously beaten by emus in 1932?Use in quizUse

Answer:Australia. Soldiers with machine guns were sent to cull the birds in Western Australia and largely came away empty handed.(click to reveal)

13The 1739 war between Britain and Spain is named after which part of a sea captain's body?Use in quizUse

Answer:His ear. Robert Jenkins claimed Spanish coastguards had cut it off, and he reportedly showed it to Parliament.(click to reveal)

14In the 1690s, which Russian ruler introduced a tax on men who wore beards?Use in quizUse

Answer:Peter the Great. Anyone who paid got a token to prove it. He wanted Russia to look more like western Europe.(click to reveal)

15Which flower caused a huge speculative frenzy in the 17th-century Dutch Republic?Use in quizUse

Answer:The tulip. Single bulbs were reportedly changing hands for more than a skilled worker earned in a year.(click to reveal)

16In 1518, residents of Strasbourg were struck by a mysterious compulsion to do what, sometimes for days?Use in quizUse

Answer:Dance. Nobody is quite sure why. Theories range from food poisoning to mass psychological stress.(click to reveal)

17In 1969, qualifying matches for which sport's World Cup helped trigger a short war between El Salvador and Honduras?Use in quizUse

Answer:Football (accept soccer). It's usually called the Football War, though the real causes were land and migration tensions that had been building for years.(click to reveal)

18The Hundred Years' War between England and France actually lasted how many years?Use in quizUse

Answer:116 (1337 to 1453). So the name is off by a bit, and nobody asked for a refund.(click to reveal)

19The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896 is considered the shortest war in recorded history. About how long did it last?Use in quizUse

Answer:About 40 minutes (accept anything from 38 to 45). The Zanzibari palace was shelled by the Royal Navy, and the sultan's side surrendered quickly.(click to reveal)

20Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landings than she did to the building of which famous monument?Use in quizUse

Answer:The Great Pyramid of Giza. It was already about 2,500 years old in her day, and the Moon landings are roughly 2,000 years after her.(click to reveal)

Round 3: Animals behaving oddly

21What is a group of flamingos called?Use in quizUse

Answer:A flamboyance. Nobody is surprised.(click to reveal)

22What is a group of crows called?Use in quizUse

Answer:A murder. It's a bit dramatic for a bird that mostly steals chips.(click to reveal)

23What is a group of ferrets called?Use in quizUse

Answer:A business. A ferret in a business suit is something nobody asked for, but now we have it.(click to reveal)

24What is a baby echidna called?Use in quizUse

Answer:A puggle. Baby platypuses are called the same thing.(click to reveal)

25Which tiny bird is famous for being able to fly backwards?Use in quizUse

Answer:The hummingbird. Its wings rotate in a figure of eight, which is how it can hover and reverse.(click to reveal)

26Sloths risk a trip down from the trees about once a week to do what?Use in quizUse

Answer:Go to the toilet. Most of the time they do everything else, including sleeping and eating, up in the branches.(click to reveal)

27Which penguin at Edinburgh Zoo holds the military rank of Brigadier in the Norwegian King's Guard?Use in quizUse

Answer:Sir Nils Olav. He's a king penguin who was knighted in 2008 and promoted in 2016. The Norwegian Guard inspects him whenever they visit.(click to reveal)

28Male Adelie penguins are known to give a female what kind of courtship gift?Use in quizUse

Answer:A pebble. Pebbles are valuable nest material, so it's a serious offer.(click to reveal)

29An ostrich's eye is bigger than its what?Use in quizUse

Answer:Its brain. Which explains a lot about the head-in-the-sand reputation, which is also a myth.(click to reveal)

30True or false: goldfish have a three-second memory.Use in quizUse

Answer:False. They can be trained to recognise signals and remember the training for months, so we're sorry for the fishbowl jokes.(click to reveal)

Round 4: Daft laws, records and contests

A quick note: we've only included rules that exist on the statute book or contests that really run every year. There are a lot of "silly laws" lists online, and most are myths.

31Under the UK's Salmon Act 1986, it's an offence to handle a salmon in what circumstances?Use in quizUse

Answer:Suspicious ones. The section is titled "Handling salmon in suspicious circumstances", although since 2010 it covers other fish as well.(click to reveal)

32Which country banned the sale of chewing gum in 1992?Use in quizUse

Answer:Singapore. A narrow exception for medical and dental gum came later.(click to reveal)

33Swiss animal welfare rules treat which small pet as a social animal that shouldn't be kept alone?Use in quizUse

Answer:A guinea pig. The rules require them to have company, and there's reportedly a rental service for owners whose pet has lost its friend.(click to reveal)

34At the annual world championships in Sonkajarvi, Finland, the winning wife-carrying team gets their prize in a quantity equal to the carried partner's weight. What is the prize?Use in quizUse

Answer:Beer. The event dates from the 1990s, and the course includes a water pit to wade through.(click to reveal)

35In Derbyshire, there's an annual world championship in wrestling with which body parts?Use in quizUse

Answer:Toes. Competitors lock their feet together, and the aim is to force the opponent's foot to the side.(click to reveal)

36At Egremont Crab Fair in Cumbria, contestants pull the ugliest face they can through a horse collar. What is this called?Use in quizUse

Answer:Gurning. The World Gurning Championship has been held there for centuries, and the best gurners can do it without their teeth in.(click to reveal)

