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Hard Funny Trivia Questions
The hard questions from our funny set, 14 of them, each with the answer and an explanation below the game.
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Keys 1-4 pick an answer, Enter moves on. Nothing is saved to an account.
The hard round is mostly vocabulary nobody expects to exist: petrichor, defenestration, borborygmus, the formal medical name for brain freeze. They are guessable from the word roots if a player keeps their nerve.
14 hard funny trivia questions with answers
"Petrichor" is the name for what?
Answer: The smell of rain on dry ground Two Australian scientists coined it in 1964 from Greek words for stone and the fluid of the gods.
Brain freeze has a formal medical name. Which is it?
Answer: Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia Cold on the palate triggers a nerve bundle that refers the pain to your forehead.
"Defenestration" means throwing something out of what?
Answer: A window The Defenestrations of Prague are real historical events that helped start a war.
The metal band holding the eraser onto a pencil is called a what?
Answer: Ferrule The same word covers the metal band on a walking stick or a chisel handle.
To "cachinnate" is to do what?
Answer: Laugh loudly The word imitates the sound, much like cackle.
The philtrum is which part of the face?
Answer: The groove above the upper lip Its name comes from a Greek word for love charm.
A "sesquipedalian" person is fond of what?
Answer: Long words Horace coined it, literally meaning words a foot and a half long.
Tarantism was a supposed medieval affliction cured by doing what?
Answer: Dancing Southern Italian villagers blamed a spider bite and danced it off, giving us the tarantella.
Onychophagia is the habit of doing what?
Answer: Biting your nails Onycho- is Greek for nail and -phagia means eating.
The "Streisand effect" describes what?
Answer: Trying to hide something and spreading it further It is named after a 2003 lawsuit over an aerial photo almost nobody had seen.
Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of what?
Answer: Peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth Despite the look of it, the arachi- here is from the peanut's genus Arachis, not spiders.
If you walk "widdershins", you are going which way?
Answer: Counterclockwise In folklore, circling a building this way was thought to bring bad luck.
Borborygmus is the medical word for what?
Answer: A rumbling stomach It is gas and fluid moving through the intestines, and the word imitates the noise.
Which animal has the splendidly repetitive scientific name Gorilla gorilla gorilla?
Answer: The western lowland gorilla Genus, species and subspecies happen to share the same word — a tautonym.
Answer key
- The smell of rain on dry ground
- Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia
- A window
- Ferrule
- Laugh loudly
- The groove above the upper lip
- Long words
- Dancing
- Biting your nails
- Trying to hide something and spreading it further
- Peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth
- Counterclockwise
- A rumbling stomach
- The western lowland gorilla
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 funny list and a separate answer key are printed below, and the print layout drops the game and keeps the paper.
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