219 free Fairy Tales trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
59 free fairy tale trivia questions with answers. Every fairy tale you were read as a child has a stranger, older version underneath it: a Cinderella from Roman Egypt whose sandal was stolen by an eagle, a Sleeping Beauty who was already a mother when she woke, a Snow White whose stepmother danced to death in red-hot iron shoes, and a Little Mermaid who never got the prince. This quiz walks through the whole canon: who the Grimms, Perrault and Andersen were and when they published, the Aarne-Thompson index that catalogues the tales, and the details behind Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, The Frog Prince, Puss in Boots, Bluebeard, Beauty and the Beast, Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks, The Three Little Pigs, Pinocchio, the Pied Piper, Aladdin and Andersen's Little Mermaid, Ugly Duckling, Emperor's New Clothes, Princess and the Pea and Snow Queen. A final round covers the fairies themselves: where the word comes from, cold iron and changelings, fairy rings, the Cottingley photographs that fooled Arthur Conan Doyle, Tinker Bell, the tooth fairy and the Sugar Plum Fairy. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation.
30 of 219 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Brothers Grimm published the first volume of their Children's and Household Tales in which year?
1812
The collection grew from 86 stories to more than 200 across seven editions; the last, in 1857, is the version most people know.
Q 02Which massive scholarly project did the Grimms begin in 1838 and leave unfinished at their deaths?
A German dictionary
The Deutsches Wörterbuch was completed by other scholars only in 1961; Jacob also gave his name to Grimm's law in linguistics.
Q 03Charles Perrault's 1697 collection of Cinderella, Puss in Boots and Sleeping Beauty carried what subtitle?
Tales of Mother Goose
The full title was Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités; Perrault was a member of the Académie française.
Q 04Hans Christian Andersen was born in 1805 in which Danish city?
Odense
He moved to Copenhagen at 14 to try acting; his 156 fairy tales have been translated into more than 125 languages.
Q 05The term 'fairy tale' (conte de fées) was coined in the late 17th century by which French writer?
Madame d'Aulnoy
She first used it in her 1697 collection; the genre itself had been marked out earlier by the Italians Straparola and Basile.
Q 06Cinderella is tale type 510A in which standard folk-tale catalogue, named for three scholars?
The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index
Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne published it in 1910; Stith Thompson expanded it in English and Hans-Jörg Uther revised it in 2004.
Q 07What steals the sandal of Rhodopis in Strabo's tale, the earliest known Cinderella story?
An eagle
The bird drops it in the lap of the king of Egypt, who searches the country for its owner; her name means 'rosy-cheeks'.
Q 08Which three elements did Perrault add to Cinderella that were not in earlier versions?
The pumpkin, the fairy godmother and glass slippers
Basile's 1634 Cenerentola already had the stepmother, stepsisters and missing slipper; the Grimms' Aschenputtel has a hazel tree and helpful birds instead of a godmother.
Q 09In the Grimms' 1812 first edition of Snow White, who was the villain who wanted the girl dead?
Her own mother
Later editions softened it to a stepmother; the huntsman is told to bring back the girl's lungs and liver as proof.
Q 10How is the wicked queen punished at the end of the Grimms' Snow White?
Dancing in red-hot iron shoes till death
The punishment takes place at Snow White's wedding; Disney's 1937 film, the studio's first feature, dropped it.
Q 11The seven dwarfs were first given individual names in what?
A 1912 Broadway play
Disney gave them different names again for the film; the Grimm tale, number 53 in the collection, leaves them anonymous.
Q 12In Basile's 'Sun, Moon, and Talia' (1634), the first literary Sleeping Beauty, what makes the heroine sleep?
A splinter of flax
Perrault and the Grimms switched it to a spindle; in the Grimm version the fairies are 'wise women' and the sleep lasts a hundred years.
Q 13In Perrault's original Little Red Riding Hood, what happens after the wolf eats the girl?
