Cujo
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50 free Cujo trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cujo is Stephen King with the supernatural stripped out. There is no haunted hotel and no ancient evil here, only a big friendly dog that falls sick, a car that will not start, and a mother and her small son stuck in a sun-baked dooryard at the end of a back road in Maine. King published the novel in 1981, and a film followed two years later. This quiz works as a reading check on the book and as a round on the movie. The questions follow the Trenton and Camber families from the first signs of trouble to the last page, then turn to how King came to write the story, how it ties into his other Castle Rock tales, and who made and starred in the screen version. It suits students and book clubs testing what they remember, horror fans who know the film better than the novel, and anyone putting together a Stephen King night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a miss still leaves you knowing more.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What breed of dog is Cujo, the gentle family pet turned killer in Stephen King's Maine novel?
Saint Bernard
Saint Bernard dogs are famous for Alpine rescues and a gentle temper, which is what makes the two-hundred-pound Cujo's turn so frightening.
Q 02Which animal's bite on the nose infects Cujo with rabies at the start of Stephen King's novel?
A bat
A bat bites Cujo when he pushes his head into a small cave, and the Cambers had never had him vaccinated. The novel's postscript says the cave was never found.
Q 03In which model of car are Donna Trenton and her son Tad trapped by the rabid Cujo?
Ford Pinto
Ford Pinto trouble was something Stephen King knew first-hand: he owned an unreliable one himself and gave Donna the same model.
Q 04Which major change did the 1983 film of Cujo make to the ending of Stephen King's novel?
The child survives
The child survives in the film, while in the novel Tad dies in the car shortly before his father reaches the farm.
Q 05Cujo's name came from the alias of a kidnapper of which American newspaper heiress, seized in 1974?
Patty Hearst
Patty Hearst was abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and one of its members, Willie Wolfe, went by the name Cujo. King gave the alias to his mad dog.
Q 06What did Stephen King admit about his novel Cujo in his memoir On Writing?
He hardly remembers it
He hardly remembers it, because he was drinking so heavily at the time. King adds that he likes the book and wishes he could remember enjoying the good parts.
Q 07Which actress, the mother in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, played Donna Trenton in the 1983 film Cujo?
Dee Wallace
Dee Wallace made Cujo a year after E.T. and two years after the werewolf film The Howling, a run that earned her a reputation as a scream queen.
Q 08Which scientist's laboratory produced the first vaccine against rabies, the disease that drives Cujo mad?
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur's vaccine was first used in 1885 on a nine-year-old boy who had been mauled by a rabid dog. The boy never fell ill, though rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms appear.
Q 09What stood in for Cujo in some shots of the 1983 film, alongside real dogs and animatronic ones?
A man in a dog suit
A man in a dog suit, one of the film's stuntmen, doubled for Cujo in some shots. So did a Labrador and Great Dane cross wearing a costume of its own.
Q 10Christopher Stone, Donna's lover in the 1983 film Cujo, was what to its leading lady in real life?
Her husband
Her husband since 1980, Stone had already starred beside her in a werewolf film. In Cujo he plays the man her character is trying to be rid of.
Q 11What kind of business does Vic Trenton run with his partner Roger Breakstone in Stephen King's Cujo?
An advertising agency
An advertising agency called Ad Worx is Vic's livelihood, and it depends on one big client.
Q 12Which product is at the centre of the scandal that threatens Vic Trenton's firm in Stephen King's Cujo?
Breakfast cereal
Breakfast cereal from the Sharp company scared parents when a bad batch of dye made children appear to be bleeding internally. Vic's TV spots had promised nothing was wrong with it.
Q 13Why is Vic Trenton away from Castle Rock while his wife and son are trapped by Cujo?
A business trip
Q 21Which Castle Rock sheriff is killed by Cujo while searching for the missing Donna Trenton and her son?
George Bannerman
George Bannerman drives out to check the Camber farm, and Cujo kills him in the dooryard while Donna watches from the car.
Q 22Which earlier Stephen King novel introduced Castle Rock and its strangler Frank Dodd, whose memory haunts Cujo?
