120 Trivia Questions for Work (With Answers)

Trivia is the one work game nobody has to be talked into. Post ten questions and the quietest person in the channel suddenly knows the capital of Canada, the finance team starts arguing about whether a hotdog counts as a sandwich, and the meeting that was going to start late starts on time because people showed up for round two.

Here are 120 trivia questions for work with answers, sorted into 12 rounds of 10. Every round is safe for any company, answerable by a normal adult without a phone, and short enough to run as a meeting opener. If you want prompts rather than questions with right answers, the 120 questions of the day for work and 100 icebreaker questions for work cover that side.

Ten trivia questions for work, if you need them right now

The meeting starts in two minutes. Read these out, collect answers in chat, reveal at the end.

1. What does the "Cc" in an email stand for? Answer: Carbon copy.
2. What is the capital of Australia? Answer: Canberra.
3. How many keys are on a full-size piano? Answer: 88.
4. Which company makes the Post-it Note? Answer: 3M.
5. In what year did the Berlin Wall fall? Answer: 1989.
6. What is the chemical symbol for gold? Answer: Au.
7. Which coffee chain's logo is a twin-tailed siren? Answer: Starbucks.
8. Which band released "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Answer: Queen.
9. What gives Earl Grey tea its flavour? Answer: Bergamot oil.
10. How many hearts does an octopus have? Answer: Three.

All ten appear again in the rounds below, where they belong.

What makes a trivia question work at work

Pub quiz rules do not apply. A pub quiz rewards the person who knows the most. A work quiz has to be fun for the person who knows the least.

1. Guessable by anyone. The best question has a plausible wrong answer that half the room will commit to. "How many time zones does Russia span?" gets a spread of guesses and a groan at the reveal. "Who won the 1987 Tour de France?" gets silence.
2. Answerable in a word or a number. If the answer is a paragraph, the scoring turns into a negotiation.
3. No insider knowledge. Company history rounds sound fun and reliably humiliate the new starters. Keep those for the ten-year anniversary.
4. Settled, not debatable. Every question below has one accepted answer. Nothing hinges on an opinion or a date that depends on which source you read.

How to run it

• The meeting opener. One round of ten, first five minutes, answers in chat, reveal before the agenda. People arrive on time for this. They do not arrive on time for "any updates?"
• The channel version. Post a round on Monday morning in Slack or Teams. Answers go in a thread. Post the answer key on Friday with the scores. In our benchmarks from 10,096 daily team game plays, 61% of people joined between 9am and noon, so a morning post gets the most replies.
• The live quiz. Three rounds, teams of three or four, mixed across departments so nobody is quizzing with the people they already eat lunch with. Twenty minutes, then stop while people still want more.
• Scoring. One point a question. For the numbers round, closest guess wins the point. Ties are broken by the question the host forgot to ask, which you should have ready.

The failure mode is the same as every work ritual. It lives in one person's calendar, and it dies on that person's first week of leave.

Round 1. Office life

1. What does the "Cc" in an email stand for? Answer: Carbon copy.
2. Which company makes the Post-it Note? Answer: 3M.
3. Which font was the default in Microsoft Word before Calibri replaced it in 2007? Answer: Times New Roman.
4. What does PDF stand for? Answer: Portable Document Format.
5. In which decade did Xerox release the first commercial plain-paper photocopier, the 914? Answer: The 1950s.
6. The QWERTY keyboard layout was designed for which machine? Answer: The typewriter.
7. What was the name of the animated paperclip assistant in Microsoft Office? Answer: Clippy.
8. What colour was the original Post-it Note? Answer: Canary yellow.
9. What does "OOO" mean in a calendar or an email subject line? Answer: Out of office.
10. What is the character limit of a standard post on X, raised from 140 in 2017? Answer: 280.

Round 2. Tech and the internet

1. What does "www" stand for? Answer: World Wide Web.
2. In what year was the first iPhone released? Answer: 2007.
3. Which company owns YouTube? Answer: Google.
4. What does HTTP stand for? Answer: Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
5. What was Google called when it was still a Stanford research project? Answer: BackRub.
6. According to Apple's 1998 launch, what did the "i" in iMac stand for first? Answer: Internet.
7. What does USB stand for? Answer: Universal Serial Bus.
8. Google's name is a play on which very large number? Answer: A googol.
9. Which company developed the Android operating system before Google bought it in 2005? Answer: Android Inc.
10. In what year did Wikipedia launch? Answer: 2001.

