Scarecrows
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40 free Scarecrows trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Scarecrows have guarded fields for centuries, and somewhere along the way they wandered out of the furrows and into our stories. One walks a yellow brick road in search of brains, another spreads terror through the pages of Batman comics, and others turn up in anime, stage musicals, video games and rock albums. This quiz mixes those famous fictional scarecrows with facts about the real thing: what farmers in different countries call them, the gods and ghosts tied to them, the villages that hold festivals in their honour, and the gadgets growers now use instead. It is written for anyone who enjoys autumn trivia, from families planning a harvest party to quiz hosts after a seasonal round. Every question comes with an explanation, so you come away with a little more to say about the figure in the field.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pop superstar played the Scarecrow opposite Diana Ross's Dorothy in the 1978 film musical The Wiz?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson played a Scarecrow made of garbage who is teased by a gang of crows. On the set he asked the film's music supervisor, Quincy Jones, to recommend a producer for his next solo album.
Q 02Which Irish actor wore the Scarecrow's sack mask as a corrupt psychologist in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins?
Cillian Murphy
Cillian Murphy had first auditioned to play Batman himself, even trying on the old Batman Forever suit. Christopher Nolan gave the lead to Christian Bale and handed Murphy the villain instead.
Q 03Which Studio Ghibli film features Turnip Head, a hopping scarecrow who is really a prince under a curse?
Howl's Moving Castle
Howl's Moving Castle has its heroine Sophie give the living scarecrow his vegetable nickname. A kiss on his cheek breaks the spell and reveals the missing prince an enemy kingdom has gone to war to find.
Q 04Which masked Naruto teacher, leader of Team 7, has a given name that is the Japanese word for scarecrow?
Kakashi
Kakashi beat out other farm-themed names on creator Masashi Kishimoto's shortlist, including Kuwa, meaning hoe, and Kama, meaning scythe. Scarecrows are sometimes hidden in the background of his scenes.
Q 05In Nagoro, Japan, where scarecrow dolls far outnumber villagers, Tsukimi Ayano made her first doll to look like whom?
Her father
Her father was the model: Ayano had moved back to the shrinking mountain village to care for him and stood his likeness in a field. She has since made more than 400 dolls, many resembling former neighbours.
Q 06In the musical Wicked, which carefree classmate of Elphaba is transformed by her spell into the Scarecrow?
Fiyero
Fiyero is arrested by the Wizard's guards after helping Elphaba escape, and her spell saves him by changing his body. The pair later fake her death and leave Oz together.
Q 07The Batman villain Scarecrow, a former psychology professor, uses a toxin that fills his victims with what?
Fear
Fear is both his weapon and his field of study, since he is a psychologist who specialises in phobias. His hallucinogenic toxin arrived in a 1967 comic that revived a villain used only twice in the 1940s.
Q 08In the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow tells Dorothy he is afraid of only which thing?
A lighted match
A lighted match is his one dread, and the book's author knew the danger first-hand. His own opera house burned down in the 1880s during a performance of a play he had written called Matches.
Q 09Which roadside advertising gimmick have fruit farmers tested as a modern scarecrow to keep birds off crops?
Inflatable tube men
Inflatable tube men were trialled over fruit fields in a government-funded study by Michigan State and Cornell researchers. The flailing figures were invented for the 1996 Olympic opening ceremony.
Q 10Which logical fallacy means attacking a distorted version of a rival's argument instead of the real one?
Straw man
Straw man suggests a stuffed figure that is easy to knock down, such as a scarecrow or a military training dummy. The arguer swaps the real claim for a flimsier one and demolishes that instead.
Q 11Which author created the Scarecrow who walks the Yellow Brick Road with Dorothy and Toto in a 1900 novel?
L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum later gave the character his own title, The Scarecrow of Oz, and called that 1915 book his personal favourite of the series. In it the Scarecrow helps topple a corrupt king.
Q 12In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, what does the Wizard hand the Scarecrow in place of real brains?
A diploma
A diploma is his prize, an honorary degree that seems to work at once: he reels off a famous geometry theorem and gets it wrong. The joke is that he was the group's best thinker all along.
Q 13In the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which realm does the departing Wizard leave the Scarecrow to rule?
The Emerald City
Q 21Batman's foe Scarecrow got his lanky look from which gangly schoolteacher in a Washington Irving tale?
Ichabod Crane
Ichabod Crane lent the villain more than a silhouette, because the writers also borrowed his surname for the character's real identity. In the comics, school bullies taunt the boy with the comparison.
Q 22Which English band put Syd Barrett's song The Scarecrow on their 1967 debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn?
