The Hobbit
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100 free The Hobbit trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
44 free The Hobbit trivia questions with answers. The Hobbit began as a sentence scribbled on a blank exam paper and became one of the best-selling books ever written, with a ten-year-old's book report to thank for its publication. Ninety years on it has spawned an animated TV film, a three-part blockbuster trilogy and a farm in New Zealand that never took its hobbit-holes down. This quiz covers the book first: Bilbo's hiring as a burglar, the thirteen dwarves, Thror's map, the trolls, Rivendell, the riddle game and the ring, Beorn, Mirkwood's spiders and wood-elves, Lake-town, Smaug's weak spot, Bard's black arrow, the Arkenstone and the Battle of Five Armies, plus how Tolkien later rewrote Gollum to fit The Lord of the Rings. Then it turns to the adaptations: the 1977 Rankin/Bass special, and Peter Jackson's films with Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage and Benedict Cumberbatch, from the 48-frames-per-second gamble to the invented elf Tauriel. Easy questions for anyone who has read it once, hard ones for those who know the Dvergatal. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01After The Hobbit's success, which Tolkien manuscript did Allen & Unwin reject while asking him for a sequel?
The Silmarillion
The Silmarillion drafts were turned down and the firm asked again for a Hobbit sequel, so Tolkien began 'The New Hobbit', which grew into The Lord of the Rings.
Q 02Whose favourable report persuaded Allen & Unwin to publish The Hobbit?
The publisher's 10-year-old son
The publisher's 10-year-old son, Rayner Unwin, later championed The Lord of the Rings, which the firm published despite expecting to lose £1,000.
Q 03Where did Tolkien say he wrote 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit'?
On a blank exam page
On a blank exam page: marking School Certificate papers, Tolkien found one a candidate had left empty, and the line he scribbled there grew into a whole story.
Q 04Which two dwarves in Thorin's company are his sister's sons and its youngest members?
Fili and Kili
Fili and Kili, as the youngest, had the sharpest eyes, so the company relied on them as lookouts.
Q 05What role does Gandalf propose that Bilbo fill on the expedition?
Burglar
Burglar: holding that job, Bilbo was the one the dwarves sent, reluctant, into the dragon's lair inside the mountain.
Q 06Which dwarf of Thorin's company is the father of Gimli from The Lord of the Rings?
Gloin
Gloin openly doubted Bilbo when the quest began, yet the hobbit went on to rescue the dwarves more than once.
Q 07The dwarves' lost kingdom under the Lonely Mountain is called what?
Erebor
Erebor fell when Smaug descended on it in King Thror's reign, driving the dwarves into exile; Thror's grandson Thorin leads the quest to win it back.
Q 08When three trolls capture Thorin's company and argue over cooking them, what becomes of the trolls?
They turn to stone at dawn
They turn to stone at dawn: Gandalf mimicked the trolls' voices to keep them quarrelling until the sun came up.
Q 09Where does Elrond reveal further secrets hidden in Thror's map?
Rivendell
Rivendell: Elrond read moon-letters on the map there, revealing that the mountain's secret door could be opened only on Durin's Day.
Q 10Lost in the goblin tunnels, Bilbo plays what kind of game with Gollum, his life at stake?
A riddle contest
A riddle contest: Bilbo's last question, 'What have I got in my pocket?', stumped Gollum, who realised the answer only when he found his ring gone.
Q 11In the first edition of The Hobbit, what did Gollum do after losing to Bilbo?
Showed him the way out
Showed him the way out: once Gollum's ring became the One Ring of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien revised the chapter so that Gollum turns murderous instead.
Q 12Which hobbit family, known for its adventurous streak, was Bilbo's mother born into?
The Tooks
The Tooks: Bilbo's mother, Belladonna Took, was well known to Gandalf, the wizard who set up the party that sent her stay-at-home son off with the dwarves.
Q 13What was Gollum's name before the ring corrupted him?
Sméagol
Sméagol strangled his relative Déagol, who had found the ring while they were fishing, after demanding it as a birthday present.
