Trivia categories for a 40th birthday party?

January 28, 2017 9:10 PM

I'm throwing myself a 40th birthday party, and as part of the schedule of events, I'd like to conduct a pub quiz. I'm not planning to do trivia *about* me, because that would be boring. Instead, I'm trying to come up with some categories of questions that would be connected with my 40-ness. I'd need to be able to come up with about 10 questions for each category.

Some examples I've thought of:

Celebrities who were also born in 1977 -- either pictures of them for people to recognize or clues about them.
Things that won awards in 1977 -- Oscars, Emmys, etc.
General Trivia about things that happened in 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007.
What famous people were doing when they were 40 -- movies or albums, sports achievements, political offices held, etc.
Give an event that happened and have people choose which of 1977, 1987, 1997, 2007 or 2017 it happened closest to.

My quiz team plays in a weekly league that's in the style of PubStumpers. It has:
-- 10 questions of short answer trivia
-- 10 multiple choice questions
-- 10 questions for recognizing music -- song title and artist.
-- repeat the above three categories
-- 5 somewhat harder short answer bonus questions
-- a 10 question "recognize this picture" round.
I'm not married to that format, at all -- especially the overemphasis on music recognition which I am very, very bad at -- but it gives you an idea of the sort of overall structure I'm aiming for.

I'm not looking for suggestions for questions (though you might want to offer an example of what the question might be like for your category) but rather for types of questions.

posted by jacquilynne to Grab Bag (11 answers total)

Famous quarantines of history?

(Days, years...)
posted by batter_my_heart at 10:06 PM on January 28, 2017

Might be funny to do something on signs of aging
posted by Mchelly at 10:11 PM on January 28, 2017

How about "Titles with the Word Forty"?

e.g. The 40 Year Old ____________
40 Days and 40 _______________
Ali Baba and the 40 _____________
40 Pounds of _______________
40 Miles of Bad _____________
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:53 PM on January 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

For the musical category - songs that peaked at #40 on the Billboard charts.
posted by muddgirl at 11:12 PM on January 28, 2017

Name the TV show / comic book / other serial based on a heavily edited description of its 40th episode or issue (which, ideally, came out in 1977, 1987, 1997, or 2007).
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:57 AM on January 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

Music recognition - you could play a snippet 40 seconds into the song.

Recognize this picture - you could show an image still from 40 minutes into a movie. Or ID a book based on a photocopy of page 40. (Or have generic questions based on a quote from page 40.)

1977 is year of the snake in the Chinese zodiac, right? Maybe a reptile category?
posted by cdefgfeadgagfe at 1:05 AM on January 29, 2017

1977 means Star Wars.
posted by brujita at 2:45 AM on January 29, 2017

How much did [item] cost in 1977?

Gas, butter, etc. That was before the Apple II started the PC revolution.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:29 AM on January 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

as someone else that turns 40 this year i'd avoid tying the pub quiz to what was going on in 1977 unless all your friends are 50 or older. i'd focus on stuff from the 1980s and 1990s for trivia.

maybe go for things like "movies made when movie stars were 40".
posted by noloveforned at 7:21 AM on January 29, 2017

When I think 40, I think of forties! Like the forty ounce beer bottles. You could show pictures with the name on them covered up and ask people to name the brand.
posted by mermaidcafe at 9:40 AM on January 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

A category about people who share your birthday in any year and/or people who died on your birthday. Pick your favorite X (movie, book, game, etc.) and have a category about that.
posted by soelo at 8:39 AM on January 30, 2017