Little House on the Prairie Trivia
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100 free Little House on the Prairie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free Little House on the Prairie trivia questions with answers. Little House on the Prairie lives on in reruns, on Peacock, and in a Netflix reboot, and this quiz covers the whole world of it: the NBC series that ran from 1974 to 1983 (Pa, Half Pint, the Olesons, Mary's blindness, the town blowing itself up in the finale), Laura Ingalls Wilder's nine books, and the real family history that both fictionalised. The easy questions are for anyone who watched with their grandmother. The hard ones ask which book was published first, how many actresses auditioned to play Ma, where Walnut Grove was really filmed, what Laura and Almanzo called each other, and why the library award named for Wilder was renamed in 2018. It works for a fan gathering, a classroom, or a family quiz night. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the series, the books, the cast and Laura Ingalls Wilder herself, and each question carries its source.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the TV series, the Ingalls farm sits on the banks of which stream near Walnut Grove?
Plum Creek
Plum Creek is real, and still runs past Walnut Grove: the Ingalls family's first home on it was a dugout in the bank, which the book has Pa buy by trading away his horses.
Q 02Who played Charles Ingalls, the family patriarch known as Pa?
Michael Landon
Michael Landon was sent the pilot script to direct and asked to play Charles Ingalls as well; he went on to write, direct and executive-produce much of the series.
Q 03Which actress played Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie?
Melissa Gilbert
Melissa Gilbert was nine when cast, and her real brother Jonathan joined the show too, as Willie, the bratty little brother of Laura's rival Nellie.
Q 04On the Little House set, what nickname did the show's star give the young actress playing Laura?
Half Pint
Half Pint is also what Pa calls Laura on screen; the star gave both his screen daughters nicknames so they could be told apart on set, and the girl playing Mary answered to Missy.
Q 05On which network did Little House on the Prairie air from 1974 to 1983?
NBC
NBC had its star under exclusive contract after his long-running western ended, and he brought it a script that all three networks had already turned down as too soft.
Q 06Why did twin sisters share the role of little Carrie Ingalls?
Limits on child actors' hours
Limits on child actors' hours meant two toddlers could cover a full filming day; the credits ran their names together as Lindsay Sidney Greenbush, so many viewers thought Carrie was one girl.
Q 07What happens to Mary Ingalls at the end of season four?
She goes blind
She goes blind in the two-part season-four finale, her sight lost to the aftereffects of scarlet fever; the family then sends her to a school for the blind in Iowa.
Q 08Which orphan boy do the Ingalls adopt after meeting him in the town of Winoka?
Albert
Albert has run away from a string of orphanages and is living by his wits on the streets of Winoka when he meets the Ingalls, who take him home to Walnut Grove.
Q 09Which family owns the mercantile in Walnut Grove?
The Olesons
The Olesons run Oleson's Mercantile and spoil their children accordingly: when daughter Nellie finishes school, her graduation present is a restaurant of her own.
Q 10Which actress played Nellie on Little House?
Alison Arngrim
Alison Arngrim spent seven seasons as Laura's tormentor on screen, yet off camera she and the girl who played Laura became friends.
Q 11Who played Caroline Ingalls, known as Ma, on Little House on the Prairie?
Karen Grassle
Karen Grassle came from the theatre, with Broadway and a London drama school behind her but almost no screen work, when the show's star picked her to play Ma.
Q 12Whom does Nellie eventually marry on Little House on the Prairie?
Percival Dalton
Percival Dalton, played by Steve Tracy, was hired to teach Nellie how to run her restaurant; he stood up to her, she mellowed, and the couple had twins.
Q 13Which character arrives in season six as Walnut Grove's new schoolteacher?
Eliza Jane Wilder
Eliza Jane Wilder takes over the school in the season-six premiere and brings her younger brother to town with her, the farmer a fifteen-year-old Laura falls for on sight.
Q 21Producer Ed Friendly bought the Little House screen rights after seeing which relative re-read the books every year?
His teenage daughter
His teenage daughter read the whole series again each year, which convinced him the stories could carry a show, so he bought the screen rights to all the books at once, not just one.
