Comes with an instruction sheet that explains 3 different ways to play (depending on how smart you think you are). Series 1 – The teams take turns providing one answer to a question at a time and attempting to score as few points as possible. With the start of Series 11 of Pointless Celebrities, the show's set design was changed with some new graphics and an updated intro replaced the one used since the show's debut; this extended to Series 19 of Regular Pointless. Series 2 saw audiences grow modestly; the format was tweaked prior to the start of Series 3, reducing the number of rounds and giving more time for banter between the hosts which had previously been edited out.

It comes with 341 questions, 27 Pointless trophy tokens, 9 head-to-head tokens, 8 playing pieces, 4 pencils, 3 question card holders, playing board, Pointless trophy and answer pad.Each team is given an equal number of turns; if at least one team has exceeded 100 at the end of a pass, the round ends and the lower-scoring team wins. Osman was not intended to be co-presenter; originally, he filled the role only as part of a demonstration laid on for the BBC. Series 14 took breaks on: 3 August–4 September, 30 September–23 October, 17 November 2015–1 January and 27 January–26 February 2016. In Series 1, this format was used three times in this round, before subsequent episodes used it no more than once.

The last remaining team receives a pair of trophies to keep regardless of what happens in the Final and now attempts to win the game's jackpot. As of Series 6 – Both teams compete in a multi-question best-of-three contest; while the format is the same since Series 3, all questions have five answers with each team choosing one. In 2016, Richard Osman told the Belfast Telegraph, "It's never been a show that's had posters, or trailers, and it's presented by these two slightly inept guys. Beginning with series 28, a rotating group of guests will take his place until a new permanent co-presenter is found. Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review, however all thoughts and opinions remain our own.For the 1,000th episode, Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman traded host and assistant duties and four previous couples who had distinguished themselves in various ways were invited to compete again. If a team's answer is correct, they score one point for each participant who gave it during the survey; an answer given by none of the participants is termed "pointless" and adds nothing to the team's score. For round two, the Question Master places the card into the respective plastic sleeve and reads the questions and list of answers. The change saw strong viewer growth and the show was moved to the BBC's main channel BBC One in 2011. On each episode, contestants answer a series of questions that were put to 100 members of the general public in a previously conducted online survey, which had a time limit of 100 seconds.

Any correct answers the survey didn't think of are Pointless answers and therefore awarded a most desirable zero points.

That’s why this Incredibly Pointless Trivia set by Brass Monkey is filled with some of the most pointless knowledge we could find. The game begins with two Elimination Rounds, in which teams must achieve as low a score as possible. In each episode, four teams of two contestants attempt to find correct but obscure answers to four rounds of general knowledge questions, with the winning team eligible to compete for the show's cash jackpot. The format follows the same principles as that of the "Open-ended" format, but was rarely used and was later discontinued after the series. Clues and Answers – Introduced in Series 3, contestants are given a list of clues related to the topic of the question, whereupon they must select a clue and provide the correct answer connected to it.