The Outsiders Trivia
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105 free The Outsiders trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
55 free The Outsiders trivia questions with answers. S. E. Hinton started The Outsiders at 15 and finished it at 16, and nearly sixty years later it is still one of the most-read novels in American schools. This quiz covers the whole story of the story: the greasers and Socs of an unnamed Tulsa, Ponyboy and Johnny on the run, the church fire, the rumble, and the letter tucked inside a copy of Gone with the Wind. It then moves on to the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola film that launched half of Hollywood's Brat Pack, the Broadway musical that won Best Musical in 2024, and the real house in Tulsa that fans turned into a museum. It works for a book-club night, an English class review, or anyone who read it in seventh grade and still thinks about that sunrise. Difficulty ranges from plot basics to genuinely hard questions about publishing history, casting near-misses and the Frost poem at the heart of it. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, the film, the musical, the poem and Hinton herself. If we could not cite it, it is not in the quiz.
30 of 105 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Outsiders helped create which publishing category?
Young adult
Young adult: Hinton recalled that there was no such market in 1967, and her book's realism about teenage life helped publishers see one.
Q 02In The Outsiders, what kind of animal is Mickey Mouse, whom Sodapop loved as a boy?
A horse
A horse: the buckskin belonged to another man but came only when Soda called. When it was sold Soda cried all night, and ten-year-old Ponyboy saved his money for a year hoping to buy it back.
Q 03What does Cherry Valance throw in Dally's face when he keeps pestering her?
A Coke
A Coke, and one Dally had just bought her. He gears up to bother her again until Johnny, the quietest of the gang, tells him to leave her alone, and Dally stalks off.
Q 04In The Outsiders, what is 'Socs' short for?
Socials
Socials, said 'soshes': Ponyboy calls them the jet set, the West-side rich kids. He notes that the papers call them a public disgrace one day and an asset to society the next.
Q 05Hinton said teen novels then were all 'Mary Jane goes to' where?
The prom
The prom: Hinton found no realistic fiction about teenagers, and she was angry at the way her school split into groups that never mixed, so she wrote the book she wanted to read.
Q 06Why did Susan Eloise Hinton publish The Outsiders as S. E. Hinton?
To hide her gender
To hide her gender: with a boy narrating a story about boy gangs, the publisher feared a woman's name would put off male reviewers and boy readers. She kept the initials on her later books too.
Q 07The Outsiders 'died on the vine' as a drugstore paperback before its publisher noticed who was using it?
Teachers
Teachers were using it in their classes, Hinton recalled, and that showed her publisher where the readers were. The novel went on to sell in the millions, carried by school reading lists.
Q 08In The Outsiders, Ponyboy is the youngest member of his school's A-squad team in which sport?
Track
Track: Ponyboy is a good runner, and after the church fire a newspaper calls him an honor-roll student and possible future track star as it argues that the three brothers should not be split up.
Q 09What is the first name of the oldest Curtis brother, who raises the other two?
Darrel
Darrel, called Darry, is 20. He captained the football team and won a college scholarship, but with their parents dead he roofs houses and holds a second job so the brothers can stay together.
Q 10In The Outsiders, how did the Curtis brothers' parents die?
In a car crash
In a car crash, eight months before the story opens. The three brothers are allowed to stay together only as long as they behave, so every brush with the police puts the family at risk.
Q 11Where does the middle Curtis brother, a high-school dropout, work?
A gas station
A gas station: Sodapop works full time at the DX. He tells Ponyboy he quit school because he was failing everything but auto mechanics and gym, and that he is happy working with cars.
Q 12Which greaser in The Outsiders is a wise-cracking shoplifter famous for his black-handled switchblade?
Two-Bit Mathews
Two-Bit Mathews, born Keith, got his name because he always has to get his two bits in. He shoplifted the prized switchblade, and Dally later borrows it to force his way out of the hospital for the rumble.
Q 13In The Outsiders, Dally spent three wild years on the streets of which city?
New York
Q 21Which poet wrote 'Nothing Gold Can Stay', the poem Ponyboy recites at sunrise?
Robert Frost
Robert Frost wrote it, and Ponyboy admits he never quite got what the poet meant. Johnny works it out in his last letter: you are gold when you are a kid, when everything is new.
Q 22What does Ponyboy do to his hair while hiding out?
