Pick 18 questions about the birthday person, get their real answers a few days early, then read each one out and score a point per match. Below are 40 questions to pick from, grouped by how many guests will actually get them right, which is the part that decides whether the game has a winner or a six-way tie.
Pick 18, and mix the difficulty
Eighteen questions runs about 12 minutes. Ask 40 and you will watch the party leave the room somewhere around question 22.
Which 18 matters more than which topics. Every list you will find groups questions by subject: favourites, childhood, food. That tells you nothing about how the game plays. If every question is a favourite, six people finish on 16 out of 18 and the tiebreaker does all the work. If every question is deep history, everyone finishes on 4 and it stops being fun by question six.
So pick 9 from the first group below, 6 from the second and 3 from the third, and ask them in that order. Opening with three that everyone gets right keeps the colleague who came with a plus-one in the game.
40 questions, grouped by how many people will get them right
Swap in anything specific to the person. The best question in any round is the one only that room would understand.
Group 1: everyone in the room should get these
Pick 9.
- 1.
What is their go-to coffee or tea order?
- 2.
What is their favourite takeaway?
- 3.
Cat person or dog person?
- 4.
What do they do for work, in their own words?
- 5.
What is their middle name?
- 6.
Which town or city were they born in?
- 7.
What is on their phone lock screen?
- 8.
Beach holiday or city break?
- 9.
What time do they get up on a Saturday?
- 10.
Which show have they rewatched the most?
- 11.
Which chore do they hate most?
- 12.
What is their drink of choice at a party?
- 13.
How do they take their eggs?
- 14.
What colour do they wear more than any other?
Group 2: close friends will get these
Pick 6. This is where the scores separate.
- 1.
What was their first job?
- 2.
What was the last gig or concert they went to?
- 3.
Which app do they open first in the morning?
- 4.
What are they weirdly good at?
- 5.
What is their most-played song this year?
- 6.
Who was their first celebrity crush?
- 7.
What is the furthest they have been from home?
- 8.
What was their nickname at school?
- 9.
Which subject did they hate at school?
- 10.
What is the most expensive thing they own and never use?
- 11.
What is their karaoke song?
- 12.
Which food will they not eat?
- 13.
How many countries have they visited?
- 14.
What do they order at the pub without looking at the menu?
Group 3: only family and the oldest friends
Pick 3. These decide the winner and get the biggest reaction.
- 1.
What was the name of their first pet?
- 2.
What did they want to be when they were eight?
- 3.
What was their first car?
- 4.
Where did they go on their first holiday without their parents?
- 5.
What is the worst haircut they have had, and roughly what year?
- 6.
What is their earliest memory?
- 7.
Which teacher do they still talk about?
- 8.
What was the first album they bought with their own money?
- 9.
What was on their bedroom wall as a teenager?
- 10.
What was their first phone?
- 11.
Which family member do they take after most?
- 12.
What is the longest they have kept a plant alive?
Cut these before you send the list
Anything about money, weight, exes, health or family arguments. It reads as harmless on the page and lands very differently when it is read out to a room, and the birthday person cannot object without making it worse.
Get their answers three days early
Text them the exact 18 questions, in order, three days before. Ask for one-line answers and tell them not to explain, because the moment they write a paragraph you have a judging problem. Screenshot the replies, so on the night you are reading from one image instead of scrolling a chat while 20 people wait.
If the party is a surprise, ask their partner, sibling or parent to answer as them, and say so before the first question. Otherwise the first disputed answer becomes a debate about who knows them better.
Four scoring rules
Agree these out loud before question one, because deciding them mid-game always looks like you are favouring someone.
- One point for a match, half a point for close. "A red Golf" against "a Golf" is half.
- Never take points away. The guesses people commit to out loud are the entire point.
- Keep one estimate question back as the tiebreaker. How many countries they have visited, closest number wins, no argument about wording possible.
- The birthday person reads their own answer, after everyone has committed. Not you. The reaction to the real answer is the game, and it belongs to them.
Run it after the food and before the cake. Earlier and half the guests have not arrived, later and people have started leaving.
A warm-up round for while guests arrive
The personal round needs everyone in the room, which leaves 20 minutes of people standing around. This is for that, and it gives the guest who has known them three weeks something they can actually win.
10 birthday trivia questions
Nothing to prepare.
- 1.
Which month has the emerald as its birthstone?
Answer: May
- 2.
Which month's birthstone is the diamond?
Answer: April
- 3.
Someone born on 25 December has which star sign?
Answer: Capricorn
- 4.
In Mexico, what is the tradition of pushing the birthday person's face into the cake called?
Answer: La mordida
- 5.
In Korea, which soup is traditionally eaten on your birthday?
Answer: Seaweed soup, miyeokguk
- 6.
In Denmark, what goes up outside the house on someone's birthday?
Answer: The Danish flag
- 7.
"Happy Birthday to You" was adapted from which earlier song?
Answer: "Good Morning to All"
- 8.
In a room of 23 people, roughly what are the chances that two share a birthday?
Answer: About 50%
- 9.
Which Beatles album features the song "Birthday"?
Answer: The White Album
- 10.
Which planet rules the star sign Leo?
Answer: The Sun
Running it on a screen
Paper works. What it does not survive is you reading, judging near misses and adding up 20 sheets while everyone talks at you. Run it as a live quiz and the scoring happens by itself, the question goes up on the TV, and family who could not travel join with a code and play the same game as the people on the sofa.
PardyTime is free for this: build the 18 questions with the birthday person's answers as the correct ones, host it from your phone, and use the 10 warm-up questions above as a second round while guests arrive.