I'm a loud-mouth, and yet people do like me, because I'm honestly interested in other humans.

You don't have my favorite tricks here, though. Open-ended questions are bad - as you point out, people struggle.

One of my favorites is "Tell me a lie about yourself." People love this one.

Another: "What's an interesting thing that happened to you this week?" It's a lot less open-ended.

"What do you do for fun?" - another good one, very specific.

"Tell me a story" can work, you need to judge the audience.

"Do we know anyone in common?" is great, because people tell you their life stories to track down where you might have lived.