Sun Tzu Trivia
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60 free Sun Tzu trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Sun Tzu trivia quiz covers the man, the book and the long argument over whether he existed at all. The easy questions ask what the name Sun Tzu actually means, how many chapters The Art of War has, which historian wrote his first biography and which 1980s film character quotes him between trades. Then it moves into the Shiji story: the king of Wu, the 180 concubines drilled as soldiers, the two executed favourites and the Battle of Boju against Chu. The hard end covers the scholarship: the Song-dynasty sceptic who noticed the Zuo Zhuan never mentions him, the anachronistic crossbows, the Han tombs at Yinqueshan that yielded both Sun Tzu's text and the lost treatise of his descendant Sun Bin, the earliest commentary by a famous warlord, the 1772 Jesuit translation and the 1910 English one. Along the way you will meet Takeda Shingen's banner, Admiral Togo, General Giap, Mao, MacArthur, Belichick, Scolari, Star Trek, The Sopranos and James Bond. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Sun Bin, the Yinqueshan slips and the people involved before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our ancient China and military history quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name Sun Tzu is an honorific meaning what?
Master Sun
Master Sun: 'tzu' (zi in modern spelling) is a title of respect given to revered teachers, the same suffix as in Kongzi, 'Master Kong', the Chinese name of Confucius.
Q 02Sun Tzu wrote that supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without what?
Fighting
Fighting: to win every battle is not the highest skill, he argues; best of all is to foil the enemy's plans, and the worst policy is to besiege walled cities.
Q 03Which Han-dynasty historian wrote the earliest account of Sun Tzu's life, in the Shiji?
Sima Qian
The sinologist Victor Mair considers that short biography 'essentially fictional'.
Q 04Roughly how long after Sun Tzu's supposed lifetime was his first biography written?
400 years
400 years: tradition places him around 500 BC, but the first biography dates from the 90s BC, a gap that is one reason some scholars doubt he existed at all.
Q 05Sun Tzu's last chapter says foreknowledge of the enemy can only come from which people?
Spies
Spies: he lists five kinds, among them 'doomed spies', deliberately fed false information to pass on to the enemy.
Q 06Sun Tzu said a general who knows the enemy need not fear a hundred battles if he also knows what?
Himself
Himself: know the enemy and yourself, he wrote, and a hundred battles hold no peril, but know only yourself and you will lose a battle for every one you win.
Q 07In the best-known legend about Sun Tzu, the King of Wu tested him by having him drill whom?
Palace concubines
Palace concubines: 180 of them, split into two companies with the king's two favourites as officers, who burst out laughing at his first commands.
Q 08In the legend of Sun Tzu's audition, what did he do when two trainee officers laughed at his drill orders?
Had them executed
Had them executed, over the king's protests, and the rest drilled flawlessly; his book states the principle, that there are commands from the ruler a general must not obey.
Q 09According to Sun Tzu, all armies prefer sunny places to dark ones and which kind of ground?
High ground
High ground: his reason was health as much as tactics, since an army that camps well stays free of disease, and that, he wrote, means certain victory.
Q 10Sun Tzu wrote that all warfare is based on what?
Deception
Deception: when able to attack, seem unable, he advised, and when near, make the enemy believe you are far away.
Q 11Later accounts say which refugee from Chu, bent on avenging his executed father, first recommended Sun Tzu at court?
Wu Zixu
Wu Zixu fled Chu after its king executed his father; when the army he and Sun Tzu served took Chu's capital, he is said to have dug up the dead king and given the corpse 300 lashes.
Q 12Which great chronicle of Sun Tzu's own era, sceptics have noted since the Song dynasty, never once mentions him?
Zuo Zhuan
Zuo Zhuan names most notable figures of the age and describes his supposed great victory in detail, yet never mentions Sun Tzu, the main reason scholars came to doubt he ever existed.
Q 13Sun Tzu advised that an enemy army hemmed in on all sides should always be left what?
A way out
Q 21Sun Tzu's supposed descendant Sun Bin lured a rival into a trap by having his retreating army light fewer what each night?
