Around the World in Eighty Days
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50 free Around the World in Eighty Days trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jules Verne's race against the calendar has been in print for a century and a half, and most people know its outline without having read it: a punctual Englishman, a rash bet, and a dash across continents by every means of transport the Victorian age could offer. The details are where the fun is, and where memories of the book and its many adaptations start to blur. This quiz follows Phileas Fogg from his London front door and back again. It covers the wager and the people who travel with him, the scrapes on each leg of the route, and the twist that settles the bet. It also looks beyond the page, at how Verne came to write the story, the real adventurers who set out to copy the journey, and the film and television versions that reshaped it. It is pitched for readers of the novel, students studying it, and anyone who met the story on screen. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something, and the questions can be printed for a book club or a classroom.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which vehicle did the 1956 film Around the World in 80 Days add that Jules Verne's novel never had?
A balloon
A balloon flight is one of the film's most famous sequences, created to show off scenery on its giant curved screen. In the book the travellers never take to the air.
Q 02Phileas Fogg believes he reached London too late, so what lets him win his wager after all?
A day gained going east
A day gained going east saves him. Travelling toward the sunrise, his party saw 80 dawns while London saw only 79, so he was home a day sooner than his diary said.
Q 03Which New York World reporter beat Phileas Fogg's fictional record by circling the globe in 72 days?
Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly had a rival she did not know about until she reached Asia: a magazine had sent Elizabeth Bisland the opposite way around the world to beat her.
Q 04How much does Phileas Fogg wager that he can circle the globe in eighty days in Jules Verne's novel?
£20,000
£20,000 was half of Fogg's fortune, and he took the other half along in banknotes to pay his way, so losing the bet would have meant ruin.
Q 05What does Phileas Fogg buy in India when the railway to Calcutta turns out to be unfinished?
An elephant
An elephant named Kiouni costs him a small fortune, because its owner refused point-blank to hire the animal out.
Q 06What is the name of the French valet who travels with Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's novel?
Passepartout
Passepartout translates literally as "goes everywhere", and in French the word is also an idiom for a skeleton key.
Q 07At which London gentlemen's club does Phileas Fogg make his famous wager in Jules Verne's novel?
The Reform
The Reform Club is a real place on Pall Mall, founded in 1836, and it began admitting women as members on equal terms in 1981.
Q 08The detective chasing Phileas Fogg around the world believes he robbed which institution of £55,000?
The Bank of England
The Bank of England lost a bundle of notes from a cashier's table, and the thief's description happened to fit Fogg, who left London in a hurry a few days later.
Q 09Which martial-arts star played Phileas Fogg's valet in the 2004 film Around the World in 80 Days?
Jackie Chan
Jackie Chan's valet is really a Chinese thief seeking refuge after a robbery, and the film has the travellers meet the Wright brothers on their way across America.
Q 10Which former Doctor Who star played Phileas Fogg in the 2021 BBC series Around the World in 80 Days?
David Tennant
David Tennant's Fogg travels with his valet and a journalist named Abigail, who takes the place of the novel's pursuing detective.
Q 11Which young Indian widow does Phileas Fogg rescue and take back to London in Jules Verne's novel?
Aouda
Aouda, the daughter of a rich Bombay merchant, was given a thoroughly English education before being married against her will to an elderly prince.
Q 12How does Phileas Fogg's valet save an Indian widow from being burned on her husband's funeral pyre?
Posing as the dead rajah
Posing as the dead rajah, he rises from the pyre through the smoke like a ghost and carries her off while priests and soldiers lie with their faces to the ground in terror.
Q 13Which card game is Phileas Fogg's only pastime besides reading newspapers in Jules Verne's novel?
Whist
Q 21On an American train, Phileas Fogg's valet sits through a lecture on the history of which faith?
Mormonism
Mormonism gets a whole chapter: an elder named William Hitch preaches in a railway car as the train nears Salt Lake City, while his audience slowly drifts away.
Q 22In which British port is Phileas Fogg arrested just hours before his deadline to reach London?
Liverpool
Liverpool is where the detective finally serves his warrant, only to learn that the real thief had been caught three days earlier.
Q 23When coal runs out in mid-Atlantic, what does Phileas Fogg order the crew to burn to keep steaming?
The ship's woodwork
Whist is his passion, and his regular partners at the card table, among them an engineer and a brewer, are the very men who take his bet.
Q 14Why does Phileas Fogg dismiss his previous valet on the morning Jules Verne's story begins?
Shaving water too cold
Shaving water too cold by two degrees, 84°F when Fogg required 86, was enough to cost James Forster his place.
Q 15What does Phileas Fogg's valet forget to turn off in his room before leaving London for eighty days?
A gas burner
A gas burner stays alight for the whole journey, and at the end Fogg deducts the bill from the valet's share of the leftover money.
Q 16In which British colony does a detective drug Phileas Fogg's valet in an opium den?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong was the last British soil the detective would touch in Asia, so he needed to keep the travellers there until his arrest warrant caught up with him.
Q 17Stranded without money in Yokohama, what work does Phileas Fogg's valet take in Jules Verne's novel?
Circus acrobat
Circus acrobat suits a man who once vaulted for a living: he becomes the base of a human pyramid, then brings it down like a house of cards when he spots Fogg in the audience.
Q 18How does Phileas Fogg's party reach Omaha after being stranded at Fort Kearney?
A sledge with sails
A sledge with sails, rigged like a sloop, skims over the hardened snow at forty miles an hour to reach the next railway station.
Q 19What blocks the track for three hours as Phileas Fogg's train crosses the American West?
A herd of buffalo
A herd of buffalo, ten or twelve thousand strong, ambles across the line while the engine waits, and it is night before the way is clear.
Q 20Which Native American nation attacks Phileas Fogg's train near Fort Kearney and seizes his valet?
Sioux
Sioux raiders carry off three passengers, and Fogg gives up a day he cannot spare to lead thirty volunteer soldiers after them.
The ship's woodwork goes into the furnace bit by bit, cabins, bunks, masts and spars, after Fogg buys the vessel from her captain so that he may strip her.
Q 24What is the surname of the Scotland Yard detective who shadows Phileas Fogg around the world?
Fix
Fix first spots Fogg on a quay in Egypt and dogs him across three continents, forever waiting for an arrest warrant that has not caught up with him.
Q 25After Phileas Fogg returns to London, what does he send his valet to arrange with a local clergyman?
A wedding
A wedding is suddenly in prospect: Fogg, believing himself ruined, has just accepted a proposal from the woman he rescued in India.
Q 26Which waterway, opened in 1869, helped make Phileas Fogg's fast trip around the globe believable?
The Suez Canal
The Suez Canal opened in the year America's first transcontinental railroad was finished, and with India's new rail link they made a tourist's lap of the globe possible.
Q 27Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days first ran as a serial in which French newspaper?
Le Temps
Le Temps timed the instalments so that the final chapters appeared on 22 December 1872, the day after Fogg's deadline in the story.
Q 28While Around the World in Eighty Days ran as a serial, what did some readers do, believing it real?
Placing bets on it
Placing bets on it was one response; railway and steamship companies went further and lobbied Verne to have their lines written into the story.
Q 29Whose tale Three Sundays in a Week did Jules Verne cite as a source for Phileas Fogg's adventure?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe fascinated Verne, who had published a study of the American's stories in 1864, years before he sent Fogg on his way.
Q 30Which Monty Python member retraced Phileas Fogg's route without aircraft for a 1989 BBC series?
Michael Palin
Michael Palin got the job only after Alan Whicker and other presenters turned it down, and the trip launched his long second career making travel programmes.