Calvin and Hobbes Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
This Calvin and Hobbes trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and covers the whole ten-year run of Bill Watterson's strip and the odd, quiet decades that followed it. It starts with the basics - Calvin's age, the origin of the two names, the debut and the famous final sled ride - and works through the alter egos (Spaceman Spiff, Tracer Bullet, Stupendous Man), Calvinball, G.R.O.S.S., the cardboard-box inventions and the recurring cast: Susie, Miss Wormwood, Moe, Rosalyn, Calvin's dad and the monsters under the bed. The harder questions dig into Watterson himself: the college major, the newspaper that fired him, the cat behind Hobbes, the licensing fight and the fortune he refused, the sabbaticals and the Sunday-format standoff, the Reuben Awards, the Angouleme Grand Prix, the Pearls Before Swine guest strips and The Mysteries. About a third of the questions are warm-ups; the rest climb toward the kind of detail only someone who owns the Complete collection would know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Six-year-old Calvin never ages, returning every fall to Miss Wormwood's class in which grade?
First
First grade rarely holds his attention: when Miss Wormwood calls on him he is often away as Spaceman Spiff, with the teacher recast as a monster on some distant planet.
Q 02Which historical figures gave Calvin and Hobbes their names?
A theologian and a philosopher
A theologian and a philosopher: John Calvin, who preached predestination, and Thomas Hobbes, who took what Watterson calls 'a dim view of human nature'; in the strip it is the tiger who sees the consequences coming.
Q 03In the first Calvin and Hobbes strip, what bait traps Hobbes?
A tuna fish sandwich
A tuna fish sandwich does it: tigers will do anything for one, Calvin tells his dad, and Hobbes, hanging by his foot from the snare, agrees that they are 'kind of stupid that way'.
Q 04What is the name of Calvin's favorite breakfast cereal?
Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs
Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs are so sweet that Hobbes can barely get a spoonful down, yet Calvin calls them bland until you scoop more sugar on; after five bowls, he admits, he gets pretty wired.
Q 05Which syndicate distributed Calvin and Hobbes for its entire run?
Universal Press
Universal Press Syndicate picked the strip up after United Feature, which had paid Watterson to develop it, decided it would not sell; within three years it was running in more than 600 newspapers.
Q 06Which never-explained event does Calvin insist no one can prove he did?
The Noodle Incident
The Noodle Incident is thrown at him by Hobbes and even turns up in a dossier on Santa's desk, but the strip never says what happened; Calvin's line is that he was framed.
Q 07What are the final words of the last Calvin and Hobbes strip?
"Let's go exploring!"
"Let's go exploring!" sends the pair off on a sled across fresh snow; Watterson stopped at the height of the strip's success, telling readers he had done all he could in the medium.
Q 08In one storyline, Calvin and Hobbes secede from the family and set off for which far-off place?
The Yukon
The Yukon looks close on the globe, but the trip ends in an argument in the woods: Calvin stomps home without Hobbes, and Dad has to go out and fetch the tiger. The story named the book Yukon Ho!
Q 09Bootleg car-window decals show Calvin doing what, in an image Watterson never drew or approved?
Urinating on a logo
Urinating on a logo is pure bootleg: Watterson allowed almost no merchandise, and has said that only thieves and vandals have made money on Calvin and Hobbes merchandise.
Q 10Watterson turned down an early syndication deal because it meant adding what to his strip?
A toy robot
A toy robot called Robotman, a licensed character the syndicate had lined up for toys and television, was the condition; when Watterson refused, another cartoonist took the job, and that strip was later renamed Monty.
Q 11What does Hobbes routinely do when Calvin comes home from school?
Pounce on him at the door
Pounce on him at the door is the ritual: Hobbes stalks past the potted plant, flattens Calvin as he walks in, and explains that after seven boring hours at school he might appreciate a good scare.
Q 12What tongue-in-cheek alternative name for the Big Bang did a 1992 Sunday strip coin?
The Horrendous Space Kablooie
The Horrendous Space Kablooie was Calvin's answer when Hobbes asked what he would call it; scientists, he complained, can picture the whole universe bursting from a dot smaller than a pinhead, yet settled for 'the Big Bang'.
Q 13In one of Calvin's wilder daydreams, tyrannosaurs take to the skies flying what?
Q 21Which word is missing from the 2005 three-volume set's title, The … Calvin and Hobbes?
Complete
Complete is the word, though the set falls one strip short of it: a 1985 daily that ran in only some newspapers is left out, as it was from every earlier collection.
Q 22Which rare, officially licensed 1993 book about the strip has been called the collectors' 'Holy Grail'?
Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes
Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes is a language textbook printed in one small run in Fargo, North Dakota; its authors won the licence by telling Watterson how well the strip worked with children who had learning disabilities.
Q 23In 2014 Watterson won the Grand Prix at which international comics festival?
F-14 fighter jets
F-14 fighter jets, with a jittery herd of chasmosaurs below: Calvin, playing with his toys, declares the idea 'SO cool', and Hobbes answers that it is 'SO stupid'.
Q 14Calvin's private-eye alter ego Tracer Bullet first appeared when Calvin put on a fedora to hide what?
A terrible haircut
A terrible haircut, courtesy of Hobbes, sent Calvin looking for a hat, and the fedora turned him into a hard-boiled private eye; Watterson found the detective's stories so time-consuming that he rarely attempted them.
Q 15Who made Stupendous Man's mask and cape?
Calvin's mother
Calvin's mother made the hood and cape and got little thanks: Stupendous Man casts her as his arch-nemesis, the evil Mom-Lady, and in their first clash is vanquished by being sent to bed.
Q 16What everyday object does Calvin repurpose as a transmogrifier, a time machine and a duplicator?
A cardboard box
A cardboard box, open end down, is the transmogrifier; tipped on its side it becomes the duplicator, which Calvin says combines that technology with a photocopier's, prompting Hobbes to ask if their money worries are over.
Q 17Calvinball was introduced in 1990 after Calvin had a miserable time joining which school activity?
The baseball team
The baseball team berated him for a mistake and the teacher called him a quitter when he walked off; the game he plays with Hobbes instead has one permanent rule, that it is never played the same way twice.
Q 18One critic called Calvin and Hobbes's sled the most famous in American arts 'this side of' which film?
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane turns on a childhood sled; Calvin's carries him downhill while he ponders life, death and God, rides Watterson drew because they were 'a lot more interesting' than talking heads.
Q 19What does the acronym of Calvin and Hobbes's treehouse club, G.R.O.S.S., stand for?
Get Rid Of Slimy girlS
Get Rid Of Slimy girlS has two members, Dictator-for-Life Calvin and President-and-First-Tiger Hobbes; Calvin admits 'slimy girls' is redundant, 'but otherwise it doesn't spell anything'.
Q 20Which sound effect completes the Calvin and Hobbes book title Scientific Progress Goes…?
"Boink"
"Boink" is the noise Calvin's duplicator makes when Hobbes presses the button; Hobbes, who had doubted the whole scheme, asks whether scientific progress really goes 'boink', and a second Calvin steps out.
Angoulême
Angoulême's Grand Prix comes with a job, drawing the poster for the next festival; the famously private Watterson duly delivered one for the 2015 edition, a rare new piece of his art.
Q 24Which 2013 documentary about the strip's legacy was made without an appearance by its reclusive creator?
Dear Mr. Watterson
Dear Mr. Watterson began as fan interviews by a director who wanted to understand the strip's hold on readers; fellow cartoonists and fans speak for it, while its subject never appears.
Q 25Which U.S. Supreme Court justice invoked 'Calvinball jurisprudence' in a 2025 opinion?
Ketanji Brown Jackson
Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote it in an opinion on cancelled research grants: Calvinball has one rule, that there are no fixed rules, while the Court, she said, seemed to have two, 'that one, and this administration always wins'.
Q 26Watterson grew up in which Ohio village, long rumoured to be the strip's setting?
Chagrin Falls
Chagrin Falls's real downtown appears on the back cover of one early treasury, with a giant Calvin rampaging through it; Watterson has never confirmed the popular guess that the strip is set there.
Q 27What did Watterson major in, thinking it would help him become an editorial cartoonist?
Political science
Political science was his planned route into editorial cartooning; at college he also copied Michelangelo's Creation of Adam onto his dorm-room ceiling, asking permission only once the painting was well under way.
Q 28Which newspaper hired Bill Watterson as an editorial cartoonist out of college, then fired him early?
The Cincinnati Post
The Cincinnati Post hired him straight from college and dropped him within the year; he ended up, as he later told graduates, designing car and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store.
Q 29After his 1991 sabbatical, Watterson's Sunday strip was sold at what size?
Half page
Half page, and unbreakable, so that editors could no longer drop or rearrange panels to fit their pages; that freed him to draw the sprawling Sunday layouts of the strip's later years.
Q 30Calvin regularly reports to his dad on the results of what?
Approval polls on his parenting
Approval polls on his parenting, taken among 'tigers and six-year-old white males', usually show Dad slipping; his reply is that being Dad is not an elected position, which Calvin takes as an admission of dictatorship.