A Wrinkle in Time
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50 free A Wrinkle in Time trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A Wrinkle in Time has been puzzling and delighting readers since 1962. An awkward, stubborn girl, her uncanny little brother and a new friend are swept across the universe by three very odd old ladies, in search of a father who vanished while working on a secret project. The story mixes physics, poetry and a real sense of danger, which may be why so many classrooms still read the novel aloud. This quiz follows the book from its first chapter to the final page. Expect questions on Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin, on Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which, on the planets the children visit and the sinister sameness of Camazotz, plus famous lines, the gifts handed out before the showdown with IT, and how the rescue ends. A smaller group covers the writer, the prizes and bans the novel collected, and the screen versions. Students can use the questions as a comprehension check or an end-of-book review, teachers and parents get a ready-made multiple choice set, and returning fans can find out how much they remember. Early questions are the gentlest, later ones reward close readers, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On the planet Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time, the all-controlling ruler called IT turns out to be what?
A disembodied brain
A disembodied brain gives off a pulsing rhythm that drags every mind on the planet into step. Meg thinks it the most horrible thing she has ever seen.
Q 02What was Mrs Whatsit in A Wrinkle in Time before she gave up her life fighting the darkness?
A star
A star is what she once was, until she exploded in an act of self-sacrifice to drive the shadow back. The children learn it just after watching another one die in the same fight.
Q 03At the end of A Wrinkle in Time, what does Meg have that IT lacks, letting her free Charles Wallace?
Love
Love is the one weapon IT cannot understand, so Meg tells her brother again and again how much he means to her. IT's biggest mistake was claiming that Mrs Whatsit hated her.
Q 04A Wrinkle in Time opens 'It was' and which words, borrowed from an 1830 Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel?
a dark and stormy night
A dark and stormy night is fiction's most mocked cliché, and the author chose it with a wink to the reader. Meg really is sitting awake while a hurricane shakes the house.
Q 05Which author saw A Wrinkle in Time rejected by at least 26 publishers before it became a children's classic?
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle was told the story was 'too different', and suspected that a girl hero in science fiction had put publishers off. The novel has never been out of print since.
Q 06Which Netflix series' final season shows young Holly Wheeler with a copy of A Wrinkle in Time?
Stranger Things
Stranger Things uses the novel as a metaphor for the Upside Down, with nods to Camazotz and IT. The villain Vecna even poses as a 'Mr. Whatsit' to lure children away.
Q 07Who plays Mrs Which, eldest of the three celestial guides, in Disney's 2018 film of A Wrinkle in Time?
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey joined the cast first, and Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling followed as Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who. In the novel Mrs Which rarely manages to take solid form at all.
Q 08In A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs Whatsit startles Mrs Murry by saying 'there is such a thing as a' what?
Tesseract
Tesseract names an idea Mrs Murry's husband was working on before he vanished, so hearing it from a visitor in the kitchen shocks her. The word describes a fold in space that makes a vast journey almost instant.
Q 09Before leaving Meg on Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs Whatsit hands her which gift?
Her faults
Her faults, chiefly anger and stubbornness, turn out to be what stops IT swallowing her mind. Calvin is given stronger powers of communication and Charles Wallace the resilience of childhood.
Q 10In A Wrinkle in Time, what name does Meg use for the gentle being who nurses her back to health?
Aunt Beast
Aunt Beast is the name the creature itself settles on after sifting the words in Meg's mind and rejecting 'monster'. Its planet, Ixchel, lies next to Camazotz.
Q 11Which leading American children's book prize did A Wrinkle in Time win the year after it was published?
Newbery Medal
The Newbery Medal goes to the year's most distinguished contribution to American children's literature. A 2007 paperback edition even reprints the acceptance speech.
Q 12Which planet of towering mountains and singing creatures is the children's first stop in A Wrinkle in Time?
Uriel
Uriel takes its name from an archangel, and its creatures make music that Mrs Whatsit translates as a hymn of praise. The ladies stop there to rest and to show the children what they are up against.
Q 13Which seer, living in a cave in Orion's Belt, shows the children Earth in her crystal ball in A Wrinkle in Time?
The Happy Medium
Q 21What are the names of Meg Murry's sporty twin brothers, who fit in easily at school in A Wrinkle in Time?
Sandy and Dennys
Sandy and Dennys keep telling their sister to act more normal, which only makes her more bitter. A later book in the series sends the pair back to the days just before Noah's flood.
