Fun quizzes to liven up New Year’s parties: a collection of questions everyone can enjoy
Are you struggling to come up with fun quiz questions for a New Year’s party—something that will really liven things up? The truth is, there are plenty of entertaining quizzes that everyone can laugh over, even when participants are from different generations and have varied interests! You can have people guess where a piece of background music is from, puzzle over the readings of tricky kanji, or test their trivia skills.
From quizzes that are fun regardless of knowledge level to ones that spark lively conversation, we’ll introduce quiz ideas perfect for a New Year’s party.
This year, make your New Year’s gathering a time filled with smiles through quizzes!
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Fun quizzes to liven up New Year’s parties. A collection of questions everyone can enjoy (41–50)
Place Name Quiz
How about a quiz where you collect hard-to-read place names from around the country and ask participants to guess their pronunciations? Since local place names might make it too easy, it’s best to choose difficult names from regions that the participants are likely unfamiliar with.
Also, when presenting the questions, including information about the area’s local specialties or famous tourist spots can serve as hints and make the quiz more enjoyable.
It sounds like a quiz idea everyone can have fun with together.
Novel opening quiz
There are many novels with striking openings that draw you into the story that follows.
This quiz asks you to come up with the title of a work from its memorable opening lines.
It tests not only your habit of reading novels regularly, but also your memory for specific passages.
If it’s hard to identify the work from the opening alone, it’s a good idea to narrow it down gradually with hints such as the author’s name or the era in which it was written.
Even if you don’t know the answer, it could be a chance to discover new works you weren’t familiar with.
Plant quiz with names of the Chinese zodiac
How about a New Year’s quiz featuring plants named after the animals of the zodiac? There are twelve in total to enjoy, so do a little research beforehand and prepare a list.
For example, for “nezumi” (rat), you can find quite a few like nezumimochi (Ligustrum japonicum) and nezumimugi (ryegrass).
It’s fine even if the animal name is only part of the plant’s name.
For “tatsu” (dragon), you could allow plants that use the character for “dragon,” like rindō (gentian; written with the character for dragon in Japanese), and for “mi” (snake), hebiichigo (mock strawberry; “hebi” means snake) would also count—those rules make it more exciting.
If an open-ended format feels too difficult, you could instead present three plant names each round: two real plants that contain a zodiac animal name and one made-up plant.
Players guess the fake one—this format could be a hit as well.
Rule Quiz
Illustrations, letters, numbers, and so on are arranged according to a certain rule, and the quiz is to decipher that rule and figure out what belongs in the hidden spot.
It tests your knowledge of various patterns as well as the ability to apply them to the problem at hand.
Because it uses simple rules, people of all ages can enjoy it, and it’s easy to accept the answer once you know it.
Another key point is that you can adjust the difficulty by combining multiple rules to create more complex problems.
Dog Breed Quiz
Dogs are animals with deep ties to humans and have long been familiar companions as pets.
Here’s a quiz to check your understanding of dogs—how much do you know about dog breeds? From classic pet breeds to those rarely seen in Japan, let’s explore a wide range of breeds to deepen our familiarity with and understanding of dogs.
If you also learn which country each breed comes from, you can get a sense of the environment they developed in, which could be helpful when considering them as pets.
For people who prefer cats over dogs, questions that seem simple at first glance might actually feel quite challenging.
Color Vision Quiz
A simple yet very difficult challenge where you find and name the object hidden within a colored circle.
The object is drawn in nearly the same color as the circle, requiring a superhuman ability to discern subtle color differences.
It’s important to explain in advance that most people won’t be able to answer, so if someone can’t find it, they won’t feel frustrated and can move on.
Focusing to answer can train attention, and trying to perceive color differences can improve color discrimination ability.
People with excellent color vision can solve these, so if you figure out the answer, show off your skills to those around you.
Comedian Quiz
It’s a game that tests how many names of comedians you know and whether you can recall them from memory.
By narrowing down specific conditions—like “solo comedians whose names start with a letter of the alphabet”—you have players think of names that fit.
It doesn’t just test whether you know the comedians, but also whether you’ve seen their names in written form.
If you make it a head-to-head format and motivate players to answer faster than their opponent, the urgency to come up with fitting names should make the scene all the more exciting.