Discworld
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50 free Discworld trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Discworld is a flat world on the backs of four elephants on the back of a turtle, and across 41 novels Terry Pratchett used it to satirise everything from opera and rock music to policing, banking, religion and the postal service. More than 80 million copies have sold in 37 languages, and the books regularly topped the Sunday Times list through the 1990s, when Pratchett was Britain's best-selling author. These 50 questions move through the sub-series. The Rincewind books with Twoflower and the Luggage, Death with Binky, Albert and Susan Sto Helit, the Lancre witches and their headology, the Ankh-Morpork City Watch from a hopeless gang of three to Commander Vimes and his boots theory, Unseen University and the orangutan Librarian, Lord Vetinari, Moist von Lipwig's post office, and Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegle. There are questions on the author too: the 506-copy first printing of The Colour of Magic, the Carnegie Medal, the knighthood, the sword he forged from meteoric iron, and the last novel finished before his death in 2015. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Discworld hero, still fighting in his nineties, wears dentures made from a troll's diamond teeth?
Cohen the Barbarian
Cohen the Barbarian. An echo of Conan grown very old, he leads the Silver Horde, a band of equally ancient heroes who have lasted this long by being extremely good at not dying.
Q 02On the backs of which four giant animals does the Disc rest?
Elephants
Elephants. Legend on the Disc says there was once a fifth, which slipped off and crashed back onto the world, leaving the buried deposits of fat that are mined in Überwald.
Q 03What is the name of the giant turtle that carries the Discworld through space?
Great A'Tuin
Great A'Tuin. Nobody on the Disc knows whether the turtle is male or female, so in the first novel the people of Krull build a capsule to drop over the Rim and take a look.
Q 04Which Discworld novel came last?
The Shepherd's Crown
The Shepherd's Crown, the 41st, came out months after Pratchett died in 2015. He had asked that anything left unfinished be destroyed, so in 2017 his hard drive was crushed by a steamroller.
Q 05What was the title of the first Discworld novel, published in 1983?
The Colour of Magic
The Colour of Magic. Pratchett called it an attempt to do for the classical fantasy universe what Blazing Saddles did for Westerns, and it ends on a literal cliffhanger, with its hero going over the edge of the world.
Q 06Which Discworld novel sends up The Phantom of the Opera, with a ghost haunting a city opera house?
Maskerade
Maskerade. Its heroine, Agnes Nitt, has the best voice in the company but is kept in the chorus, singing the leading role from the shadows while a prettier soprano takes the bows.
Q 07What is the biggest city on the Disc, its corrupt mercantile capital?
Ankh-Morpork
Ankh-Morpork runs on the principle of One Man, One Vote: the Patrician is the Man, and he has the Vote.
Q 08Which cowardly, incompetent wizard was the first Discworld protagonist?
Rincewind
Rincewind. He was born, the books say, with a wizard's spirit and the body of a long-distance sprinter, which is why so many people have tried to kill him and he is still running.
Q 09Twoflower, the Disc's first tourist, is an insurance clerk from where?
Agatean Empire
Agatean Empire. Twoflower sells a local innkeeper a fire insurance policy, a new idea in those parts, and the man promptly burns his tavern down for the money, taking much of the city with it.
Q 10The Luggage is made from which magical material?
Sapient pearwood
Sapient pearwood grows only where old magic has soaked the ground, which leaves it proof against spells; the chest made from it follows its owner anywhere on hundreds of little legs.
Q 11Which Discworld street trader is nicknamed for swearing that, at his prices, he is 'cutting me own throat'?
Dibbler
Dibbler. His stock in trade is the sausage in a bun, made of things best not asked about, and whenever one of his get-rich-quick schemes collapses he goes back to selling them from a tray.
Q 12What is the name of Death's pale horse?
Binky
Binky. Death first tried a skeletal steed, but kept having to stop and wire bits back on, and then a fiery one that set its own bedding alight, so he settled for a living white horse.
Q 13Death turns up in all but two Discworld novels, always speaking in which style of lettering?
Small capitals
Small capitals, without quotation marks: a skeleton has no vocal cords, so his words are said to arrive in the head without troubling the ears. Only The Wee Free Men and Snuff do without him.