Nothing; the story ends
Q 21In Puss in Boots, the cat claims his master, a miller's youngest son, is a nobleman with what title?
The Marquis of Carabas
The eldest brother got the mill, the middle one the donkey and the youngest only the cat; Antonio Banderas voices him in the Shrek films.
Q 22Perrault's Bluebeard is a wealthy man with what habit?
Murdering his wives
His latest wife is saved by her brothers after her sister Anne watches from the tower; the forbidden room and bloodstained key are the tale's famous motifs.
Q 23Which French novelist first wrote down Beauty and the Beast in 1740?
Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve
The Grimms added the huntsman who cuts the wolf open and fills its belly with stones.
Q 14In the Grimms' Little Red Riding Hood, how does the wolf finally die?
Stones in his belly drown him in a well
The same trick ends 'The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids'; in traditional German tellings the stones simply make him collapse.
Q 15The witch's house in Hansel and Gretel is described in the Grimm tale as made of what?
Bread, cake and sugar
Gretel pushes the witch into her own oven; the tale was set to opera by Engelbert Humperdinck in 1893.
Q 16How did the Grimms change who abandons Hansel and Gretel between 1810 and 1850?
From a mother to a stepmother
The brothers probably heard the story in 1809 from the family of Wilhelm's future wife Dortchen Wild.
Q 17In the Grimms' revised 1857 ending, how does Rumpelstiltskin meet his end after his name is guessed?
He tears himself in two
He drives his right foot into the ground up to his waist and rips himself apart pulling on the left; researchers trace the tale back some 4,000 years.
Q 18The English cousin of Rumpelstiltskin, collected by Joseph Jacobs in 1890, is called what?
Tom Tit Tot
Whuppity Stoorie is the Scottish version and Gilitrutt the Icelandic one; all share the guess-my-name plot.
Q 19In the Grimms' Rapunzel, the pregnant wife craves which plant from the witch's garden, the source of the name?
Rampion
The Grimms' tale descends from the French 'Persinette' (parsley) and the Italian 'Petrosinella'; all three heroines are named after garden greens.
Q 20In the Grimms' 'The Frog King, or Iron Henry', how does the princess break the spell?
She hurls him against a wall
The kiss is a later invention; the tale's full title is 'The Frog King, or Iron Henry' after the prince's faithful servant.
Beaumont's 1756 version cut the cast down and became the standard; the design of Cocteau's 1946 Beast was inspired by the hairy courtier Petrus Gonsalvus.
Q 24The ogre's cry 'Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman' comes from which tale?
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack trades the family cow for the beans; researchers trace the story type back more than five thousand years.
Q 25In Robert Southey's original 1837 'Story of the Three Bears', who breaks into the bears' house?
A rude old woman
The bears were three bachelors; the intruder later became a girl called Silver-Hair and only in the 20th century Goldilocks.
Q 26'Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin' first appeared in print in 1886 in whose collection?
James Halliwell-Phillipps
Joseph Jacobs' 1890 English Fairy Tales, crediting Halliwell, gave the story its best-known form; an earlier Dartmoor version starred pixies and a fox.
Q 27According to the Hamelin chronicle, how many children followed the Pied Piper out of the town in 1284?
130
The account was written on the last page of a Latin chronicle; music and dancing are still forbidden on the street they left by.
Q 28Antoine Galland added Aladdin to the Arabian Nights after hearing it from a storyteller from which city?
Aleppo
Hanna Diyab, a Maronite Syrian, met Galland in Paris in 1709; Aladdin and Ali Baba are known as the 'orphan tales'.
Q 29In Andersen's original mermaid tale, what does the sea witch take in exchange for giving her legs?
Her tongue
Every step feels like walking on knives, and when the prince marries another she dissolves into sea foam rather than killing him.
Q 30At what age is a mermaid in Andersen's tale first allowed to swim to the surface?
Fifteen
Her grandmother explains that mermaids live about 300 years but have no immortal soul, which is what the heroine really wants.