It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
80 free It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown went out on CBS on October 27, 1966, pre-empting My Three Sons, and pulled 49 percent of everyone watching television that night. Charles Schulz, Bill Melendez and Lee Mendelson wrote it in a hurry after the network demanded a "blockbuster" follow-up to A Charlie Brown Christmas, and it became the first real Halloween special and, for many people, the best Peanuts special of all. These 80 questions cover the plot (the letter, the sincere pumpkin patch, the party at Violet's, the 4 a.m. rescue), the production (a $76,000 budget, a five-year-old Sally with a loose tooth, the argument over whether one rock was too cruel), Vince Guaraldi's sextet and "The Great Pumpkin Waltz", the World War I songs Schroeder plays, the ratings battle with Star Trek and Bonanza, and the 2020 move to Apple TV+ that took it off broadcast television for the first time in 54 years. Easy questions cover the characters and the rocks; harder ones ask about voice actors, background painters and Nielsen numbers. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a Halloween round.
30 of 80 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01According to Linus, what does the Great Pumpkin bring for the children who believe?
A bag of toys
A bag of toys makes him a Halloween Santa Claus, and that was Schulz's whole joke: a small boy who has muddled one holiday's legend with the next and will not be argued out of it.
Q 02In Peanuts, Linus is almost always drawn holding what?
A security blanket
A security blanket: Schulz did not invent the phrase, but Linus made it famous, and dictionaries trace its figurative sense, anything a person clings to for comfort, to his blanket.
Q 03What does Charlie Brown get at every house while the other children collect treats?
A rock
A rock at each of three houses: producer Lee Mendelson protested that even one was too cruel, which only made his partners triple it, and 'I got a rock' passed into the language.
Q 04Whose Halloween party is Charlie Brown surprised to be invited to?
Violet
Violet's invitation thrills him, but at the party the girls only want his round head as a model, and sketch a jack-o'-lantern face on the back of it.
Q 05What does a furious Sally threaten to do to Linus after her wasted night in the pumpkin patch?
Sue him
Sue him is exactly what she shouts, 'I'll sue!', in a tirade that ends with her shaking Linus by the shirt; she had given up trick-or-treating and the party to keep him company.
Q 06In It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Snoopy's costume makes him a flying ace from which war?
World War I
World War I had entered Peanuts only a year earlier, in a 1965 strip; when Schulz wished the doghouse could really fly on screen, his director took it as a dare: 'I'm an animator! That's what I do!'
Q 07In It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Snoopy imagines his doghouse is which fighter plane?
Sopwith Camel
Sopwith Camel was a real British fighter, and Snoopy's wooden version became so well known that the flight, which its producer called one of animation's most memorable scenes, ended up on a postage stamp.
Q 08Which enemy pilot shoots Snoopy down in the dogfight of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?
The Red Baron
The Red Baron never appears: the dogfight shows only Snoopy on his doghouse, and it convinced the producers that the beagle could carry a scene, and a show, without saying a word.
Q 09At the Halloween party, which game does Snoopy sneak into after being shot down?
Apple bobbing
Apple bobbing is how the downed flying ace gatecrashes the party: he slips into the tub while a girl who cannot stand dog germs is taking her turn, with the result you would expect.
Q 10Why is Charlie Brown's ghost costume full of eyeholes?
He had trouble with the scissors
He had trouble with the scissors, he admits when the others ask where he is; Pig-Pen hides no better, greeted by name at once because his sheet trails its usual cloud of dust.
Q 11Which marching song opens the piano medley at the Halloween party, sending Snoopy strutting?
It's a Long Way to Tipperary
It's a Long Way to Tipperary gets Snoopy marching, but by 'Roses of Picardy', the last of the four songs, he is in tears, and an accidental howl finally sends him off in embarrassment.
Q 12Who finally fetches the shivering Linus from the pumpkin patch at 4 a.m.?
Lucy
Lucy, who has spent the whole special mocking his vigil, gets up unasked at four in the morning, leads him home without a word and puts him to bed.
Q 13What does Linus do when he spots a figure he believes is the Great Pumpkin?
He faints
Q 21Which US network first broadcast It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?