The Dead Zone
The Dead Zone was the first novel set in Castle Rock, published two years before Cujo. Its psychic hero exposes Dodd, a town policeman, as the killer.
Q 23Castle Rock, the Maine town where Cujo is set, takes its name from a fort in which classic British novel?
Lord of the Flies
A business trip takes Vic away to save his firm's biggest account. He forgets to arrange the car repair before he goes, so Donna has to deal with the failing car herself.
Q 14What is the trade of Joe Camber, the abusive owner of Cujo in Stephen King's novel?
Auto mechanic
Auto mechanic Joe Camber works from his farm outside town, which is why Donna nurses her failing car up his road. By the time she arrives, he is already dead.
Q 15How does Charity Camber get the money to bargain for a trip away with her son Brett in Cujo?
A lottery win
A lottery win of $5,000 gives Charity something to bargain with, and she uses it to make Joe let her show Brett the possibility of a better life.
Q 16In which state does Charity Camber's sister live, the destination of her trip with Brett in Cujo?
Connecticut
Connecticut is home to Charity's sister Holly, who married a lawyer. Charity wants Brett to see that a life unlike his father's is possible.
Q 17Which city do Joe Camber and a drinking buddy plan to visit once Charity and Brett leave town in Cujo?
Boston
Boston was to be a secret pleasure trip, with a baseball game on the schedule. Neither man lives to make it.
Q 18Which neighbor of the Cambers, a hard-drinking war veteran, is the first person Cujo kills?
Gary Pervier
Gary Pervier lives at the foot of the hill below the Camber place and meets the sick dog in his own yard. Joe finds him only minutes before his own death.
Q 19Which Castle Rock poet and furniture refinisher has an affair with Donna Trenton in Stephen King's Cujo?
Steve Kemp
Steve Kemp takes the break-up badly: he sends Vic a note exposing the affair, then wrecks the Trentons' empty house, which makes him the police's first suspect.
Q 20Where does four-year-old Tad Trenton believe a monster is hiding at night in Stephen King's Cujo?
His bedroom closet
His bedroom closet holds a red-eyed monster that only a charm written by his father can keep away. The real danger turns out to be waiting in daylight.
Lord of the Flies has a mountain fort called Castle Rock, and Stephen King borrowed William Golding's name for a town he would return to in story after story.
Q 24What was Stephen King riding when a growling dog at a rural Maine repair shop gave him the idea for Cujo?
A motorcycle
A motorcycle that barely made it to the shop left King exposed when the huge dog came out growling and went for his hand. The owner stopped it with a whack on the rump.
Q 25Which 2024 Stephen King story, narrated by an aging Vic Trenton in Florida, is a sequel to Cujo?
Rattlesnakes
Rattlesnakes appeared in the collection You Like It Darker, more than forty years after the novel. It finds Vic retired and sitting out the pandemic on a Gulf Coast island.
Q 26Which prize for best novel did Stephen King's Cujo win in 1982, the year after it was published?
British Fantasy Award
British Fantasy Award voters gave Cujo their best-novel prize, the August Derleth Award, even though it is one of King's least supernatural horror novels.
Q 27Which 1991 Stephen King novel was billed on its cover as the last story of Castle Rock, the town in Cujo?
Needful Things
Needful Things brings a charming stranger and his curio shop to Castle Rock, and the pranks he asks of his customers end in the town's destruction.
Q 28Which Stephen King novella, filmed as Stand by Me, shares its Castle Rock setting with Cujo?
The Body
The Body follows four boys from Castle Rock in the summer of 1960, twenty years before Cujo's rampage. It was published in the collection Different Seasons.
Q 29Which child actor played Tad Trenton in the 1983 film Cujo before starring in the sitcom Who's the Boss?
Danny Pintauro
Danny Pintauro came to Cujo from the daytime soap As the World Turns. A year later he began eight seasons as the young son in a hit sitcom household.
Q 30Which director, who later made The Jewel of the Nile, took over the 1983 film Cujo at the last minute?
Lewis Teague
Lewis Teague came recommended by Stephen King, who admired his giant-reptile film Alligator. Teague later said he regarded Cujo as his best film.