37In Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales, competitors in a famous annual event swim through a trench in a field, wearing flippers and a snorkel. What are they in?Use in quizUse

Answer:A bog. It's a peat bog, and the course is two lengths of the trench with no regular swimming strokes allowed.(click to reveal)

38Also in Llanwrtyd Wells, every year runners compete in a marathon against which animal?Use in quizUse

Answer:Horses. Runners have won on a couple of occasions, which says something about horses or about runners.(click to reveal)

39Which food is chased down the steep Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire every spring?Use in quizUse

Answer:A wheel of cheese (Double Gloucester). It gets a head start, and it generally still reaches the bottom first.(click to reveal)

40At the World Championships held in Ashton, Northamptonshire, competitors take turns hitting the fruit of a horse chestnut tree on a string. What's the game?Use in quizUse

Answer:Conkers. It's been running since 1965.(click to reveal)

Round 5: Food and drink oddities

41In the 1830s, tomato ketchup was marketed as what?Use in quizUse

Answer:Medicine. A doctor named John Cooke Bennett claimed that it could cure indigestion and other ailments.(click to reveal)

42Which seeds were used as currency in the Aztec Empire?Use in quizUse

Answer:Cacao beans (accept cocoa). They were valuable enough to be counterfeited.(click to reveal)

43Before orange carrots became the norm, what colour were most cultivated carrots?Use in quizUse

Answer:Purple (accept yellow). Orange ones were bred in the Netherlands in the 1600s.(click to reveal)

44Which Scottish city claims to have invented chicken tikka masala?Use in quizUse

Answer:Glasgow. In 2001, a British foreign secretary called it a "true British national dish", and the claim has been argued over ever since.(click to reveal)

45In which country was the Hawaiian pizza invented?Use in quizUse

Answer:Canada. A Greek-born restaurateur in Chatham, Ontario, is credited with putting ham and pineapple on one in 1962, though the origin story isn't entirely settled.(click to reveal)

46In which country was the Caesar salad invented?Use in quizUse

Answer:Mexico. The restaurateur Caesar Cardini is said to have made it in Tijuana in the 1920s.(click to reveal)

47What ingredient in early Coca-Cola gave the drink the first half of its name?Use in quizUse

Answer:Coca leaf (accept coca leaf extract). The original recipe contained a trace of cocaine, and it was removed in the early 1900s.(click to reveal)

48In 1991, a UK VAT tribunal ruled that Jaffa Cakes were what?Use in quizUse

Answer:Cakes. The ruling kept them free of VAT, which at the time applied to chocolate-covered biscuits. McVitie's reportedly showed that a stale one goes hard, where a stale biscuit goes soft.(click to reveal)

49In which country is it a popular tradition to eat KFC for Christmas dinner?Use in quizUse

Answer:Japan. A marketing campaign in the 1970s was so successful that people now order their buckets weeks in advance.(click to reveal)

50Which frozen treat was reportedly invented in 1905 by an 11-year-old who left a drink with a stirring stick outside overnight?Use in quizUse

Answer:The ice lolly (accept Popsicle). The boy was Frank Epperson, and he patented it nearly twenty years later.(click to reveal)

Round 6: Trick questions

These all have one fair answer. Read them slowly, then watch the table argue.

51How many months of the year have 28 days?Use in quizUse

Answer:All twelve. Some have more as well.(click to reveal)

52A farmer has 17 sheep, and all but 9 die. How many are left?Use in quizUse

Answer:Nine.(click to reveal)

53You walk into a cold, dark room with one match. There's a candle, an oil lamp and a fireplace with kindling. What do you light first?Use in quizUse

Answer:The match.(click to reveal)

54Which weighs more: a kilogram of feathers or a kilogram of bricks?Use in quizUse

Answer:Neither, they weigh the same.(click to reveal)

55How many animals of each kind did Moses take onto the ark?Use in quizUse

Answer:None, it was Noah. It's a famous psychology trick: most people answer "two" without noticing.(click to reveal)

56A rooster lays an egg on top of a sloped roof. Which way does it roll?Use in quizUse

Answer:Neither, roosters don't lay eggs.(click to reveal)

57In which month did the Russian October Revolution begin, by the calendar we use today?Use in quizUse

Answer:November. Russia was still on the old Julian calendar in 1917, so the date was 25 October there and 7 November elsewhere.(click to reveal)

58Panama hats are traditionally made in which country?Use in quizUse

Answer:Ecuador. They got the name because they were shipped through Panama on the way to the gold rush.(click to reveal)

59What two meals can you never eat before breakfast?Use in quizUse

Answer:Lunch and dinner.(click to reveal)

60Before 1865, what was Mount Everest known to British surveyors as?Use in quizUse

Answer:Peak XV. The new name honoured a former Surveyor General of India, who had reportedly objected to the idea.(click to reveal)

Running these funny pub quiz questions

A few things we've learned from hosting this sort of round.

• Don't put it last. Funny rounds work best in the middle of the night, when people need a break from concentrating.
• Give each round a title that hints at the mood but not the answers. "Ridiculous history" is a promise, not a spoiler.
• Let people complain. A trick question that gets the whole room shouting "that's not fair" has done its job, as long as the answer really is fair.

If you're after a gentler or tougher round to go with these, try our easy quiz questions or hard quiz questions. And if your team still has no name, we've got a list for that too.