70 free Cinderella trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
62 free Cinderella trivia questions with answers. Cinderella is not one story but thousands. The oldest version on record is a Greek slave girl in Egypt whose sandal is stolen by an eagle; the Grimms' heroine gets golden shoes from a hazel tree and watches doves blind her stepsisters; the glass slipper, the pumpkin and the fairy godmother only arrived with Charles Perrault in 1697. This quiz runs 70 questions across all of it: the folk tales from Naples to ninth-century China, Disney's 1950 film that pulled the studio back from bankruptcy (the 380 auditions, the calico cat, the Nine Old Men), Kenneth Branagh's 2015 remake and its unwearable crystal shoes, the three Rodgers and Hammerstein television versions, Ever After with Drew Barrymore, and the steel-and-plaster castle in Florida with two missing tower numbers. It starts easy and works up to questions for people who know their Aarne-Thompson types. Every answer has been checked against reference sources and is shown with a short explanation once you answer, so it works for a family movie night, a Disney round at pub quiz or settling an argument about what the slipper was really made of.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which writer's 1697 French version introduced the fairy godmother and the glass slippers to the story?
Charles Perrault
His title was Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre, and it came with two morals, the second admitting that talent gets you nowhere without a godparent.
Q 02In the Grimm tale Aschenputtel, the heroine's help comes not from a fairy godmother but from what?
A hazel tree on her mother's grave
She grew it from a hazel twig her father brought back from a fair, watering it with her tears; a white bird in its branches throws down whatever she asks for.
Q 03In the Grimm version, what are the slippers the heroine wears on the third night made of?
Gold
The glass slipper belongs only to the French telling and its descendants; other variants use an anklet, a ring or a bracelet instead.
Q 04In the Grimm tale, what does the elder stepsister cut off on her mother's advice so the slipper will fit?
Her toes
The younger sister trims her heel instead, and both are exposed by two doves who point out the blood dripping from the shoe.
Q 05How does the prince in the Grimm tale try to stop the mystery girl escaping on the third night?
He has the staircase smeared with pitch
It works only halfway: she loses one golden slipper in the tar and gets away, having earlier escaped him via a pigeon coop and a pear tree.
Q 06In the coda the Grimms added in 1819, what happens to the stepsisters at the wedding?
Doves peck out their eyes
The 1812 first edition had no punishment at all; the blinding was bolted on for the second edition, one eye on the way into church and the other on the way out.
Q 07Which ancient writer first recorded the tale of the Greek girl Rhodopis?
Strabo
Herodotus mentions a courtesan called Rhodopis five centuries earlier, but without the shoe story; Aelian later added that the king was Psammetichus.
Q 08In the ancient tale of Rhodopis, what carries her sandal away to the king of Egypt?
An eagle
The bird drops it in the king's lap while he is holding court outdoors, and he sends men across the country to find the foot that fits.
Q 09In the ninth-century Chinese tale of Ye Xian, the heroine's festival finery comes from the magical bones of what?
A fish
The fish is the reincarnation of her dead mother; the cruel stepfamily ends up killed by flying rocks.
Q 10The first European prose version, Basile's La Gatta Cenerentola of 1634, was published in which city?
Naples
It was written in Neapolitan dialect and set in the Kingdom of Naples; the heroine, Zezolla, actually helps her governess become her stepmother.
Q 11In Basile's 1634 version, how many stepsisters does the new stepmother spring on the heroine?
6
Zezolla is dressed for the ball by a fairy living in a date tree grown from a seedling her father brought back from Sardinia.
Q 12In Rossini's opera La Cenerentola, what replaces the slipper as the proof of the heroine's identity?
Matching bracelets
Rossini agreed to the opera only if all magic was cut, so she is helped by a philosopher named Alidoro rather than a fairy.
Q 13Folklorists classify the tale under which Aarne-Thompson-Uther type number, 'Persecuted Heroine'?
