Play Along: Can You Get 10 out of 10?
Reading trivia is one thing. Answering it before you see the solution is another entirely — the gap between "I knew that" and actually knowing it is where quizzes are won and lost.
So here are ten questions across geography, science, art and history. Commit to an answer in your head first, then click to reveal. No timer, no pressure. Keep a tally — there is a scoring guide at the bottom.
The quiz
1. What is the capital of Australia?
A) Sydney B) Canberra C) Melbourne
Show answer
B) Canberra. Sydney and Melbourne both wanted it, so a compromise capital was built between them. The famous city rarely gets the parliament.
2. How many hearts does an octopus have?
A) One B) Two C) Three
Show answer
C) Three. Two pump blood to the gills, one to the rest of the body. Its blood is blue, because it carries oxygen with copper rather than iron.
3. On which planet is a day longer than its year?
A) Venus B) Mercury C) Mars
Show answer
A) Venus. It spins so slowly that one rotation takes longer than one full orbit of the Sun. It also spins backwards, for good measure.
4. Who painted The Starry Night?
A) Claude Monet B) Vincent van Gogh C) Paul Cézanne
Show answer
B) Vincent van Gogh. He painted it while staying at an asylum in the south of France, and sold almost nothing in his lifetime.
5. Which country has the only national flag that is not a rectangle or square?
A) Bhutan B) Sri Lanka C) Nepal
Show answer
C) Nepal. It is two stacked pennants. Switzerland and Vatican City are square, which catches people out — but they are still four-sided.
6. Which element has the chemical symbol Au?
A) Silver B) Gold C) Copper
Show answer
B) Gold. From the Latin aurum. When a symbol looks nothing like the English word — Fe, Pb, Na, K — the answer is almost always Latin.
7. Which river is traditionally listed as the longest in the world?
A) The Nile B) The Amazon C) The Yangtze
Show answer
A) The Nile. Though the Amazon is a very close second, and which one truly wins depends on where you decide the source begins. Quizzes want the Nile.
8. In which year did the First World War end?
A) 1916 B) 1918 C) 1920
Show answer
B) 1918. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month — a detail so tidy it is practically designed for quizzes.
9. What is the largest organ of the human body?
A) The liver B) The brain C) The skin
Show answer
C) The skin. People reach for an internal organ every time. Skin is an organ, and it is comfortably the biggest.
10. Where was paper money invented?
A) Italy B) China C) Egypt
Show answer
B) China. Centuries before it reached Europe. Travellers were baffled that anyone would swap real goods for a printed note — which is still the whole trick.
How did you do?
- 9–10 — Genuinely excellent. You are the person other teams want to recruit.
- 6–8 — Strong. You have broad general knowledge and lost points to one or two specialist traps.
- 3–5 — Respectable. Most people land here, and the ones you missed are the most memorable.
- 0–2 — Everyone starts somewhere, and you now know ten things you did not know five minutes ago.
The thing worth noticing
Look back at the ones you got wrong. Almost every question above has a reason attached — Venus spins backwards, gold is aurum, Canberra was a compromise. That reason is what makes the fact stick.
Facts learned as isolated trivia evaporate within a week. Facts attached to a reason stay for years. If you want to be better at this, the trick is not to memorise more answers — it is to ask "why" once for each answer you miss.
Ready for something faster, with a clock and a leaderboard? Pick a category and play a full round.