Get Smart Trivia
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46 free Get Smart trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Get Smart trivia quiz covers the Mel Brooks and Buck Henry spy spoof from its NBC premiere in 1965 to its final CBS season in 1970, plus the follow-ups: The Nude Bomb, Get Smart, Again!, the 1995 Fox revival and the 2008 Steve Carell film. Expect questions on Don Adams's Maxwell Smart and Barbara Feldon's Agent 99, Edward Platt's Chief, Siegfried and Starker, Hymie the Robot and Agent 13, the shoe phone and the Cone of Silence, the Sunbeam Tiger, the catchphrases ('Missed it by that much!'), the Emmys and the network that called the show 'un-American'. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has watched the reruns, a third are medium, and the rest are for fans who know why Max is Agent 86 and what the Chief's first name is. Would you believe... 46 questions? Every one has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Get Smart's opening titles, Max's walk through a corridor of slamming doors ends when he drops through the floor of what?
A phone booth
A phone booth: Max steps in, dials a number and drops out of sight. Executive producer Leonard Stern designed and directed the sequence himself.
Q 02Hymie, the robot who defects to Max's side on Get Smart, has which comic failing?
He takes every order literally
He takes every order literally: told to 'hop to it', Hymie starts hopping. Built by the enemy as the perfect agent, he changed sides because Max treated him like a person.
Q 03What is Maxwell Smart's code number?
86
86 is bar and restaurant slang: to eighty-six a customer is to refuse him service, and to eighty-six anything else is to get rid of it. Mel Brooks picked the number for his bumbling agent.
Q 04Who played Agent 99 on the original Get Smart series?
Barbara Feldon
Barbara Feldon, a former model who won the top prize on The $64,000 Question in 1957, was taller than her leading man, so she often played scenes shoeless, slouching or with her knees bent.
Q 05What is the name of the secret US agency Smart and 99 work for?
CONTROL
CONTROL is the Washington, D.C. spy agency whose headquarters hides behind a phone booth with a secret elevator, reached through a corridor of slamming steel doors.
Q 06Whenever Get Smart's Max just fails at something, he shrugs that he 'missed it by' what?
That much
'That much' got its first airing when an enemy agent leapt from a window at a truckload of mattresses; Max looked out, turned back to the room and delivered the line.
Q 07On which network did Get Smart premiere in September 1965?
NBC
NBC took the show after another network had rejected the script, ran it for four seasons and then cancelled it; CBS stepped in at once for a fifth and final year.
Q 08ABC turned down Get Smart after demanding a lovable dog and which other character?
Max's mother
Max's mother was where Mel Brooks drew the line, insisting 'Max has no mother'; the dog went into the script and the mother never did.
Q 09Who played the Chief on Get Smart?
Edward Platt
Edward Platt came to acting from music: a trained bass-baritone, he had sung with a big band before turning to film, and as the Chief he got to belt out 'Alouette' in one episode.
Q 10Outsiders know Get Smart's Chief as Harold Clark; what is his real first name?
Thaddeus
Thaddeus is his real first name; Harold Clark is a cover so thin that every agent knows it is false, and the series never gives him a surname at all.
Q 11Where does Get Smart's Max keep his most famous concealed telephone?
In his shoe
In his shoe: Mel Brooks dreamed up the shoe phone, which Max has to take off to answer. The writers went on to hide phones in more than 50 other objects, a cheese sandwich among them.
Q 12Where does Get Smart's Agent 99 hide one of her concealed phones?
In her fingernail
In her fingernail: she pretends to bite her nails nervously while actually talking into the phone. Her makeup compact hides another one.
Q 13What is the running joke about the Cone of Silence in Get Smart?
The users can't hear each other
Q 21What does Agent 99 give birth to in Get Smart's final season?
Twins
Twins, a boy and a girl whose names the series never reveals, arrive in a two-part episode timed for the November ratings sweeps; both babies were played on screen by twin brothers.
Q 22Who beat Get Smart's Don Adams to the 1966 lead-actor Emmy?
Dick Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke won in 1966 for the last season of his own show, his third Emmy in a row as Rob Petrie; Adams then matched him with three straight wins, in 1967, 1968 and 1969.