Round 3. Brands and logos

1. Which coffee chain's logo is a twin-tailed siren? Answer: Starbucks.
2. What animal is on the Lacoste logo? Answer: A crocodile.
3. Which car brand's badge is a prancing horse? Answer: Ferrari.
4. Which company's slogan is "Just Do It"? Answer: Nike.
5. How many rings are in the Audi logo? Answer: Four.
6. The name IKEA is made from the founder's initials and the names of what two things? Answer: His family farm (Elmtaryd) and his home village (Agunnaryd).
7. Which chocolate brand is known for the purple wrapper on its Dairy Milk bars? Answer: Cadbury.
8. What does BMW stand for? Answer: Bayerische Motoren Werke.
9. What is the Michelin Man's official name? Answer: Bibendum.
10. Which fast food chain's mascot is a colonel? Answer: KFC.

Round 4. Food and drink

1. What is the main ingredient of guacamole? Answer: Avocado.
2. Which country drinks the most coffee per person? Answer: Finland.
3. Which nut is marzipan made from? Answer: Almonds.
4. What is sushi rice seasoned with? Answer: Rice vinegar.
5. Which spice is the most expensive in the world by weight? Answer: Saffron.
6. What gives Earl Grey tea its flavour? Answer: Bergamot oil.
7. What are the three toppings on a Margherita pizza? Answer: Tomato, mozzarella and basil.
8. What does the Scoville scale measure? Answer: The heat of chilli peppers.
9. In which country was espresso invented? Answer: Italy.
10. Which fruit is dried to make a prune? Answer: A plum.

Round 5. Geography

This is the round that pairs with a map. If your team prefers tapping a globe to typing a capital, Pin Drop is the same idea as a two-minute game.

1. What is the capital of Australia? Answer: Canberra.
2. What is the largest country in the world by area? Answer: Russia.
3. Which river runs through Paris? Answer: The Seine.
4. What is the smallest country in the world? Answer: Vatican City.
5. Which continent has the most countries? Answer: Africa.
6. What is the longest river in South America? Answer: The Amazon.
7. Mount Everest sits on the border of which two countries? Answer: Nepal and China.
8. Which city is nicknamed the Big Apple? Answer: New York City.
9. What is the capital of Canada? Answer: Ottawa.
10. Which is the largest ocean? Answer: The Pacific.

Round 6. Dates and history

Read these as a "which year" round, or turn five of them into a put-them-in-order question. That second version is what Timeline and Date Stamp do every day, and the arguments are better.

1. In what year did the Berlin Wall fall? Answer: 1989.
2. In what year did humans first land on the Moon? Answer: 1969.
3. In what year did the Titanic sink? Answer: 1912.
4. In what year did the Second World War end? Answer: 1945.
5. In what year was the first Harry Potter book published? Answer: 1997.
6. In what year was Google founded? Answer: 1998.
7. In what year did Facebook launch? Answer: 2004.
8. In what year did euro notes and coins enter circulation? Answer: 2002.
9. In what year were the first modern Olympic Games held? Answer: 1896.
10. In what year did Spotify launch? Answer: 2008.

Round 7. Science and nature

1. What is the chemical symbol for gold? Answer: Au.
2. How many bones are in the adult human body? Answer: 206.
3. Which planet is closest to the Sun? Answer: Mercury.
4. Which gas do plants absorb from the air? Answer: Carbon dioxide.
5. What is the hardest natural substance? Answer: Diamond.
6. How many hearts does an octopus have? Answer: Three.
7. What is the largest animal that has ever lived? Answer: The blue whale.
8. What is the chemical formula for water? Answer: H2O.
9. At what temperature in Celsius does water boil at sea level? Answer: 100.
10. What is the fastest land animal? Answer: The cheetah.

Round 8. Numbers, closest guess wins

Nobody is expected to know these. Everyone guesses, the closest answer takes the point, and the reveal is the fun part. This is the Over/Under format, and it is the round most likely to end with someone being mocked for a week.

1. How many keys are on a full-size piano? Answer: 88.
2. How many time zones does Russia span? Answer: 11.
3. How many squares are on a chessboard? Answer: 64.
4. How many member states does the United Nations have? Answer: 193.
5. How tall is the Eiffel Tower to the tip, in metres? Answer: About 330.
6. How many minutes are in a week? Answer: 10,080.
7. How many days did the Apollo 11 mission last, from launch to splashdown? Answer: Eight.
8. How many bones does a shark have? Answer: Zero. The skeleton is cartilage.
9. How long is a marathon in kilometres? Answer: 42.195.
10. How many strings are on a standard guitar? Answer: Six.