Q 22Little House's Pa went on to star in which series about an angel on probation, from 1984 to 1989?
Highway to Heaven
Highway to Heaven reunited him with Victor French: Little House's Charles and Mr. Edwards became a probationary angel and the retired policeman who travels with him.
Q 23Little House's star died in 1991, at age 54, of what illness?
Pancreatic cancer
Q 14What was Little House on the Prairie retitled for its ninth and final season?
Little House: A New Beginning
Little House: A New Beginning was the title of the ninth and final season, after Charles and Caroline had moved the family to Burr Oak, Iowa, leaving Laura and her husband at the centre of the stories.
Q 15How does the 1984 Little House finale movie, The Last Farewell, end?
The townspeople blow up their own buildings
The townspeople blow up their own buildings rather than surrender Walnut Grove to a land baron, and the dynamiting was real: the lease required the sets to be cleared from the land.
Q 16Where were the exteriors of Walnut Grove and the Ingalls farm actually filmed?
Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, California
Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, California stood in for Minnesota for the whole run; in March 2024 cast members and fans went back to tour it for the show's 50th anniversary.
Q 17What is Hiram Baker's job in Walnut Grove?
Town doctor
Town doctor: Kevin Hagen, who played Doc Baker in all nine seasons, had spent much of his earlier career cast as villains.
Q 18Which earlier Western made the actor who played Pa a star, as Little Joe Cartwright?
Bonanza
Bonanza ran for 14 seasons, and it was there that he began writing and directing episodes himself, the skills he would use to run Little House.
Q 19Which future film star made his TV debut on Little House as the Ingalls' adopted son James?
Jason Bateman
Jason Bateman joined as James Cooper, an orphan taken in with his sister; the writers were not gentle with him, catching him in a bear trap and later having him shot in a bank robbery.
Q 20In Wilder's books, what destroys Pa's wheat crop in Minnesota?
Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers devour the wheat and leave eggs that doom the next year's crop too, so Pa walks hundreds of miles east to find paid work at harvest time.
Pancreatic cancer, diagnosed that April, killed him on July 1 at his Malibu home; weeks after the diagnosis he had gone on The Tonight Show to talk about it.
Q 24Linwood Boomer, who played Mary's husband on Little House, later created which hit sitcom?
Malcolm in the Middle
Malcolm in the Middle, which Boomer based on his own childhood, ran on Fox from 2000 to 2006; he had given up acting for work behind the camera after leaving Walnut Grove.
Q 25Which of Wilder's books was published first, in 1932?
Little House in the Big Woods
Little House in the Big Woods came out when Wilder was 65; it grew out of Pioneer Girl, a memoir for adults that publishers had turned down, reworked as a story for children.
Q 26Which instrument does Pa play for the family in the Little House books and TV series?
The fiddle
The fiddle was real: Charles Ingalls's own violin survives at his daughter's Missouri home, now a museum, where it is still taken out and played at an annual festival.
Q 27The novel Little House on the Prairie is set in which state, where the family squatted on Osage land?
Kansas
Kansas, near modern Independence, is where Pa built the cabin on Osage land not yet open to settlers; the books send the family straight on to Minnesota, but in life they went back to Wisconsin first.
Q 28What breed of dog is Jack, the Ingalls family's pet in the early Little House books?
Bulldog
Bulldog Jack guards the family through the early books and dies in his sleep at the start of By the Shores of Silver Lake, on the very morning Pa leaves to take a railroad job out west.
Q 29Five Little House books were runners-up for which children's book prize?
Newbery Medal
The Newbery Medal's judges named five of the books Honor Books between 1938 and 1944 but never a winner; in 1954 librarians created a lifetime award in Wilder's name and gave her the first one.
Q 30Whose illustrations replaced the originals when the books were reissued in a uniform edition in 1953?
Garth Williams
Garth Williams, the artist of Charlotte's Web, began by visiting Wilder at her Missouri farm and then toured every place the family had lived; she said they "live again in these illustrations".