Q 21Wyrd Sisters, the 1988 witches novel, mainly parodies which playwright?
Shakespeare
Shakespeare. The plot stitches Macbeth to Hamlet: three witches meddle after a duke murders his king, and the truth comes out when a troupe of actors stages the crime in front of the killer.
Q 22Equal Rites, the third Discworld novel, introduced which character?
Granny Weatherwax
Granny Weatherwax. She takes charge of Esk, a girl handed a staff of power at birth by a dying wizard who never checked the baby's sex, and escorts her to the men-only Unseen University.
Q 23Sam Vimes first appears, in the eighth Discworld novel, as captain of which force?
The Night Watch
Q 14Which 1987 novel was the first to focus on Death, who takes on a human apprentice?
Mort
Mort. He lasts only briefly as Death's apprentice: he falls in love with his master's adopted daughter, marries her, and ends the book as a duke.
Q 15What is the name of Death's granddaughter, a key character in Soul Music and Hogfather?
Susan Sto Helit
Susan Sto Helit. Death only adopted her mother, yet Susan inherited some of his powers anyway: she can walk through walls and step outside time, though she earns her living as a governess.
Q 16The title of Reaper Man references which film?
Repo Man
Repo Man, Alex Cox's 1984 cult film. In the novel the Auditors retire Death for having grown a personality, and he takes work as a farm hand under the name Bill Door.
Q 17In Hogfather, the Auditors hire an Assassin named what to eliminate the Hogfather?
Mr Teatime
Mr Teatime, who insists it is pronounced Teh-ah-tim-eh, breaks into the Tooth Fairy's realm and uses the stolen teeth to make the Disc's children stop believing in the Hogfather.
Q 18The Discworld's leading witches live in which mountain kingdom?
Lancre
Lancre. The kingdom is so tiny that one man, Shawn Ogg, is its army, its palace guard, its herald and its postman, yet it counts witches among its exports.
Q 19What do Discworld witches call the knack they prefer to magic?
Headology
Headology rests on the principle that what people believe is what is real, so a witch can cure a patient, or win a village's respect, without using any magic at all.
Q 20Nanny Ogg's murderous cat is called what?
Greebo
Greebo. Nanny Ogg still sees a sweet kitten in the scarred, evil-smelling tom that every animal in the forest fears, a cat said to have once chased a bear up a tree.
The Night Watch. With the guilds left to police their own crimes, it has withered to three men nobody expects to arrest anyone, until an eager recruit arrives who takes the law at its word.
Q 24Carrot Ironfoundersson is a human raised by which people?
Dwarfs
Dwarfs. Carrot is a foundling raised in a dwarf mine who grew to six foot six, and on his first day as a watchman he arrests the head of the perfectly legal Thieves' Guild.
Q 25What creature terrorises the city in Discworld's first City Watch novel?
A dragon
A dragon. The plotters mean their puppet to slay it and take the throne, but the beast comes back, makes itself king instead and demands gold and sacrifices.
Q 26Which Watch member is a werewolf?
Angua
Angua. She was hired in a drive to bring the city's minorities into the Watch, in the same intake as a troll and a dwarf, and her wolf's nose soon made her its best tracker.
Q 27Vimes's 'boots theory' of socioeconomic unfairness appears in which 1993 novel?
Men at Arms
Men at Arms. Vimes reasons that a rich man's fifty-dollar boots last for years while a poor man's ten-dollar pairs keep wearing out and cost him more; in 2022 a campaigner named a food-price index after the idea.
Q 28What noble title does Sam Vimes eventually hold?
Duke of Ankh
Duke of Ankh. Vimes learned his trade as a street copper, then married Lady Sybil Ramkin, the richest woman in the city, and was pushed up the ranks until he found himself a duke.
Q 29In the 2002 time-travel novel, Vimes is sent back and must assume whose identity?
John Keel
John Keel. The real Keel is murdered on the day he arrives by the killer who fell through time with Vimes, so Vimes has to take his place and teach his own younger self how to be a copper.
Q 30What is the first name of Lord Vetinari, the Patrician?
Havelock
Havelock. Vetinari trained at the Assassins' Guild and loathes mimes, whom he is said to hang upside down in a scorpion pit facing a sign that reads 'Learn the Words'.