Q 23Which cartoon crimefighter did Don Adams voice after Get Smart, in tones almost identical to Max's?
Inspector Gadget
Inspector Gadget was partly inspired by Get Smart, and after two other actors had recorded the part its producers brought in Adams and re-recorded every one of the hero's lines.
The users can't hear each other, while everyone outside hears every word. Buck Henry thought up the gag, and Max kept demanding the Cone even after it came down and crushed the Chief's desk.
Q 14Which car does Max drive most often in Get Smart?
A red Sunbeam Tiger
A red Sunbeam Tiger is Max's car, though for the gadget scenes the crew used a lookalike Sunbeam Alpine: its smaller engine left room under the hood for the hidden machine gun.
Q 15Why does Max drive a VW Karmann Ghia in Get Smart's opening credits for seasons three and four?
The carmaker became a sponsor
The carmaker became a sponsor, so a blue Karmann Ghia took over the titles, yet Max never drives one in an actual episode; when Buick signed on for season five he got a gold Opel GT.
Q 16Who played Get Smart's recurring KAOS villain Siegfried?
Bernie Kopell
Bernie Kopell played Siegfried as a villain who could not abide silliness, then spent nine seasons as the genial ship's doctor on The Love Boat; in the 2008 film he cameos as a motorist.
Q 17On Get Smart, what is the name of Siegfried's henchman, played by King Moody?
Starker
Starker, which Siegfried bellows as 'Shtarker', was a KAOS thug; King Moody, who played him, went on to spend years as the clown Ronald McDonald in McDonald's commercials.
Q 18Which actor played Hymie the Robot on Get Smart?
Dick Gautier
Dick Gautier won the part at an open casting call after the producers had despaired of filling it; he had been Broadway's original Conrad Birdie, a role that brought him a Tony nomination.
Q 19From Get Smart's second season on, which colleague of Max's turns up inside cigarette machines, mailboxes and washing machines?
Agent 13
Agent 13, played by Dave Ketchum, met every new posting with bitter sarcasm; his worst, three days inside a washing machine, left him so wrinkled that he had to iron his skin.
Q 20On Get Smart, Larabee, the Chief's dim assistant, was played by Robert Karvelas, who was Don Adams's what?
Cousin
Cousin: their mothers were sisters, and when Karvelas, a stockbroker, was about to move back east, Adams kept him in Los Angeles with bit parts that grew into Larabee.
Q 24Why did the actress cast as Get Smart's Agent 99 nearly lose the role?
An ad for a sponsor's rival
An ad for a sponsor's rival: she had endorsed a competing product a year earlier, and the sponsor dug in until the network and producers talked it round. She then signed for three years and stayed for five.
Q 25Which talk-show host appeared as a 'special guest conductor' in the episode 'Aboard the Orient Express'?
Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson, then hosting The Tonight Show, played the conductor and came back as a royal footman in 'The King Lives?'; Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Phyllis Diller also did cameos.
Q 26Which F Troop star played the mind-bending disc jockey of the Get Smart episode 'The Groovy Guru'?
Larry Storch
Larry Storch played the Guru, a hippie disc jockey out to take over teenagers' minds through his radio show; TV Guide later named it one of the 100 greatest episodes of any series.
Q 27What was the title of the 1980 theatrical Get Smart film, made without Brooks or Henry?
The Nude Bomb
The Nude Bomb, in which the enemy threatens a weapon that destroys only clothing, was planned as a TV movie until the studio saw how popular the old series still was; Agent 99 is nowhere in it.
Q 28On Get Smart, Max's dog, Agent K-13, is better known by what name?
Fang
Fang was written in because ABC, the first network to see the script, wanted a lovable dog to give the show more heart; ABC then turned the show down anyway.
Q 29In Fox's 1995 revival of Get Smart, who played Max and 99's bumbling son Zach?
Andy Dick
Andy Dick played Zach opposite Don Adams, whose Max now ran the agency; the revival lasted seven episodes, by which time Dick had already landed NewsRadio, which began weeks later.
Q 30Who played Maxwell Smart in the 2008 Get Smart film?
Steve Carell
Steve Carell took the role after Will Ferrell, who had been attached to it, dropped out during years of script trouble; the film went on to earn about $230 million worldwide.