Q 22Which school principal in A Wrinkle in Time suggests Meg Murry should stop hoping her father will return?
Mr. Jenkins
Mr. Jenkins gets a sharp answer: Meg will believe it when her mother says so. In the sequel he turns into an unlikely ally on her next quest.
Q 23Mrs Murry, a scientist with a laboratory at home in A Wrinkle in Time, sometimes cooks dinner over what?
A Bunsen burner
The Happy Medium would rather watch pleasant things and has to be coaxed into showing a shadowed Earth. Before dozing off she lets Meg and Calvin glimpse their mothers back home.
Q 14What name is given in A Wrinkle in Time to the evil dark cloud that has spread across several worlds?
The Black Thing
The Black Thing has swallowed Camazotz whole and partly covers Earth. Mrs Whatsit tells the children that Earth's great artists and thinkers have been fighting it for a long time.
Q 15In what is Mr Murry held prisoner when Meg finally reaches him on Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time?
A transparent column
A transparent column works like a one-way peephole: the children can see him, but he cannot see out. Meg is first hurled back by the cell's see-through wall as if she had hit brick.
Q 16What does Mrs Who lend Meg in A Wrinkle in Time, to be used only as a last resort on Camazotz?
Her glasses
Her glasses let Meg pass straight through the wall of her father's cell. Without them the inside is pitch dark, so she hands them to him and he carries her out.
Q 17How does Mrs Who usually speak in A Wrinkle in Time, because she finds it hard to use her own words?
In quotations
In quotations is how she copes, borrowing great authors and often keeping their own languages. She tells Charles Wallace, after Pascal, that 'the heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing'.
Q 18Calvin O'Keefe, a popular boy a few grades above Meg in A Wrinkle in Time, plays which sport for the school?
Basketball
Basketball lets him pass for one of the crowd, yet he tells Meg that nobody at home, where there are eleven children, would notice if he vanished. He calls himself a 'sport', a biological oddity.
Q 19What is the Murry family's dog called in A Wrinkle in Time, a name shared with a character in Hamlet?
Fortinbras
Fortinbras is the Norwegian crown prince who speaks the final lines of Shakespeare's tragedy. The Murrys' dog growls towards the laboratory just before Mrs Whatsit blows in.
Q 20Which director of Disney's 2018 A Wrinkle in Time was the first Black woman to helm a $100-million live-action film?
Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay had an estimated $103 million to work with and shot in Los Angeles and New Zealand. The finished film lost money at the box office.
A Bunsen burner lets her watch an experiment and the family's supper at the same time. Meg describes her mother as both a scientist and a beauty.
Q 24What are the children outside every house on Camazotz doing in perfect rhythm in A Wrinkle in Time?
Bouncing balls and skipping rope
Bouncing balls and skipping rope to a single beat, every child moves at exactly the same instant. One little boy who fumbles is snatched indoors by his frightened mother.
Q 25The turkey dinner Meg and Calvin enjoy on Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time tastes like what to Charles Wallace?
Sand
Sand is all he tastes, because the meal is an illusion planted in the mind and his mind is shut tight against it. Soon afterwards he lowers his guard on purpose, hoping to find his father.
Q 26Which document does Meg Murry shout at IT in A Wrinkle in Time, before arguing that like and equal are different?
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence gives her 'all men are created equal', and IT pounces: on Camazotz everyone is equal because everyone is alike. Her furious reply buys her a moment.
Q 27What does Mr Murry tell Meg to recite when IT's rhythm starts to pull her under in A Wrinkle in Time?
The periodic table
The periodic table steadies her for a moment, but nothing holds for long against that pull. Her father finally snatches her and Calvin off the planet altogether.
Q 28Which figure at CENTRAL Central Intelligence in A Wrinkle in Time speaks straight into the children's minds?
The Man with Red Eyes
The Man with Red Eyes calls himself the Prime Coordinator, yet he is only a mouthpiece for the power behind him. Charles Wallace hits him hard to test whether he is even real.
Q 29Meg Murry struggles at school in A Wrinkle in Time, yet she breezes through Calvin's homework in which subject?
Mathematics
Mathematics comes easily because her father taught her shortcuts, which is exactly what annoys her teachers. She can handle E=mc² but cannot name the capital of New York.
Q 30What has Mrs Whatsit stolen in A Wrinkle in Time, a theft the town blames on a passing tramp?
Bedsheets
Bedsheets are what she took, and she cheerfully admits she needed them and has used them. Mrs Who is later found stitching them into ghost costumes.