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True or false questions are the quickest win in any quiz. You read out a statement and players decide whether it is true or false. There are only two options, so everyone has a fair shot, yet a well-chosen statement can still fool a whole room. When we run myth-busting rounds in live AhaSlides quizzes, the Great Wall and goldfish statements split the room almost every time.
Below are 40 true or false quiz questions: 15 easy statements and 25 hard ones, mixing science, history, geography, animals and popular myths. The funny ones include a headless chicken and cube-shaped wombat poo, and the hard round suits adults and older teens. Every answer sits right under its statement, with a short explanation so the quizmaster can settle any arguments. We checked each one against a reliable source, and several “facts” that circulate on other lists turned out to be myths, so we have corrected them here.
Easy true or false questions
A gentle warm-up round for mixed groups, families and team socials. Our pick: “Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not”, because almost nobody believes it at first.
Science and nature6 questions
1Lightning is seen before thunder is heard because light travels faster than sound.
AnswerTrue. Light arrives almost instantly, while sound covers roughly a kilometre every three seconds.
2Scallops cannot see.
AnswerFalse. A scallop can have up to 200 small eyes along the edge of its shell.
3Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not.
AnswerTrue. Botanically, a banana is a berry; a strawberry’s seeds sit on the outside, so it is not.
4Giraffes are completely silent.
AnswerFalse. They snort and grunt, and researchers have recorded giraffes humming at night.
5A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.
AnswerTrue.
6All mammals live on land.
AnswerFalse. Whales and dolphins are mammals that live in the sea.
Food and drink3 questions
7Coffee is made from berries.
AnswerTrue. Coffee beans are the seeds of the coffee cherry, often called a coffee berry.
8A coconut is a nut.
AnswerFalse. Botanically, it is a drupe: a fruit with a hard stone.
9Weight for weight, broccoli contains more vitamin C than lemons.
AnswerTrue. Raw broccoli has about 89 mg per 100 g, compared with about 53 mg in raw lemon flesh.
Places on the map3 questions
10Vatican City is a country.
AnswerTrue. It is the smallest independent state in the world.
11Melbourne is the capital of Australia.
AnswerFalse. The capital is Canberra.
12Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan.
AnswerTrue. It stands 3,776 metres tall.
Famous stories and everyday objects3 questions
13Thomas Edison invented the first light bulb.
AnswerFalse. Earlier inventors made incandescent lamps; Edison’s team developed a practical, long-lasting bulb in 1879.
14A chicken once lived for months without its head.
AnswerTrue. Mike the Headless Chicken survived for about 18 months after a botched beheading in Colorado in 1945.
15The numbers on opposite sides of a standard die always add up to seven.
AnswerTrue. One faces six, two faces five, and three faces four.
Hard true or false questions for adults
Time to separate the experts from the guessers. Many of these are popular myths, so expect some groans at the reveal. Our pick: the Cleopatra timeline, which sounds impossible until you do the maths.
Myths most people believe8 questions
16The Great Wall of China is visible from the Moon with the naked eye.
AnswerFalse. NASA confirms it is not visible from the Moon, and it is hard to spot even from Earth orbit.
17Goldfish have a three-second memory.
AnswerFalse. Experiments show goldfish can be trained to respond to sounds and remember tasks for months.
18Bulls are enraged by the colour red.
AnswerFalse. Bulls cannot tell red from green; they charge at the movement of the matador’s cape.
19Albert Einstein failed maths at school.
AnswerFalse. He failed the general sections of a university entrance exam in 1895, aged 16, but scored highly in maths and physics.
20Humans share 95% of their DNA with bananas.
AnswerFalse. The popular figure is around 60%, and even that refers to genes with a recognisable counterpart, not identical DNA.
21An aeroplane’s black box is black.
AnswerFalse. Flight recorders are painted bright orange so they are easier to find.
22It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
AnswerFalse. It is possible, just rare, because most people close their eyes by reflex (ScienceDaily).
23You can sneeze in your sleep.
AnswerFalse. The sneeze reflex is suppressed during sleep, so an irritation strong enough to trigger one usually wakes you first.
Space and science5 questions
24Mercury’s atmosphere is made mostly of carbon dioxide.