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd first issued the track as the B-side of See Emily Play, two months ahead of the album. Barrett uses the scarecrow as a mirror for his own existence, an early taste of the band's brooding themes.
Q 23Which star of The Godfather played a drifter opposite Gene Hackman in the 1973 road film Scarecrow?
The Emerald City gets a scarecrow for a king when the Wizard floats away in his balloon. The reign is short: in the first sequel General Jinjur and her Army of Revolt march in and oust him in a coup.
Q 14Ray Bolger played the Scarecrow in 1939's The Wizard of Oz only after swapping out of which role?
The Tin Man
The Tin Man was Bolger's original part until he talked the studio into a swap with Buddy Ebsen. Ebsen then had to leave the film after inhaling the aluminium dust in his silver makeup.
Q 15Which farming video game lets players craft scarecrows and collect quirky 'rarecrows' to protect their crops?
Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley scarecrows stop crows from eating whatever is planted nearby, so a big farm needs several. Collect every rarecrow and a letter arrives with the recipe for a deluxe model.
Q 16Which heartland rocker's 1985 album Scarecrow produced the hits Small Town and Lonely Ol' Night?
John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp built the album around the 1980s farm crisis, and its scarecrow single mourns family farms lost to foreclosure. That same year he co-founded the Farm Aid concerts with Willie Nelson and Neil Young.
Q 17Which Pumpkin King first appears in The Nightmare Before Christmas as a scarecrow during the opening song?
Jack Skellington
Jack Skellington is the scarecrow at the start of the opening number, and he then makes his grand entrance by rising out of the fountain in Halloween Town's plaza. He runs the town's yearly celebration.
Q 18Which former Doctor Who star played the scarecrow Worzel Gummidge on British television from 1979?
Jon Pertwee
Jon Pertwee gave Worzel a set of swappable heads, each lending the scarecrow a different skill or mood. The character began on BBC radio in 1935 and returned in 2019 played by Mackenzie Crook.
Q 19Japan's shishi-odoshi, a see-saw fountain that clacks against a rock to startle deer, is made of what?
Bamboo
Bamboo forms the pivoting arm, which fills with water until it tips, empties, and swings back to strike the rock with a sharp crack. Meant to scare off grazing deer and boars, it is now kept mostly for its looks.
Q 20In tattie bogle, the Scots name for a scarecrow, a bogle is a ghost and a tattie is which crop?
Potato
Potato fields were where the tattie bogle stood guard, and folklore gave the same name to a spirit said to hide among the plants. Other British dialect names include hodmedod, mommet and gallybagger.
Al Pacino
Al Pacino plays a childlike former sailor who teams up with Hackman's short-tempered ex-convict to open a car wash in Pittsburgh. The film shared the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Q 24In the 1980s CBS series Scarecrow and Mrs King, what does Lee Stetson, the Scarecrow of the title, do for a living?
Secret agent
Secret agent Lee Stetson thrusts a package at a stranger in a train station while he is being chased, and the divorced housewife he picks becomes his partner. Bruce Boxleitner played him for four seasons.
Q 25The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight, about scarecrows brought to life, is part of which children's horror series?
Goosebumps
Goosebumps sent siblings Jodie and Mark to their grandparents' farm, where a farmhand's black magic has set the scarecrows walking. It was the twentieth of the 62 books in the original run.
Q 26Which scarecrow stalks a bully through a cornfield in the 2019 film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark?
Harold
Harold attacks the bully with a pitchfork, and his victim starts sprouting hay like a scarecrow himself. The film, produced by Guillermo del Toro, adapts Alvin Schwartz's children's books.
Q 27In Japan's Shinto tradition, the scarecrow god Kuebiko cannot walk but is credited with which power?
Knowing everything
Knowing everything makes Kuebiko the one to ask in the ancient Kojiki chronicle, where he alone can identify a mysterious little god who arrives by boat. He is also a deity of farming.
Q 28Which Canadian province hosts an autumn festival of pumpkin-headed scarecrows known as the Pumpkin People?
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia's pumpkin people are posed in little scenes, playing the fiddle or riding wooden horses. The province was also home to Joe's Scarecrow Village, a Cape Breton roadside stop with dozens of figures.
Q 29Why does a scarecrow left standing in one spot protect a field less and less over time?
Birds get used to it
Birds get used to it once they work out that the figure will never give chase, and research shows that happens quickly. Noise cannons fade the same way, so growers keep moving them and mixing methods.
Q 30Ray Bolger's Scarecrow costume from 1939's The Wizard of Oz now belongs to which American institution?
The Smithsonian
The Smithsonian keeps the suit at its National Museum of American History, though not the mask. That was a thin rubber piece moulded to look like sacking, and it left lasting lines on Bolger's face.