Fairy Tales
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
255 free Fairy Tales trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 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 255 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 Grimms began the Deutsches Wörterbuch, a German dictionary, in 1838; other scholars completed it only in 1961. Jacob also gave his name to Grimm's law.
Q 03Charles Perrault's 1697 collection of Cinderella, Puss in Boots and Sleeping Beauty carried what subtitle?
Tales of Mother Goose
The 1697 frontispiece read Contes de ma mère l'Oye, Tales of Mother Goose; the formal title was Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités.
Q 04Hans Christian Andersen was born in 1805 in which Danish city?
Odense
Andersen was born in Odense, on the island of Funen, in 1805; he left for Copenhagen at 14 hoping to become an actor.
Q 05The term 'fairy tale' (conte de fées) was coined in the late 17th century by which French writer?
Madame d'Aulnoy
Madame d'Aulnoy titled her 1697 collection Les Contes des fées, giving the genre its name; Straparola and Basile had written such tales in Italy earlier.
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
In Strabo's Geography an eagle snatches Rhodopis's sandal and drops it in the lap of the Egyptian king, who searches the country for its owner.
Q 08Which three elements did Perrault add to Cinderella that were not in earlier versions?
The pumpkin, the fairy godmother and glass slippers
Perrault's 1697 Cendrillon introduced the pumpkin coach, the fairy godmother and the glass slippers; Basile's 1634 Cenerentola already had the stepmother, stepsisters and a lost slipper.
Q 09In the Grimms' 1812 first edition of Snow White, who was the villain who wanted the girl dead?
Her own mother
In the 1812 text Snow White's own mother orders her death; the 1819 edition changed her to a stepmother. The huntsman must bring back the girl's lungs and liver.
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
The 1912 Broadway play by Jessie Braham White named them Blick, Flick, Glick, Snick, Plick, Whick and Quee; the Grimm tale, number 53, leaves them anonymous, and Disney chose new names in 1937.
Q 12In Basile's 'Sun, Moon, and Talia' (1634), the first literary Sleeping Beauty, what makes the heroine sleep?
A splinter of flax
A splinter of flax lodges under Talia's fingernail and she falls as if dead; Perrault and the Grimms changed it to a spindle, and the Grimm sleep lasts a hundred years.
Q 13In Perrault's original Little Red Riding Hood, what happens after the wolf eats the girl?
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
Puss tells the king his master is the Marquis of Carabas, an invented title; the eldest brother got the mill, the middle one the donkey and the youngest only the cat.
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
Nothing; the story ends
The Grimms added the huntsman who cuts the wolf open and fills its belly with stones.
Q 14How do Red Riding Hood and her grandmother kill the second wolf in the Grimm tale?
He drowns in a trough of sausage water
Grandmother has Red Riding Hood pour the water she boiled sausages in into the trough; the wolf, lured by the smell, slides off the roof and drowns in it.
Q 15The witch's house in Hansel and Gretel is described in the Grimm tale as made of what?
Bread, cake and sugar
The Grimm text says the house was built of bread, roofed with cake and had windows of clear sugar; the gingerbread house is a later embellishment.
Q 16As the Brothers Grimm revised Hansel and Gretel between 1810 and 1850, how did they shift the blame for abandoning the children?
From a mother to a stepmother
From a mother to a stepmother, one associated with the witch, as the tale grew longer and more Christian in tone; the brothers probably heard it in 1809 from Dortchen Wild's family.
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
Tom Tit Tot appears in Jacobs's English Fairy Tales (1890), where the girl must guess the imp's name; Whuppity Stoorie is the Scottish version and Gilitrutt the Icelandic one.
Q 19In the Grimms' Rapunzel, which plant does the pregnant wife crave from the witch's garden?
Rampion
Rapunzel is the German name for rampion, the salad green the wife craves; the French Persinette and the Italian Petrosinella are likewise named for parsley.
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.
Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve published La Belle et la Bête in 1740 in her collection La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins; her novel-length version gave Beauty and the Beast elaborate back-stories.
Q 24The ogre's cry 'Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman' comes from which tale?
Jack and the Beanstalk
The giant roars it in Jack and the Beanstalk as Jack hides in his castle; Jack had traded the family cow for the magic beans that grew to the sky.
Q 25In Robert Southey's original 1837 'Story of the Three Bears', who breaks into the bears' house?
A rude old woman
Southey's intruder was an impudent old woman, and the bears were three bachelors; she became a girl called Silver-Hair in 1849 and Goldilocks only in 1904.
Q 26'Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin' first appeared in print in 1886 in whose collection?
James Halliwell-Phillipps
James Halliwell-Phillipps printed the tale in his Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales (1886); Joseph Jacobs's 1890 English Fairy Tales, crediting Halliwell, gave it its best-known form.
Q 27According to the Hamelin chronicle, how many children followed the Pied Piper out of the town in 1284?
130
The earliest account, in the Lüneburg manuscript, records that 130 children born in Hamelin were led away on 26 June 1284; on the street they left by, music and dancing are forbidden by tradition.
Q 28Antoine Galland added Aladdin to the Arabian Nights after hearing it from a storyteller from which city?
Aleppo
Hanna Diyab, a Maronite from Aleppo, told Galland the story in Paris in 1709; Aladdin and Ali Baba, absent from the Arabic manuscripts, are called the 'orphan tales'.
Q 29In Andersen's original mermaid tale, what does the sea witch take in exchange for giving her legs?
Her tongue
The sea witch cuts out the little mermaid's tongue as payment, taking her beautiful voice; every step on her new legs feels like treading on knives.
Q 30At what age is a mermaid in Andersen's tale first allowed to swim to the surface?
Fifteen
Each sister may rise to the surface on her fifteenth birthday; the grandmother explains that mermaids live about 300 years but lack the immortal soul the heroine longs for.