A Clockwork Orange
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50 free A Clockwork Orange trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A Clockwork Orange is one of the most argued-over films ever made. Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel follows Alex, a teenage gang leader with a taste for classical music and cruelty, through crime, prison and a state experiment meant to cure him. This quiz covers the whole story: the plot and its most famous scenes, the invented slang, the cast and the shoot, the soundtrack, the censorship rows on both sides of the Atlantic and the marks the film has left on music, television and later movies. It is written for Kubrick fans and for anyone who has seen the film once and never forgot it. Plenty of the questions can be reasoned out, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which song does Alex sing during the home invasion in A Clockwork Orange, an improvisation by Malcolm McDowell?
Singin' in the Rain
Singin' in the Rain was the only song McDowell said he half knew the words to when Kubrick asked him to liven up the scene with a dance. It appears nowhere in Burgess's novel.
Q 02David Prowse, the attendant Julian in A Clockwork Orange, later wore the costume of which Star Wars character?
Darth Vader
Darth Vader came his way after George Lucas noticed the English bodybuilder as the writer's manservant in Kubrick's film.
Q 03Which rock singer hoped to play Alex in an abandoned 1960s film of A Clockwork Orange, his band as the droogs?
Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger was keen on the lead when the Rolling Stones were lined up for the project, with Ken Russell attached to direct. The rights later passed to Kubrick.
Q 04The white outfits of Alex's droogs in A Clockwork Orange grew out of Malcolm McDowell's own kit for which sport?
Cricket
Cricket whites that McDowell owned gave Kubrick the idea, and he told the actor to wear the protective box on the outside of the trousers.
Q 05The man dripping saline into Malcolm McDowell's clamped eyes in A Clockwork Orange was really what?
A doctor
A doctor stood in the shot as one of the treatment staff, there to stop the actor's pinned-open eyes from drying out.
Q 06What do Alex and his droogs drink at the Korova bar in A Clockwork Orange, laced with drugs before a night out?
Milk
Milk spiked with drugs is the gang's drink of choice, taken to fortify themselves before a night of what Alex calls ultraviolence.
Q 07Which Tarantino film's torture scene, set to Stuck in the Middle With You, nods to A Clockwork Orange?
Reservoir Dogs
Reservoir Dogs borrows the idea of cheerful music over cruelty from Alex's home invasion, and its slow-motion walk at the start echoes the droogs too.
Q 08Which pop artist filmed A Clockwork Orange as Vinyl in 1965, six years before Stanley Kubrick?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol shot Vinyl in black and white at The Factory, with Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick in the cast.
Q 09A Clockwork Orange was withdrawn from British cinemas for 27 years, returning only after which event?
Its director's death
Its director's death in 1999 ended a withdrawal Kubrick himself had requested from Warner Bros. after the press blamed the film for copycat crimes.
Q 10Which Beethoven work, played over a treatment film, can Alex no longer bear to hear in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange?
The Ninth Symphony
The Ninth Symphony is the piece the film ruins for him, while in the novel it is the Fifth and all classical music becomes unbearable.
Q 11Nadsat, the invented slang Alex narrates A Clockwork Orange in, borrows most of its words from which language?
Russian
Russian supplies words such as droog, from the word for a close friend, and Burgess chose invented slang so the story would never sound dated.
Q 12What job have two of Alex's former droogs taken when they find him after his release in A Clockwork Orange?
Policemen
Policemen is what his old gang mates have become, and they use the uniform to settle scores by beating and nearly drowning him.
Q 13Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange omits which part of the novel, also cut from early American editions?
The final chapter
Q 21What does the droog Dim smash into Alex's face as sirens approach, leaving him for arrest in A Clockwork Orange?
A bottle
A bottle does the job in the film, payback for Alex's bullying, while in Burgess's novel the same droog swings his chain.
Q 22Which band refused to let Stanley Kubrick use their Atom Heart Mother suite in A Clockwork Orange?
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd turned him down because he wanted the freedom to cut the piece up. Roger Waters later asked to use sounds from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Kubrick refused in turn.
Q 23The woman Alex kills in A Clockwork Orange, played by Miriam Karlin, is nicknamed for which pets?
Cats
Cats give the Catlady her nickname, and her death during the break-in is the crime that sends Alex to prison for murder.
The final chapter shows an older Alex growing bored of violence and thinking of a family, an ending Kubrick thought unconvincing.
Q 14In A Clockwork Orange, the Ludovico technique's drugs train Alex to feel what at the thought of violence?
Nausea
Nausea floods him whenever he tries to fight or grope, leaving him unable to defend himself against anyone who attacks him.
Q 15Which pet, never mentioned in the novel, does Alex own in Kubrick's film of A Clockwork Orange?
A snake
A snake is Alex's pet on screen, one of the few details Kubrick invented for a script that otherwise stays close to the book.
Q 16In the Nadsat slang of A Clockwork Orange, what does Alex mean when he calls something horrorshow?
Good
Good is the meaning, because horrorshow is how an English ear hears khorosho, the borrowed word for it.
Q 17In A Clockwork Orange, where is Alex when his singing gives him away to the writer Mr Alexander?
In the bath
In the bath, he breaks into the tune he sang during the attack, and the writer realises who his guest is. In the novel, careless remarks give Alex away instead.
Q 18In a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons, which character dresses as Alex from A Clockwork Orange?
Bart
Bart wears the outfit in Treehouse of Horror III, one of many nods to the film in the series, which also had Mr. Burns use the Ludovico technique on the family dog.
Q 19Which US rating did A Clockwork Orange first receive, before Kubrick replaced 30 seconds of footage?
X
X was the original rating, and Kubrick swapped about 30 seconds of explicit footage to earn an R for a re-release later in 1972.
Q 20Whose version of the song Alex sings during the attack plays over the end credits of A Clockwork Orange?
Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly's recording, from his 1952 Hollywood musical, returns over the credits after Alex has sung the tune twice in the story.
Q 24Which surname did Stanley Kubrick give Alex in the film A Clockwork Orange, a name the novel never states?
DeLarge
DeLarge comes from a boast in the novel, where Alex calls himself Alexander the Large; newspapers later in the film muddy things by printing another surname.
Q 25Which injury did Malcolm McDowell suffer while filming the eye-clamp treatment scene in A Clockwork Orange?
A scratched cornea
A scratched cornea left him temporarily blinded, and he also cracked ribs while filming the stage show where Alex is humiliated.
Q 26How did Stanley Kubrick film Alex's point-of-view plunge from the window in A Clockwork Orange?
Dropping a boxed camera
Dropping a boxed camera lens-first from the third storey of a hotel gave the shot, and the clockwork Newman-Sinclair survived six takes.
Q 27Which prison figure protests that the Ludovico technique has robbed Alex of free will in A Clockwork Orange?
The chaplain
The chaplain argues that being decent has to be a choice, an objection the government brushes aside because the treatment promises to empty crowded prisons.
Q 28Which synthesizer pioneer, famous for Switched-On Bach, created the electronic score for A Clockwork Orange?
Wendy Carlos
Wendy Carlos was already at work on a piece called Timesteps before Kubrick's offer reached her, and it became a foundation of their collaboration.
Q 29Anthony Burgess said he took the title A Clockwork Orange from Cockney slang he overheard in what kind of place?
A pub
A pub in the capital was where he heard the expression in 1945, and he later said it joined something sweet and living to something cold and mechanical.
Q 30Anthony Burgess sold the film rights to A Clockwork Orange soon after its 1962 publication for roughly how much?
$500
$500 was the whole fee, and it was the only money Burgess made directly from a film that went on to gross $114 million.