Round 9. Words and language

1. Which letter of the alphabet does not appear in the name of any US state? Answer: Q.
2. What does RSVP stand for? Answer: Répondez s'il vous plaît.
3. What do you call a word that reads the same backwards and forwards? Answer: A palindrome.
4. Which language has the most native speakers in the world? Answer: Mandarin Chinese.
5. What is the dot above a lowercase i or j called? Answer: A tittle.
6. What does "e.g." stand for? Answer: Exempli gratia, meaning "for example".
7. What is the collective noun for a group of crows? Answer: A murder.
8. What does "a.m." stand for? Answer: Ante meridiem.
9. The word "schadenfreude" is borrowed from which language? Answer: German.
10. What is the name of this punctuation mark, ; ? Answer: A semicolon.

Round 10. Film and TV

1. Which film features the line "I'll be back"? Answer: The Terminator.
2. Who directed Jurassic Park? Answer: Steven Spielberg.
3. In the US version of The Office, what is the name of the paper company? Answer: Dunder Mifflin.
4. Which Pixar film is about a rat who wants to be a chef? Answer: Ratatouille.
5. What is the name of the fictional African country in Black Panther? Answer: Wakanda.
6. Which actor played Jack in Titanic? Answer: Leonardo DiCaprio.
7. Which series is set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana? Answer: Stranger Things.
8. Which colour pill does Neo take in The Matrix? Answer: The red pill.
9. In Finding Nemo, what kind of fish is Nemo? Answer: A clownfish.
10. Which studio made Toy Story? Answer: Pixar.

Round 11. Music

1. Which band released "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Answer: Queen.
2. How many strings does a standard violin have? Answer: Four.
3. Which artist released the albums "1989" and "Folklore"? Answer: Taylor Swift.
4. What does DJ stand for? Answer: Disc jockey.
5. Which city did The Beatles come from? Answer: Liverpool.
6. Which Swedish group won Eurovision in 1974 with "Waterloo"? Answer: ABBA.
7. What is the best-selling album of all time? Answer: Thriller, by Michael Jackson.
8. Beyoncé rose to fame as a member of which group? Answer: Destiny's Child.
9. Which musical term means to gradually get louder? Answer: Crescendo.
10. Which streaming service launched in Sweden in 2008? Answer: Spotify.

Round 12. Sport

1. How many players does a football team have on the pitch? Answer: Eleven.
2. In which sport would you perform a slam dunk? Answer: Basketball.
3. How often are the Summer Olympics held? Answer: Every four years.
4. How many holes are there in a standard round of golf? Answer: 18.
5. Which country has won the most FIFA World Cups? Answer: Brazil.
6. In tennis, what is a score of zero called? Answer: Love.
7. How long is an Olympic swimming pool in metres? Answer: 50.
8. Which sport is played at Wimbledon? Answer: Tennis.
9. How many points is a try worth in rugby union? Answer: Five.
10. Which city hosted the 2000 Summer Olympics? Answer: Sydney.

Running trivia in Microsoft Teams or Slack

The channel version needs no tools at all. Post a round, ask for answers in the thread, and post the key at the end of the day. Two things make it stick.

• Same slot every week. Monday morning or Friday afternoon, not "when I remember". The ritual is the slot, not the questions.
• Scores in public. A running tally in the channel topic or a pinned message turns twelve weeks of rounds into a season. Without it, every week starts from zero and the energy does too.

If you want a hosted live quiz with a screen, the Kahoot alternatives for teams post compares the tools built for that. If you want a weekly quiz that posts itself, Water Cooler Trivia and QuizBreaker are the two most people land on, and both comparisons are honest about where they beat a daily game. The broader lists of Microsoft Teams games for work and Slack games for work cover what else fits in a channel.

The trivia games inside Halftime

Halftime's daily rotation includes six trivia formats, each two minutes long, each scored so the channel can argue about the results. The game changes every day, so trivia is a regular visitor rather than the whole diet.

• Final Answer. Read the clue, type the answer. No multiple choice.
• Rapid Fire. Sixty seconds, as many questions as you can clear, wrong answers cost you.
• Over/Under. Guess the number, closest wins. The round above, automated.
• Timeline. Put five events in order.
• Date Stamp. Flick a tape of years to the right one for five moments in history.
• Pin Drop. Five places, one world map, scored in kilometres missed.

Start with a round from this page this week. If the channel asks for more, that is the signal to try a game and see whether a daily one holds.