Cooking fires
Cooking fires: 100,000 the first night, 50,000 the next, then 20,000, so his pursuer assumed mass desertion and raced ahead into a narrow pass lined with archers.
Q 22How many chapters make up The Art of War?
13
13 chapters, each on one aspect of war, though an early imperial library catalogue lists a version swollen to 82.
Q 23Sun Tzu likened an army's tactics to which substance?
Water
Water: it runs downhill, he wrote, so an army should avoid what is strong and strike what is weak, and like water it should keep no constant shape.
A way out: he pairs the advice with a warning never to press a cornered enemy, because men with nowhere to run fight to the death.
Q 14Which weapon in The Art of War is cited as an anachronism for Sun Tzu's supposed lifetime?
Crossbows
Crossbows: the book likens a general's timing to releasing a crossbow trigger, a weapon historians say places its writing well after 500 BC, when Sun Tzu supposedly lived.
Q 15According to The Art of War, no country has ever benefited from what?
Prolonged warfare
Prolonged warfare: long campaigns, he wrote, blunt weapons, empty the treasury and tempt neighbouring rulers to strike while you are weak.
Q 16Bamboo-slip copies of The Art of War turned up in 1972 in tombs of which dynasty?
Han
Han: beside Sun Tzu's text in the same tomb library lay a military treatise by his supposed descendant Sun Bin, a book long thought lost for good.
Q 17Sun Tzu compared a general leading his army deep into enemy land to a climber who kicks away what?
The ladder
The ladder: in the same passage the general burns his boats and breaks the cooking pots, so that his men can only go forward.
Q 18Sun Tzu's supposed descendant Sun Bin was framed for treason and punished by losing what?
His kneecaps
His kneecaps, in the usual telling, though the oldest history says his feet: 'Bin' is thought to be a nickname taken from the punishment itself.
Q 19Sun Tzu said soldiers will follow a general into the deepest valleys if he regards them as what?
His own children
His own children: they will stand by him even unto death, he wrote, but troops who are indulged and never disciplined turn out like spoilt children, useless for anything.
Q 20According to The Art of War, birds suddenly rising in flight are the sign of what?
An ambush
An ambush: in the same passage, startled animals mean a sudden attack is coming, while birds gathering on a campsite mean the enemy has already slipped away.
Q 24Which warlord of the Three Kingdoms era wrote the earliest surviving commentary on The Art of War?
Cao Cao
Cao Cao wrote the oldest commentary that survives, though mastering the text did not make him invincible: his defeat at Red Cliffs in 208 left China split into three rival kingdoms.
Q 25Japan's first record of The Art of War dates from 760, when which dynasty ruled China?
Tang
Tang: a court chronicle for 760 has officers sent to learn Sun Tzu from Kibi no Makibi, a scholar who had spent years studying in Tang China.
Q 26'Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer' is often credited to Sun Tzu, but which film made it famous?
The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part II: Michael Corleone says it in the 1974 film, as a lesson learned from his father, and it ranks 58th on the American Film Institute's list of great movie quotes.
Q 27A Jesuit in Beijing made the first European translation of The Art of War in the 18th century, into which language?
French
French: Father Joseph Amiot's version was so loose that a later English translator dismissed it as 'little better than an imposture'.
Q 28Which Renaissance Italian's 1521 war manual shares its English title, The Art of War, with Sun Tzu's classic?
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli's Art of War, a dialogue on how to raise and lead armies, was printed in his lifetime, while The Prince came out only after his death.
Q 29Lionel Giles, the 1910 English translator of The Art of War, kept Oriental manuscripts at which institution?
British Museum
British Museum: from his desk there he savaged the only earlier English version, made by an army captain in Tokyo, as 'excessively bad'.
Q 30Which 19th-century general's On War, often set against Sun Tzu, calls war the continuation of politics by other means?
Carl von Clausewitz
Carl von Clausewitz died of cholera in 1831 with On War unfinished, and his widow, Marie, edited and published it.