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2000s Trivia Questions
The decade of the iPod, the first iPhone, reality television and the financial crash. Play the round, then read every question and answer below.
Keys 1-4 pick an answer, Enter moves on. Nothing is saved to an account.
The 2000s are close enough that most players lived through them and far enough away that the details have gone soft. That gap is what makes the decade such good quiz material. A round can move from the arrival of the iPod to the launch of Wikipedia to the year Pluto stopped counting as a planet, and every one of those is a fixed date rather than an opinion. The music is easy to date because album releases are documented, and the films are easy to date because award ceremonies are. Technology carries most of the surprises: people routinely place the first iPhone a year or two later than it actually appeared, and they forget how briefly some dominant companies stayed on top. Everything here is anchored to a year, an artist, a director or a chart position, so answers do not drift.
Music: 2000s trivia questions
Beyonce's 2003 solo debut album was titled what?
Answer: Dangerously in Love EasyIt followed her years fronting Destiny's Child.
Coldplay's debut album, released in 2000, was called what?
Answer: Parachutes MediumIt won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.
The 2003 album Elephant was recorded by which duo?
Answer: The White Stripes MediumIt won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.
Amy Winehouse won five Grammys in 2008 for which album?
Answer: Back to Black HardIt was her second and final studio album.
Radiohead released which 2007 album as a pay-what-you-want download?
Answer: In Rainbows HardThe band had no record contract at the time.
Film and television: 2000s trivia questions
Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy concluded in 2003 with which film?
Answer: The Return of the King EasyIt swept every Oscar category it was nominated in.
Which 2009 science fiction film was directed by James Cameron?
Answer: Avatar EasyIts 3D presentation pushed cinemas worldwide to upgrade projectors.
Which singing competition began on Fox in 2002?
Answer: American Idol EasyIt was adapted from the British series Pop Idol.
Which Pixar film about a lost clownfish arrived in 2003?
Answer: Finding Nemo EasyA sequel followed thirteen years later.
Which film won the Best Picture Oscar for 2008?
Answer: Slumdog Millionaire MediumDanny Boyle also took Best Director for it.
Which HBO drama about a New Jersey crime family ended in 2007?
Answer: The Sopranos MediumIts abrupt final scene was argued over for years.
Ridley Scott's Gladiator won Best Picture for which year?
Answer: 2000 MediumRussell Crowe took Best Actor for the same film.
The American version of The Office premiered in which year?
Answer: 2005 MediumIt ran for nine seasons on NBC.
Which film took Best Picture at the ceremony held in 2006?
Answer: Crash HardThe result is still cited as one of the Academy's biggest upsets.
The Harry Potter novels concluded in 2007 with which book?
Answer: Deathly Hallows HardIt was the seventh and final novel in the series.
Martin Scorsese won his first Best Director Oscar for which film?
Answer: The Departed HardThe win came at the 2007 ceremony.
Avatar: The Last Airbender first aired in which year?
Answer: 2005 HardIt ran three seasons on Nickelodeon.
Technology and the internet: 2000s trivia questions
Which social network did Mark Zuckerberg launch in 2004?
Answer: Facebook EasyIt began as a college-only site before opening to everyone in 2006.
Which portable music player did Apple introduce in 2001?
Answer: iPod EasyIts click wheel arrived on the second generation and became the product's signature.
Which video-sharing site, founded in 2005, was bought by Google the following year?
Answer: YouTube EasyGoogle paid in stock, and the site kept its own brand.
Which Nintendo console, released in 2006, was built around motion controls?
Answer: Wii EasyIts remote used infrared sensing and accelerometers.
Which search company went public in 2004?
Answer: Google EasyIt used an unusual Dutch auction to price the shares.
In which year did Apple announce the first iPhone?
Answer: 2007 EasySales began that June, months after the January announcement.
Which free online encyclopedia launched in 2001?
Answer: Wikipedia EasyAnyone could edit it, which was the radical part at the time.
Sony released which handheld console in 2004?
Answer: PlayStation Portable MediumIt played games from a proprietary disc format called UMD.
Microsoft entered the console market in 2001 with which machine?
Answer: Xbox MediumIts online service, Xbox Live, followed a year later.
Which Finnish company led global mobile phone sales through the early 2000s?
Answer: Nokia MediumIts handsets were known for sturdiness and long battery life.
Which site launched in 2006 originally capped posts at 140 characters?
Answer: Twitter MediumThe limit came from the length of a text message.
Mozilla shipped version 1.0 of which browser in 2004?
Answer: Firefox HardIt grew out of the earlier Mozilla suite.
Blizzard released which massively multiplayer game in 2004?
Answer: World of Warcraft HardIt grew out of the earlier Warcraft strategy series.
Apple opened its music download store in which year?
Answer: 2003 HardSongs were sold individually rather than only as albums.