510A
The same type covers The Wonderful Birch, Fair, Brown and Trembling and Katie Woodencloak; stories where the father is the persecutor are 510B.
Q 21What is the name of Cinderella's dog in the 1950 film, who is turned into a footman for the ball?
Bruno
Bruno later saves the day by chasing the cat Lucifer out of the house so the mice can free Cinderella from the attic.
Q 22Where did Walt Disney find the model for the villainous cat Lucifer?
At animator Ward Kimball's home
None of Kimball's earlier designs had pleased Walt; the animals, unlike the humans, were animated without live-action reference footage.
Q 23Cinderella's reference model Helene Stanley later did the same job for which Disney heroine?
Aurora in Sleeping Beauty
Q 14If Cinderella's 'glass' slipper came from confusing French verre with vair, what would the slippers be?
Squirrel fur
Most scholars think the glass was deliberate poetic invention; Nabokov's Professor Pnin nonetheless states the fur theory as fact.
Q 15Who made the first film version of the story, Cendrillon, in 1899?
Georges Méliès
Hundreds of films have followed, from Mary Pickford's 1914 silent to a 2025 Norwegian body-horror take told from the stepsister's side.
Q 16Who provided the voice of Cinderella in Disney's 1950 animated film?
Ilene Woods
She got the part after recording demo songs as a favour for the songwriters; Walt Disney phoned her two days later and she was named a Disney Legend in 2003.
Q 17Roughly how many applicants auditioned for the voice of Cinderella in the 1950 film?
380
The Hollywood Reporter even announced singer Jeannie McKeon had won it in March 1948 before the deal fell apart.
Q 18Which Disney regular voiced the Fairy Godmother in the 1950 film?
Verna Felton
Walt wanted a tall, regal fairy like Pinocchio's Blue Fairy; animator Milt Kahl used Felton's casting to win him over to a dotty little one instead.
Q 19Eleanor Audley, the voice of the stepmother Lady Tremaine, went on to voice which other Disney villain?
Maleficent
Her Lady Tremaine look and manner were reportedly modelled on Bette Davis as Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes.
Q 20Which of these is one of Cinderella's stepsisters in the 1950 Disney film?
Drizella
The other names all belong to rival versions: Javotte to a 1940 Disney treatment, Marguerite to Ever After and Esmerelda to the 1965 TV musical.
Animators were filmed a full-length reference film first, partly to keep costs down, and complained it left no room to invent.
Q 24By 1947, shortly before the film was greenlit, roughly how deep in debt was the Disney studio?
Over $4 million
Roy Disney wanted Walt to sell up and retire; the film's success instead funded Disneyland and the studio's move into television.
Q 25Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo lost the Academy Award for Best Original Song to which song?
Mona Lisa
The most popular record of it was by Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters, which reached number 14 on the Billboard chart.
Q 26'A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes' was inspired by a Transcendental Etude by which composer?
Franz Liszt
It later opened The Wonderful World of Disney on television and was re-recorded by the star of the 2015 remake's soundtrack.
Q 27At the very first Berlin International Film Festival in 1951, the 1950 film won which award?
The Golden Bear
Berlin got it back in 2023, when a 4K restoration scanned from the original Technicolor negative premiered there for Disney's centenary.
Q 28The 1988 VHS release of the film was the best-selling video title ever until which film overtook it?
E.T.
Disney shipped 4.3 million tapes and had to send more than seven million; it went into the vault seven months later with $108 million in sales.
Q 29Disney's 'Nine Old Men' nickname borrowed a jibe Franklin Roosevelt aimed at what?
The Supreme Court
Two of them, Eric Larson and Marc Davis, both drew Cinderella herself, and Ken O'Brien was assigned to make their two versions look like the same woman.
Q 30Who took over the voice of Cinderella for the 2002 direct-to-video sequel Dreams Come True?
Jennifer Hale
The original voice had sued Disney over VHS royalties in 1990, following similar suits by Peggy Lee and Mary Costa.