This Sixteen Candles trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers John Hughes's 1984 directorial debut from the first forgotten birthday to the last candle. It walks through the plot - the sex quiz, the floppy-disk bet, the borrowed Rolls-Royce, the grandparents answering the phone, the cake - and then digs into how the film got made: the headshot Hughes pinned above his desk, the actors who nearly played Jake, the closed Skokie high school that doubled as a set, the R rating that became a PG, and the five-song soundtrack. There is a full round on the cast beyond Molly Ringwald: the Cusack siblings, the youngest Oscar nominee ever as little brother Mike, a Poltergeist medium at the organ, a Tony winner as Mrs Baker, and what Jake Ryan's actor did after quitting Hollywood. It also faces the parts that have aged badly, from Long Duk Dong to the Caroline scene critics revisited decades later. About a third of the questions are easy warm-ups for anyone who has seen the film; the rest climb toward the detail only a true fan of 1980s teen movies will know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year was Sixteen Candles released in US cinemas?
1984
Universal put it out on May 4, and it opened in second place at the box office on its first weekend.
Q 02Why does Samantha's family forget her sixteenth birthday?
Her sister's wedding is the next day
The bride is Ginny, described as older, beautiful and self-absorbed, and the whole household is consumed by the wedding.
Q 03Which actress plays Samantha Baker?
Molly Ringwald
It was the first of three John Hughes films she headlined, followed by The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink.
Q 04Who plays Sam's crush, senior heart-throb Jake Ryan?
Michael Schoeffling
The role has outlived his career: he made only a handful of films afterwards and has not acted since 1991.
Q 05What is the nickname of Anthony Michael Hall's freshman character, otherwise billed as 'the Geek'?
Farmer Ted
Hughes said every other kid who read for the part did a stereotyped nerd act, while Hall played it straight 'like a real human being'.
Q 06What does Ted wager with Bryce and Wease that he will 'get physical' with Sam before the dance ends?
Floppy disks
It is a very 1980s bet; the pair then demand proof, and Ted ends up charging other freshmen a dollar a look at it.
Q 07What proof do Bryce and Wease demand that Ted has won his bet?
Sam's underwear
Sam actually hands them over willingly after Ted admits the bet, then Jake buys them back from Ted later that night.
Q 08Who exactly is Long Duk Dong?
An exchange student travelling with Sam's grandparents
He is billeted in Sam's bedroom with the grandparents, which is why she ends up sleeping downstairs.
Q 09Which actor plays Long Duk Dong?
Gedde Watanabe
He was an original Broadway cast member of Sondheim's Pacific Overtures years before the film and later spent six seasons as Nurse Yosh on ER.
Q 10What sound effect plays whenever Long Duk Dong appears on screen?
A gong
The gag is one of the main reasons the character is now cited as an example of Hollywood's Asian stereotypes.
Q 11Watanabe auditioned for Long Duk Dong in character, imitating whose way of speaking?
A friend with a Korean accent's
The bit fooled Hughes completely; when he finally heard the actor's ordinary American voice he laughed and said, 'Boy, was I duped.'
Q 12Fooled by the fake accent, what did casting director Jackie Burch try to do with Watanabe?
Communicate in sign language
Burch had once taught deaf students; the ruse ended only when the actor admitted where he was actually from.
Q 13Which newspaper called Long Duk Dong an 'unfunny' and 'potentially offensive stereotype'?
The New York Times
Q 21How much do Ted, Bryce and Wease charge other freshman boys to look at the proof of the bet?
$1
The scene is one of several Hughes had to defend when the MPAA initially slapped the film with an R rating.
Q 22Which real-life sibling pair both appear in the film, as Bryce and 'Geek Girl'?
John and Joan Cusack
Both were raised in Evanston, one of the suburbs where the film was shot, and both went on to Say Anything and Working Girl breakthroughs within five years.
Q 23Hughes wrote the script over a single weekend after pinning what above his desk?
Ringwald's headshot
The criticism only grew over the decades; NPR asked in a 2008 piece whether he was 'the last of the Hollywood stereotypes'.
Q 14With her bedroom taken over, where does Sam have to sleep?
On the sofa
It is on that sofa, the night before the wedding, that her father finally apologises for forgetting her birthday.
Q 15How does Sam first reveal her crush on Jake at school?
By filling out a friend's sex quiz
Jake has already noticed the way she looks at him and quizzes his friend Rock about her, who dismisses her as immature.
Q 16In exchange for the bet winnings, Jake lets Ted drive a drunken Caroline home in his father's what?
Rolls-Royce Corniche
By morning the car is banged up and Jake finds Ted and Caroline making out in the back of it.
Q 17What does Wease's photo of Ted with Caroline in the expensive car actually show?
The top of Ted's head
The detour was purely to impress the geeks, and it backfires as neatly as everything else Ted attempts.
Q 18When Jake phones the Baker house from his party, who answers and tells him Sam is not interested?
Her grandparents
The failed call leaves each of them wrongly convinced the other has no interest, until Ted sets Jake straight from under a table.
Q 19In the final scene, what does Sam say when Jake tells her to make a wish over the cake?
That it already came true
The cake carries sixteen candles, and the shot of the two of them sitting either side of it became the film's signature image.
Q 20On the wedding morning, a hungover Long Duk Dong garbles his English and says Sam is doing what?
Getting married
Jake heads to the church anyway, catches Sam after the ceremony and invites her back to his house.
He had asked his agent for photos of young actresses; two of the others in the pile were Robin Wright and Ally Sheedy.
Q 24The casting for Jake reportedly came down to Schoeffling and which future star?
Viggo Mortensen
Ringwald pushed for the other candidate; Emilio Estevez also read for the part.
Q 25Where was the film primarily shot?
Chicago's North Shore suburbs
Hughes set nearly all his teen films in that stretch of Illinois, later inventing the fictional suburb of Shermer for them.
Q 26What was unusual about Niles East High School in Skokie, where most of the school scenes were shot?
It had already closed to students
The empty building became a go-to location: Risky Business, Weird Science and Pretty in Pink also used it before Oakton Community College knocked it down.
Q 27The Baker family house is a real home on Payne Street in which suburb?
Evanston
A cafeteria scene and a gym scene were shot separately at Niles North High School.
Q 28What was the film's production budget?
$6.5 million
It was a bargain even then; the original 1982 plan had been a $1 million indie before Universal stepped in.
Q 29Which company agreed to finance Hughes's 1982 low-budget script on a $1M budget?
A&M Films
The record label's film arm lost out once Universal's Ned Tanen folded the picture into a three-year, $30 million deal with Hughes.
Q 30Hughes chose to make his directing debut with this film after being fired from which movie he wrote?
Mr. Mom
He was later rehired on that picture, and Universal boss Ned Tanen then greenlit his slate on condition that this one came out first.