News and events: 2000s trivia questions
Euro banknotes and coins entered circulation in which year?
Answer: 2002 EasyThe currency existed electronically for three years before the cash appeared.
Which country hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics?
Answer: China EasyThe Games were held in Beijing that August.
Which hurricane flooded New Orleans in 2005?
Answer: Katrina MediumThe city's levee failures caused most of the flooding.
Which of these countries joined the European Union in the 2004 enlargement?
Answer: Poland MediumTen states joined at once that May.
Which space shuttle broke apart during re-entry in 2003?
Answer: Columbia MediumFoam striking the wing during launch caused the damage.
Which body was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006?
Answer: Pluto MediumA new definition of planet was adopted that August.
Which country adopted the euro in 2001, a year after the first wave?
Answer: Greece HardIt had missed the original convergence criteria.
NASA's rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in which year?
Answer: 2004 HardBoth far outlasted their planned three-month missions.
Who became president of Russia in 2000?
Answer: Vladimir Putin HardHe had been acting president since the last day of 1999.
Which country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001?
Answer: China HardMembership followed fifteen years of negotiation.
Which investment bank filed for bankruptcy in September 2008?
Answer: Lehman Brothers HardIts collapse was the largest bankruptcy filing in US history.
Answer key
- iPod
- YouTube
- The Return of the King
- Avatar
- Wii
- Dangerously in Love
- American Idol
- 2007
- Finding Nemo
- 2002
- China
- Wikipedia
- Slumdog Millionaire
- Parachutes
- The Sopranos
- PlayStation Portable
- Katrina
- Poland
- Xbox
- 2000
- The White Stripes
- Columbia
- 2005
- Pluto
- Nokia
- Firefox
- Crash
- Greece
- Back to Black
- World of Warcraft
- 2004
- Vladimir Putin
- Deathly Hallows
- The Departed
- 2003
- China
- 2005
- Lehman Brothers
- In Rainbows
How to play
- Pick a mode: multiple choice, true or false, a 60-second sprint, or the daily quiz.
- Answer with a tap, or press 1 to 4 on a keyboard. The right answer appears straight away with a line explaining it.
- Finish the round to see your score, copy the result grid, and step up a difficulty.
- Hosting a night? The full 2000s list and a separate answer key are printed below, and the print layout drops the game and keeps the paper.
Tiebreaker questions
Closest guess wins. Read one out when two tables finish level.
In what year did the first resident crew move into the International Space Station?
Answer: 2000 Expedition 1 arrived in November 2000 and the station has been crewed ever since.
How many Academy Awards did The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King win?
Answer: 11 awards It won every category it was nominated in.
How many episodes of the American version of The Office were broadcast?
Answer: 201 episodes Nine seasons on NBC between 2005 and 2013.
Common mistakes in 2000s trivia
- Facebook was open to the public from the start.
It launched in 2004 for Harvard students and opened to anyone aged thirteen and over in 2006.
- The iPod was the first portable digital music player.
Players using flash memory and hard drives were sold from the late 1990s. The iPod, released in 2001, was easier to fill and sell than its rivals.
- Pluto was downgraded because it got smaller or moved.
Nothing about Pluto changed. In 2006 astronomers adopted a definition of a planet that Pluto does not meet because it has not cleared its orbital neighbourhood.
- The euro first existed as notes and coins in 2002.
The euro existed as an accounting currency from 1999. The notes and coins arriving in 2002 were the cash form of a currency already in use.
- The first iPhone went on sale the day it was announced.
It was announced in January 2007 and went on sale in the United States in June that year, reaching most other countries later.
Running this round at a quiz night
This decade splits sharply between players who lived it online and players who did not, so alternate technology questions with film, music and news rather than grouping them. Keep the internet questions to founding years and product launches, which are settled, and leave user numbers alone. The usual argument is over dates, because a service can have a launch year, a public launch year and a year it reached your country. Say in the question which one you want, and read the answer as the founding or first release date. Save a fixed number for the tiebreaker, such as the year the space station was first crewed.
Frequently asked questions
Does the 2000s round overlap with the 90s round?
No. Every question here is anchored to an event between 2000 and 2009, and the 90s set is anchored to its own decade. Artists who were active in both decades appear in each set with different questions.
Why are there so many technology questions?
Because the decade's most datable events were technological. Product launches have exact announcement dates, which makes them reliable quiz answers, while cultural shifts are much harder to pin to a single year.
Are the film questions based on release year or Oscar year?
Each question says which one it means. Where a film is described as winning Best Picture for a year, that is the year of the films being judged, not always the calendar year of the ceremony.
Not in a quiz mood?
The question games are a different kind of round: no right answers, just prompts you read out and argue about. Would You RatherNever Have I EverTruth or DareThis or That