Q 21Tolkien called the dragon's name 'a low philological jest', the past tense of a verb meaning what?
To squeeze through a hole
To squeeze through a hole: Tolkien said in a 1938 letter that the dragon bears his name only as a pseudonym, taken from the old Germanic verb smúgan.
Q 22Which heirloom jewel of Thorin's family does Bilbo secretly hand to the besiegers to prevent a war?
The Arkenstone
The Arkenstone was the treasure Thorin prized above all, so when he learned Bilbo had handed it over as a bargaining chip, he furiously drove the hobbit away.
Q 23Whose army arrives from the Iron Hills to reinforce Thorin just before the Battle of Five Armies?
Dain's
Q 14Into what animal can the skin-changer who shelters Thorin's company transform?
A great black bear
A great black bear: the skin-changer was no friend of dwarves, but Gandalf's story humoured him into hosting them, and he went out to check the tale before trusting them.
Q 15Which dwarf falls into Mirkwood's enchanted river and must be carried, unconscious, for days?
Bombur
Bombur was knocked into the enchanted stream by a charging deer, and he slept for days dreaming of Elvish feasts, waking with no memory of the journey.
Q 16Before evil fell upon it, the forest of Mirkwood had been known by what name?
Greenwood the Great
Greenwood the Great was renamed again once the One Ring was destroyed: cleansed of darkness, it became Eryn Lasgalen, the Wood of Greenleaves.
Q 17After saving the dwarves from giant spiders, Bilbo must rescue them again from whose dungeons?
The Wood-elves
The Wood-elves had jailed the dwarves, so Bilbo, invisible, stole the drunken jailer's keys and floated his friends out in empty wine barrels.
Q 18What does Bilbo name his elvish blade after using it to fight off the Mirkwood spiders?
Sting
Sting: Bilbo named the blade after killing a giant spider alone in the dark, then used the ring and taunting songs to lure the others away from the dwarves.
Q 19How does Bard learn about the gap in Smaug's armour?
A thrush tells him
A thrush tells him: the bird had overheard Bilbo describe the weak spot under Smaug's left breast, and Bard, being of the race of Dale, understood its speech.
Q 20Bard kills Smaug with a family heirloom called what?
The Black Arrow
The Black Arrow had come to Bard from his father, and it was the last arrow left in his quiver when he shot Smaug above Lake-town.
Dain's troops nearly started a war with the elves and men, until goblins and wolves attacked and all three sides joined forces against them.
Q 24In Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, who kills the goblin leader Bolg at the Battle of Five Armies?
Beorn
Beorn's charge turns the battle; Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo before he dies.
Q 25Which sword was laid upon Thorin's tomb after he fell in battle?
Orcrist
Orcrist, the elven blade Thorin had found in the trolls' hoard, gleamed in the dark whenever foes approached, so the dwarves could never be taken by surprise.
Q 26Tolkien took Gandalf's name and most of the dwarves' names from which Old Norse poem?
Völuspá
Völuspá, a poem of the Poetic Edda, even gave Tolkien Thorin's epithet: its roll of dwarves includes Eikinskjaldi, meaning Oakenshield.
Q 27When Bilbo finally gets home, what does he find happening at Bag End?
His possessions being auctioned off
His possessions being auctioned off meant Bilbo, legally presumed dead, had to buy back much of his own furniture.
Q 28Which prize did The Hobbit win from the New York Herald Tribune?
Best juvenile fiction
Best juvenile fiction was the American prize, but Britain's Carnegie Medal for 1937 went instead to Eve Garnett's The Family from One End Street.
Q 29Which colour did the publisher cut from Tolkien's own dust-jacket design for The Hobbit to save money?
Red
Red: Tolkien gave his sky a red sun and a red dragon, but a fourth ink cost too much, and the words 'Ignore red' were written in the margin of his artwork.
Q 30Despite strong early sales, what often kept The Hobbit out of British bookshops in the decade after it appeared?
Paper rationing
Paper rationing made wartime reprints so difficult that the 1942 printing went ahead with help from Foyle's children's book club and kept at most one of its colour plates.