Cuts and bleaches it
Cuts and bleaches it: Johnny hacks off Ponyboy's long hair with his knife and bleaches it with peroxide as a disguise. It hurts, because Ponyboy calls hair the greasers' trademark, the one thing they are proud of.
Q 23What injury does Johnny suffer during the church fire?
A broken back
New York: Dally blew off steam in its gang fights and saw people killed on its West Side, which is why Ponyboy calls him tougher, colder and meaner than the rest of the greasers.
Q 14What does Dally start carrying while the boys are in hiding?
An unloaded gun
An unloaded gun: Dally says he isn't aiming to get picked up for murder. The bluff kills him in the end, when he raises the empty gun at police who cannot know it is harmless.
Q 15In The Outsiders, who has been Sodapop's best friend since grade school?
Steve Randle
Steve Randle, 17, knows cars inside out and can lift a hubcap quicker than anyone in the neighborhood. Ponyboy likes him only for Soda's sake, because Steve treats him as a tag-along kid.
Q 16Where do Ponyboy and Johnny meet the two Soc girls?
At a drive-in movie
At a drive-in movie, the Nightly Double, where the boys sneak in over the back fence although they have the quarter to get in. Talking with Cherry there, Ponyboy first hears that things are rough all over.
Q 17Where do the Socs try to drown Ponyboy?
In a park fountain
In a park fountain: a drunk Soc holds Ponyboy's head under until he blacks out. He comes to on the pavement beside Johnny, who is holding his switchblade and says, 'I killed him.'
Q 18Months before the story begins, what did a Soc use to cut up Johnny's face in a beating?
His rings
His rings: Johnny saw only a blue Mustang and a hand full of them. When the same car pulls up for Cherry, Ponyboy catches him staring at the three heavy rings her boyfriend wears, and works out who did it.
Q 19In which town do the boys hide out in an abandoned church?
Windrixville
Windrixville: Dally hands them fifty dollars and tells them to hop the 3:15 freight, find the abandoned church on Jay Mountain, buy a week of food and not so much as stick their noses out the door.
Q 20Which novel does Ponyboy read aloud to Johnny while they hide?
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind: Johnny buys the paperback with their supplies, and its gallant Southern gentlemen remind him of Dally. He later leaves Ponyboy his copy, with a farewell letter tucked inside.
A broken back: a falling timber catches Johnny as the boys get the last children out of the burning church. His last letter tells Ponyboy it was worth it, because those kids have more to live for.
Q 24What does the judge decide about Ponyboy at the hearing over Bob's death?
Acquitted and sent home
Acquitted and sent home: the judge never asks Ponyboy about the killing, only whether he likes school and what grades he makes, and then closes the case. The three Curtis brothers get to stay together.
Q 25What is the name of Ponyboy's English teacher, who assigns the theme that becomes The Outsiders?
Mr. Syme
Mr. Syme tells Ponyboy he is failing but will pass with a C if he writes a good semester theme. Ponyboy phones him to ask how long it can be, then opens it with the book's own first sentence.
Q 26Which movie star is on Ponyboy's mind in the opening line of The Outsiders?
Paul Newman
'I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.' The book ends on that same sentence, because the whole story turns out to be the theme Ponyboy writes for his English class.
Q 27The Outsiders made which American Library Association list for the 1990s?
Most challenged books
Most challenged books: it shares the 1990s list with To Kill a Mockingbird and The Handmaid's Tale. Schools went on assigning it anyway.
Q 28Which later Hinton novel features Ponyboy Curtis in a supporting role?
That Was Then, This Is Now
That Was Then, This Is Now, from 1971, follows two foster brothers pulled apart by drugs. Ponyboy turns up as a quiet boy known as a good fighter, and the girl chasing him sets off a brawl at a dance.
Q 29Late in The Outsiders, what does Ponyboy break to make a weapon that scares off three Socs?
A pop bottle
A pop bottle: he tells them to get back in their car or get split. Then he stoops to pick up the glass so that nobody gets a flat tire, and Two-Bit grins, because the kid has not turned hard after all.
Q 30Danny Boy O'Connor, who opened a museum to The Outsiders in Tulsa, had the 1992 hit 'Jump Around' with which group?
House of Pain
House of Pain took 'Jump Around' to number three in the US. O'Connor was passing through Tulsa on tour in 2009 when he went looking for the film's locations, and he ended up buying and restoring one of them.