CBS
CBS had asked for it: after A Charlie Brown Christmas the network rang the producers to say 'We need another holiday blockbuster', and Schulz reached for the most obvious holiday left.
Q 22It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was first broadcast, before its American premiere, in which country?
Canada
Canada's CBC put the special on air shortly before the American network did, so the famous premiere date of October 27, 1966 was not in fact the world's first showing.
Q 23Which Western did It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown tie for first place in its debut week's Nielsen ratings?
Bonanza
Bonanza had kept A Charlie Brown Christmas down to second place in the ratings ten months earlier; this time the Peanuts gang drew level with the Cartwrights at the top.
He faints just as the shape rises over the pumpkins, and comes round to learn that he swooned at the sight of a beagle and that his one fellow believer has had enough.
Q 14Linus says the Great Pumpkin rises from the pumpkin patch that is the most what?
Sincere
Sincere is a test Linus applies to himself: when nothing comes, he never doubts the Great Pumpkin, only whether his own patch and his own faith measured up.
Q 15Linus says there are three things he has learned never to discuss with people: religion, the Great Pumpkin and what?
Politics
Politics completes the list, and Linus has cause to add the third: by then his letter has drawn disbelief from Charlie Brown, laughter from Snoopy and the threat of a pounding.
Q 16When Linus backs the Great Pumpkin and Charlie Brown backs Santa Claus, what does Charlie Brown say separates them?
Denominational differences
Denominational differences is his verdict: to Charlie Brown the two beliefs are rival churches, a joke from Schulz, a Sunday-school teacher who doubted that any one denomination could be sure of the truth.
Q 17In his letter, Linus concedes that the Great Pumpkin lags behind Santa Claus in what?
Publicity
Publicity is Santa's one advantage, Linus writes, before consoling the Great Pumpkin that 'being number two, perhaps you try harder', a line echoing a famous car-rental advertisement of the day.
Q 18The morning after, which attempt at comfort from Charlie Brown sends Linus into a furious rant?
That he does stupid things too
That he does stupid things too is meant kindly, but Linus hears only the word 'stupid', and he is still shouting about it as the closing credits roll.
Q 19Which running Peanuts gag made its TV-special debut in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?
The pulled-away football
The pulled-away football comes early: shown a signed contract promising the ball will stay put, Charlie Brown runs at it, lands on his back and is told the paper was never notarized.
Q 20Linus panics after saying which word in place of 'when' as his friends leave the pumpkin patch?
If
If: 'I meant when he comes! I'm doomed,' he wails, sure that 'one little slip like that can cause the Great Pumpkin to pass you by', which makes every no-show his own fault.
Q 24Which science-fiction series aired on NBC against the first broadcast of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?
Star Trek
Star Trek, seven weeks into its first season, sent out 'Miri' that night, an episode about a planet run by children, and was outdrawn by a cartoon about children waiting in a pumpkin patch.
Q 25Roughly what share of US viewers watched the Great Pumpkin special's 1966 debut?
49%
49%, roughly 17 million viewers; after that success the network repeated the special every year for decades.
Q 26What does Linus vow to do in his rant over the closing credits of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?
Wait again next year
Wait again next year is the promise, and Schulz kept it for him: Linus went back to the pumpkin patch in the strip almost every October until the final Halloween of Peanuts in 1999.
Q 27After the 1966 broadcast, what did sympathetic viewers mail to Charlie Brown for years?
Candy
Candy poured into Schulz's studio from viewers who felt sorry for him after his trick-or-treat haul, and producer Lee Mendelson said the parcels kept coming for years.
Q 28Who directed It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and also supplied Snoopy's voice?
Bill Melendez
Bill Melendez never meant to voice the dog: Schulz would not let Snoopy talk, so he recorded himself speaking gibberish, sped up the tape and kept the job for four decades.
Q 29The director of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, a Disney and Warner Brothers veteran, was born in which country?
Mexico
Mexico: born in Hermosillo, he joined Disney in 1938, worked on Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi, and moved to Warner Brothers after the animators' strike of 1941.
Q 30Who voiced Charlie Brown in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?
Peter Robbins
Peter Robbins was nine when he first played Charlie Brown and was replaced at fourteen, but his recorded 'AAUGH!' went on being used in the specials after he had gone.