True or False Questions to Ask
Twenty true or false statements to read out at a party or in a classroom, mixing widely believed myths with facts that sound invented, with the answer and the explanation given for each.
The questions
Open any question for the note
True or false: you can see the Great Wall of China from space with the naked eye.
Why ask it
False, and a good one to open with because most rooms are split on it. The wall is long but only a few metres wide, which is the dimension that matters at that distance, and astronauts have generally reported not being able to pick it out. Someone will bring up photographs taken with long lenses, which is a fair thing to distinguish.
True or false: goldfish have a memory of about three seconds.
Why ask it
False. Goldfish can be trained to respond to feeding cues and routines, which would be impossible with three seconds of memory. Ask the room where they first heard it: nobody can ever say, which is the useful part.
True or false: bats are blind.
Why ask it
False. Bats have eyes and can see; echolocation is an addition, not a replacement. The phrase blind as a bat is doing all the work here, which makes this a nice demonstration of how idioms become beliefs.
True or false: humans only use ten percent of their brains.
Why ask it
False, and worth stating plainly because the idea is so widespread. Brain scans show activity throughout the organ, and damage to almost any part of it causes problems, which would not be the case if ninety percent were spare. Expect one person to defend it, because it is often repeated as motivation.
True or false: lightning never strikes the same place twice.
Why ask it
False. Tall structures are struck repeatedly, and the Empire State Building is hit many times a year. This one is quick to settle and gets you a laugh at whoever answered confidently, which is what you want early on.
True or false: the largest desert on Earth is the Sahara.
Why ask it
False. Antarctica is larger, because a desert is defined by how little precipitation it gets rather than by heat or sand. This is the first statement in the set where being wrong is about a definition rather than a fact, so expect a longer argument.
True or false: a tomato is a fruit.
Why ask it
True botanically, since it develops from the flower and carries the seeds, though it is treated as a vegetable in cooking and in some countries in law. Useful for showing that true or false sometimes depends on whose classification you are using.
True or false: honey can still be edible after thousands of years.
Why ask it
True. Honey is very low in water and mildly acidic, so microbes cannot easily grow in it, and sealed jars recovered from ancient tombs have been found unspoiled. Crystallised honey has not gone off; it can be warmed back into liquid.
True or false: octopuses have three hearts.
Why ask it
True. Two pump blood through the gills and one pumps it around the rest of the body, and that third one stops when the animal swims, which is part of why they prefer to crawl. This is the point in the set where the answers stop being myths and start being genuinely odd facts.
True or false: sharks are mammals.
Why ask it
False, they are fish. It gets answered wrong because people know some sharks give birth to live young, which feels like a mammal trait, but they have gills and no mammary glands. Whales and dolphins are the mammals people are thinking of.
True or false: you cannot tickle yourself.
Why ask it
True for most people, and it can be tested on the spot, which makes it the best statement in the set for a group. The brain predicts the sensations your own movements will produce, so the surprise that tickling depends on is missing.
True or false: a day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus.
Why ask it
True. Venus turns on its axis more slowly than it goes around the Sun, so one rotation takes longer than one orbit. Expect someone to insist this is impossible, which is a good moment to separate two things people usually treat as one.
True or false: sound travels faster through water than through air.
Why ask it
True, roughly four times faster, because water is far denser and the vibration passes between molecules more readily. Most people guess the opposite, reasoning from how muffled things sound underwater, which is about how your ears work rather than about speed.
True or false: Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth measured from base to summit.
Why ask it
False. Everest has the highest summit above sea level, but Mauna Kea in Hawaii rises further from its base, most of which is underwater. The trick is entirely in which starting point you measure from, so read the statement exactly as written.
True or false: an adult human has 206 bones.
Why ask it
True as the standard count, and the interesting part is that babies start with around 270 that fuse over childhood, so you end life with fewer bones than you began with. Individual variation exists, including extra ribs and small bones in the feet.
True or false: the human heart has four chambers.
Why ask it
True: two atria and two ventricles. This one is in the set as a breather after the harder statements, and it is a fair place to ask whether anyone can name all four, which usually nobody can.
True or false: the adult human body is about sixty percent water.
Why ask it
True as an average, and it varies with age, sex and body composition, with infants higher and older adults lower. If someone challenges the exact number they are right to, because it is a range rather than a constant.
True or false: light travels at about 186,000 miles per second.
Why ask it
True, near enough, in a vacuum. Light slows down in glass and water, which is why lenses bend it. Worth pairing with the sound question so the room can compare the two speeds out loud.
True or false: the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
Why ask it
True, based on radiometric dating of the oldest meteorites and rocks. Keep this one factual and short, because it is the statement most likely to turn into a different sort of conversation than the one you were having.
True or false: your fingernails and hair keep growing after you die.
Why ask it
False, and a good one to end on. Growth stops, but the skin dries and retracts, which makes nails and stubble look longer, and that appearance is where the belief comes from. It also shows how many of these myths are accurate observations with the wrong explanation attached.
Running a True or False Round
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to Run It
Make everyone commit before you answer
Hands up for true, hands up for false, no abstaining. The round dies if people wait to hear what others think, and the point of the game is having been publicly wrong for four seconds.
Read the statement word for word
Several of these turn on one word: tallest from base rather than highest above sea level, largest desert rather than hottest. Paraphrasing changes the answer and you will lose the argument that follows.
Ask why before you confirm
Take one reason from a true voter and one from a false voter first. The reasoning is more entertaining than the answer, and it is where the actual learning happens.
Mix myths with genuine oddities
If every statement is false, the room works out the pattern by number five and votes false on everything. Alternating, as this list does, keeps them guessing.
Concede the arguable ones
The tomato and the sixty percent water statement both have legitimate objections. Saying so is better than defending a number, and it keeps the pedants on your side.
Three Ways to Play
Sides of the room
True stands on one side, false on the other, wrong answers sit down. Fast, physical, and works with a large group where you cannot track scores.
Bet the point
Each player says how confident they are, one to three points, and stakes it. Rewards knowing what you do not know, which turns out to be the harder skill.
Explain to score
A correct answer earns nothing unless the player can say why. Slower, better with a small group, and the version to use in a classroom.
What Spoils It
- Statements nobody can settle in the room. If the answer is genuinely disputed, it becomes an argument rather than a round, so leave it out.
- Numbers dressed up as facts. Figures like the miles of blood vessels in a body or the lifetime volume of saliva are repeated everywhere and hard to pin down, so they make weak questions.
- Correcting someone twice. Once is the game, twice is a lecture, and the second time takes the room's energy with it.
- Politics, religion and anything a person present has a stake in. The room stops playing and starts positioning.
- Too many in a row. Eight to ten statements is a round. Twenty is a test, and by the end nobody is putting a hand up.