AnswerFalse. Mercury has only a thin exosphere made mostly of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium and potassium.
25Venus takes longer to spin once on its axis than to orbit the Sun.
AnswerTrue. One rotation takes about 243 Earth days; one orbit takes about 225.
26Penicillin was discovered by accident.
AnswerTrue. In 1928 Alexander Fleming noticed that mould growing on a culture plate he had left out had killed the bacteria around it.
27Violin strings have been made from spider silk.
AnswerTrue. Japanese researcher Shigeyoshi Osaki made them in 2012.
28Your body makes about a litre of mucus a day.
AnswerTrue. Most of it is swallowed without you noticing, and it does a useful job trapping dust and germs.
Surprising and funny animal facts4 questions
29Some snails can stay dormant for years.
AnswerTrue. A desert snail glued to a display card at the British Museum in 1846 was found alive about four years later.
30An elephant pregnancy lasts nine months.
AnswerFalse. It lasts about 22 months, the longest of any land mammal.
31Pigs can learn to use a mirror to find hidden food.
AnswerTrue. In a 2009 University of Cambridge study, pigs that had spent time with a mirror used the reflection to find food hidden behind a screen.
32Wombat poo is cube-shaped.
AnswerTrue. The final stretch of a wombat’s intestine has stiffer and softer sections that shape the droppings into cubes.
History and dates3 questions
33The Eiffel Tower was completed in 1887.
AnswerFalse. Building started in 1887; it was completed on 31 March 1889, in time for the Paris World’s Fair.
34Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
AnswerTrue. The Great Pyramid was built around 2560 BC, Cleopatra died in 30 BC, and the Moon landing was in 1969.
35Google was originally called BackRub.
AnswerTrue. Larry Page and Sergey Brin renamed it Google in 1997.
Words, laws and world facts5 questions
36Coulrophobia is the fear of clouds.
AnswerFalse. It is the fear of clowns. A fear of clouds is nephophobia.
37Coca-Cola is officially sold in every country in the world.
AnswerFalse. It is not officially sold in Cuba or North Korea, and the company suspended its business in Russia in 2022.
38In Arizona, it is illegal to cut down a saguaro cactus without permission.
AnswerTrue. Saguaros are protected under the state’s native plant law.
39Scotland’s national animal is the unicorn.
AnswerTrue. The unicorn has long been a Scottish royal symbol, and it still appears on the royal coat of arms used in Scotland.
40More than 300 million people worldwide live with depression.
AnswerTrue. The World Health Organization estimates around 322 million.
How to host a free true or false quiz
Reading statements aloud works, but scoring by hand gets messy fast. Running the quiz on AhaSlides lets everyone answer on their phones, keeps score automatically and shows the results the moment you reveal the answer.
Step 1: set up your quiz
Sign up for a free AhaSlides account, create a new presentation and add a True or False slide. Type one statement per slide and mark which side is correct. Repeat for each statement, or paste in the lists above.
Step 2: invite your players
Click Present. Players join by scanning the QR code or typing the join code on their phones, with no app to download. If you would rather let people play in their own time, switch the quiz to self-paced and share the link instead.
Step 3: reveal answers and crown a winner
When the timer runs out, the correct side is highlighted along with how many people picked each answer. Read the explanation aloud, then move on. The myth-busting statements (the Great Wall, the goldfish, the bull) get the biggest reactions, so save a few for the final stretch.
Faster correct answers score more points, and the leaderboard keeps the competition going right to the end.
Want more rounds? Try our tricky questions with answers, history trivia questions or science trivia questions.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a good true or false question?
A good statement is short, has one clear answer and is surprising enough that people hesitate. Popular myths work well, because the “obvious” answer is often wrong. Always add a one-line explanation so the reveal teaches something.
How many questions should a true or false quiz have?
For a warm-up or icebreaker, 10 to 15 statements take about ten minutes. For a full quiz night, 30 to 40 statements split into rounds of rising difficulty keeps the energy up without dragging.
Can I run a true or false quiz online?
Yes. On AhaSlides, add a True or False slide for each statement. Players join from their phones with a code, answer in real time and see their scores on a live leaderboard.
