Maths trivia questions and answers
30 maths trivia questions with the answers and a fact for each: numbers and their names, shapes, primes, famous problems and the math behind things you use every day, none of it needing a calculator. Read them as a quiz for yourself, use them for a pub quiz round, or press the button and play a Maths round live with everyone answering on their own phone.
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The 30 maths quiz questions
- 1
The interior angles of a triangle always add up to how many degrees?
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B180
Any four-sided shape adds up to 360, and each extra side adds another 180.
- 2
What is 2 to the power of 10?
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D1,024
It's why a kilobyte was traditionally 1,024 bytes rather than a round thousand — computers count in twos.
- 3
How many zeros are there in one million?
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BSix
A billion has nine, a trillion twelve. Counting to a million out loud would take you around 11 days without a break.
- 4
What is the only even prime number?
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B2
Every other even number is divisible by 2, which rules it out; 1 isn't counted as prime because it has only one factor.
- 5
How many minutes are there in a day?
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B1,440
24 hours times 60 minutes. That's 86,400 seconds, or just under 10,000 days in a 27-year lifetime.
- 6
What is the Roman numeral for the number 10?
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AX
Many clock faces write four as IIII rather than IV — a tradition said to date back to the very first Roman-numeral clocks.
- 7
What is the Roman numeral for 100?
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BC
It stands for centum, the Latin for a hundred — the root of century, cent and centipede. M is a thousand, from mille.
- 8
What is the next number in the sequence 2, 4, 8, 16?
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C32
Each number doubles. Double 1 twenty times and you're past a million — the maths behind the old story of rice grains on a chessboard.
- 9
What is 15 squared?
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C225
A quick trick: for any number ending in 5, multiply the first digit by one more than itself (1 × 2 = 2) and stick 25 on the end.
- 10
How many edges does a cube have?
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C12
Six faces, eight corners and twelve edges. Euler's formula — faces plus corners minus edges — gives 2 for every simple solid.
- 11
What is 11 squared?
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D121
Keep going and the pattern is lovely: 111 times 111 is 12321, and 1111 times 1111 is 1234321.
- 12
How many hours are there in a week?
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D168
It's a number that leaves no excuses: sleep eight hours every night and you still have 112 hours to play with.
- 13
How many millimetres are there in a metre?
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C1,000
The metre was originally defined in the 1790s as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator on a line through Paris.
- 14
How many centimetres are there in an inch?
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A2.54
The inch was fixed at exactly 2.54 centimetres by international agreement in 1959; before that, the American and British inches differed by a few millionths.
- 15
How many sides does an octagon have?
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BEight
Stop signs are octagonal in most of the world so that drivers can recognise one from behind, even when they can't read it.
- 16
What is 5 factorial, written 5!?
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C120
5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1. It's the number of ways five people can line up. For a full deck of 52 cards, the answer has 68 digits.
- 17
What is the name of a shape with eight sides?
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BOctagon
Stop signs are octagons almost everywhere in the world, a shape it's often said was chosen so drivers could recognise the sign even from behind.
- 18
What is the longest side of a right-angled triangle called?
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AHypotenuse
Pythagoras' theorem says its square equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides. The classic example is a 3-4-5 triangle.
- 19
How many faces does a dodecahedron have?
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C12
All twelve faces are regular pentagons. It's one of the five Platonic solids, and the 12-sided dice used in role-playing games are dodecahedra.
- 20
What is the probability of a fair coin landing heads twice in a row?
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C1 in 4
Each flip is independent, so you multiply: a half times a half. Ten heads in a row is about a 1 in 1,000 chance.
- 21
How many degrees are there in a right angle?
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B90
The 360-degree circle is a Babylonian idea; they counted in sixties, and 360 divides neatly by a great many numbers.
- 22
How many items are in a baker's dozen?
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C13
It's often said that medieval bakers threw in an extra loaf to avoid harsh punishments for selling underweight bread.
- 23
What is the largest two-digit prime number?
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C97
91 looks prime but is 7 × 13. There are 25 primes below 100, and they thin out the higher you go.
- 24
How many seconds are there in one hour?
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C3,600
60 seconds times 60 minutes. The base-60 system is another Babylonian hand-me-down, like the 360-degree circle.
- 25
What is the value of pi to two decimal places?
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B3.14
Pi Day is 14 March — 3/14 in the American date format — which also happens to be Einstein's birthday.
- 26
If you roll two ordinary dice and add them, which total is the most likely?
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BSeven
Six of the 36 possible combinations add up to seven. Only one makes twelve — a double six — and only one makes two.
- 27
How many zeros are there in one billion?
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B9
In Britain a billion used to mean a million million, with 12 zeros. The UK officially switched to the American thousand-million in 1974.
- 28
What is the name of a triangle whose three sides are all the same length?
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BEquilateral
Each of its angles is exactly 60 degrees. An isosceles triangle has two equal sides; a scalene one has none.
- 29
Which number is neither prime nor composite?
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B1
A prime has exactly two factors and a composite more than two; 1 has only itself. Mathematicians argued about it until the early 1900s.
- 30
How many degrees are there in a full circle?
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C360
The 360 is thanks to the ancient Babylonians, who counted in sixties. It's a handy number: it divides exactly by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 12.
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Maths quiz FAQ
Can I use these maths trivia questions for my own quiz night?
That is what the page is for. Read them out at a pub quiz, paste them into a work quiz or a family quiz night, and keep the answers hidden until the table has committed. If you would rather not keep score by hand, the button on this page runs a Maths round on everyone's phones.
Are the answers on the page?
Yes. Every question has a "Show the answer" toggle with the right option and a one-line fact, so you can quiz yourself first or read straight through with the answers open.
How do I play a Maths quiz round live?
Press "Play a Maths round". It opens the host page with the Maths category already picked. The room shows a join code, everyone else opens huddlequiz.com/join on their phone and types it, and ten questions later there is a winner on the board. No accounts and nothing to install.
Will the live game ask the same questions?
Some of them. The game draws at random from a bigger Maths pool, of which this page is a sample, so a live round mixes questions you have read here with ones you have not.
How hard are they?
Mixed. They are written for adults and teenagers at pub-quiz level, so a table of four should get most of them between them and argue about the rest.