General Knowledge Questions: Top 100 GK Quiz with Answers

Picture this: you’re three drinks deep into pub quiz night, coasting through the easy rounds, when someone drops a question about Mount Everest’s exact height or which planet sits closest to the Sun—and your team falls apart. It’s a universal humbling experience. This collection pulls the toughest general knowledge questions from top viral quizzes, organized by difficulty tier so you can warm up, level up, or just scroll for the satisfying rush of knowing things.

Buzzfeed GK Questions: 460 · Mentimeter Trivia: 450+ · Irish Pub Quiz: 140+ · EF Pub Quiz: 40 · PAA Queries Analyzed: 20

These key facts span geography, history, and technology—and they surface repeatedly because they’re exactly the details that trip people up under quiz pressure.

What are 10 top GK questions?

Ten questions covering science, history, and geography make for a solid pub quiz foundation. The Cosmopolitan collection of 300+ GK questions demonstrates which facts travel across multiple sources most often.

Easy starters

• What is the capital of the United States? — Washington D.C. (TriviaMaker)
• What planet is closest to the Sun? — Mercury (Cosmopolitan)
• What is a shape with nine sides called? — Nonagon (Cosmopolitan)
• Who painted the Mona Lisa? — Leonardo da Vinci (TriviaMaker)
• What is the tallest mountain in the world? — Mount Everest (TriviaMaker)

Medium challenge

• Who is the Queen of England’s surname? — Windsor (Cosmopolitan)
• What year was Madonna born? — 1958 (Cosmopolitan)
• Which country is the largest in the world? — Russia (Cosmopolitan)
• What does IPA stand for? — India Pale Ale (Cosmopolitan)
• How many time zones does Russia have? — 11 (Cosmopolitan)

The implication: these questions appear across Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, and smaller trivia databases precisely because they’re the facts people keep forgetting—not because they’re obscure, but because they’re easy to misplace under pressure.

What are the 50 quiz questions?

Fifty-question sets have dominated pub quiz nights because they split nicely into themed rounds. Pub quizzes typically involve teams writing answers on sheets for a quizmaster, covering history, sports, geography, music, and more (Number 42). Here are two curated rounds from that format.

Round 1: Basics

• What is the smallest country in the world? — Vatican City (Cosmopolitan)
• What is the biggest island in the world? — Greenland (Cosmopolitan)
• Which London Underground line has the most stations? — District Line, with 60 stations (Cosmopolitan)
• What is Heinz famous for being established in? — 1869 (Cosmopolitan)
• What is the study of mushrooms and fungi called? — Mycology (YouTube Quickfire Trivia)
• What art movement did Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso found? — Cubism (YouTube Quickfire Trivia)
• Who wrote Frankenstein? — Mary Shelley (YouTube 70 Trivia)
• What is Brazil’s official language? — Portuguese (YouTube 70 Trivia)
• Which country’s name means “The Shallows”? — Netherlands (EF Blog)
• What is the national flower of Japan? — Cherry blossom (EF Blog)

Round 2: Pop culture

• What is Eminem’s real name? — Marshall Mathers (Cosmopolitan)
• What was Google’s original name? — BackRub (Brightful)
• Where is Area 51 located? — Nevada, US (Brightful)
• What color is named after the fruit? — Orange (Brightful)
• What country consumes the most chocolate per capita? — Switzerland (Cosmopolitan)
• What is KFC’s slogan? — “Finger lickin’ good” (Cosmopolitan)
• What number is opposite 1 on a dartboard? — 19 (Brightful)
• What is a funambulist? — Someone who walks on a tight rope (Brightful)
• Who founded Spotify? — They were from Sweden (YouTube Quickfire Trivia)
• What was Chicken Tikka voted as? — The national dish of the UK (Cosmopolitan)

What are some good general knowledge questions?

Versatile questions span everyday trivia and weird facts that stick with you long after quiz night. These come sourced from pub quiz traditions and trivia databases used by real quizmasters (Number 42).

Everyday trivia

• How many stripes does the US flag have? — 13 (EF Blog)
• What is Earth’s national animal? — Australia has the red kangaroo as its national animal (EF Blog)
• What is the currency of Russia? — The ruble (Brightful)
• What is Poland’s currency? — The złoty (Brightful)
• What country has the most Trappist breweries? — Belgium (Brightful)

Fun facts

• What year did the London Underground open? — 1863 (EF Blog)
• When was the World Wide Web invented? — 1990 (EF Blog)
• Where did the pineapple plant originate? — South America (Brightful)
• What country is Coca-Cola not sold in? — North Korea and Cuba (Cosmopolitan)
• What year did Istanbul become Istanbul? — 1923, when it was renamed from Constantinople (EF Blog)

The pattern: good general knowledge questions tend to flip assumptions—when you hear the answer, you nod, but the moment before, you genuinely weren’t sure. That’s the sweet spot for memorable trivia.

What are some tricky GK questions?

Tricky questions either have plausible-sounding wrong answers or demand knowledge of obscure details. These 10 brain-bending ones come from the hardest sections of quizzes that rank highest in search results.

Logic puzzles

• The average centipede has how many legs? — 30 (though the exact count varies by species) (Cosmopolitan)
• What was the Incan empire missing? — A written language (EF Blog)
• How long does Earth take to orbit the Sun? — 365 days (EF Blog)

Obscure history

• What year was Buckingham Palace first opened? — 1705 (Cosmopolitan)
• When did St Paul’s Cathedral in London reach completion? — 1710 (Cosmopolitan)
• What is California’s nickname? — The Golden State (Brightful)
• What are the official colors of the Olympic rings? — Blue, yellow, black, green, and red (Cosmopolitan)
• What year was the Apollo 11 Moon landing? — July 20, 1969 (EF Blog)
• What is the capital of Finland? — Helsinki (Cosmopolitan)
• Who composed Moonlight Sonata? — Ludwig van Beethoven (TriviaMaker)

The catch: tricky questions succeed by exploiting pattern recognition—your brain wants to reach for the obvious answer, but the trivia setter built in a trap. The payoff is that moment when you realize you almost got it, and now you’ll never forget.

What are 5 hard trivia questions?

Ultra-hard trivia questions are the ones that separate the winning teams from the also-rans. These five come from quizzes ranked as the world’s toughest.

• What is the most abundant gas in Earth’s atmosphere? — Nitrogen, at roughly 78% (Cosmopolitan)
• How many time zones does Russia span? — 11, the most of any country (Cosmopolitan)
• What year did the Apollo 11 Moon landing occur? — 1969 (EF Blog)
• What was the Incan empire lacking that most major civilizations developed? — A written language (EF Blog)
• Which country consumes the most chocolate per capita? — Switzerland (Cosmopolitan)

The pattern: the hardest trivia questions often combine a numeric element with a geography or science fact—and the number is specific enough that you can’t bluff your way through it.

The correct answer is mycology.

— Quiz Host (YouTube Quickfire Trivia)

It’s like Trivial Pursuit, except in a pub.

— Number 42 (Quiz Provider, Number 42)

For anyone hosting pub quiz nights, the choice between downloading a ready-made set or curating your own is clear: ready-made quizzes from platforms like Buzzfeed’s 460-question database give you volume, but building from scratch—from PAA queries and verified facts—lets you tailor the difficulty to your crowd and stand out as a quizmaster worth remembering.