The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
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50 free The Secret Life of Walter Mitty trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
James Thurber needed only a few dozen paragraphs to create one of the best-known characters in American fiction. Walter Mitty is a mild, forgetful husband on a shopping trip who keeps slipping into grand fantasies of courage, and his name has since become shorthand for any hopeless dreamer. The story is one of the most anthologized in American literature and has been filmed twice, each time as something very different from what its author wrote. This quiz covers all three versions. The short-story questions follow Mitty through his errands and each of his daydreams, with the small details that teachers like to test. The film questions cover the 1947 Technicolor comedy and the 2013 adventure: who played whom, how each plot departs from the page, where the cameras went and what happened behind the scenes. A few more look at Thurber himself and at how his character entered the language. It suits students revising the story for class, film fans who know the remake by heart, and anyone setting a literature round for a quiz night. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which comedy star both directed and played Walter Mitty in the 2013 film of James Thurber's story?
Ben Stiller
Ben Stiller took the lead role in April 2011 and agreed to direct three months later. The remake had been stuck in development since 1994.
Q 02Which magazine, also home to James Thurber's cartoons, first printed his Walter Mitty story?
The New Yorker
The New Yorker ran the story on March 18, 1939, and it was an immediate success. It went on to become one of the most anthologized short stories in American literature.
Q 03What does Walter Mitty imagine facing in the final daydream of James Thurber's short story?
A firing squad
A firing squad is where the story leaves him, leaning on a wall outside a drugstore while his wife shops. Every earlier daydream had been cut short before he could triumph.
Q 04In British military slang, Walts, short for Walter Mitty, are people caught doing what?
Impersonating soldiers
Impersonating soldiers earns the nickname because Walter Mitty only dreamed of heroics. Andy McNab wrote that SAS applicants driven by vanity were labelled Walter Mitties and quietly sent home.
Q 05Which David Bowie song plays as Walter Mitty leaps aboard a helicopter in the 2013 film?
Space Oddity
Space Oddity plays in his imagination, sung by his co-worker Cheryl, and it is what gets him to jump aboard. The scene marks the point where his fantasies and his real life come together.
Q 06Which comedian, famed for tongue-twisting patter songs, played Walter Mitty in the 1947 film?
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye was the reason the plot changed so much: the writers were told to reshape it to show off his talents. James Thurber's own suggestions for the script were largely ignored.
Q 07James Thurber, the creator of Walter Mitty, lost an eye as a boy when his brother hit him with what?
An arrow
An arrow shot by his older brother William struck his left eye during a game in the yard. His other eye failed decades later, leaving him almost completely blind in the 1940s.
Q 08Which rare Himalayan animal is the photographer after when Walter Mitty finds him in the 2013 film?
Snow leopard
A snow leopard is what he has tracked into the Afghan mountains. Flying home from Afghanistan then gets Walter detained by airport security in Los Angeles.
Q 09Which horror star pushes Walter Mitty out of an office window as Dr. Hollingshead in the 1947 film?
Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff even shot a sequence in his Frankenstein monster make-up for the film, but it was cut. His character poses as a psychiatrist to convince Walter that his adventure never happened.
Q 10What does Walter Mitty manage at Life magazine in the 2013 film about its final print issue?
Photo negatives
Photo negatives are his whole job as negative assets manager, which is why one missing frame threatens his career. The lost shot was meant for the last cover.
Q 11Which item does Walter Mitty's wife order him to buy in town, saying he is no longer young?
Overshoes
Overshoes are the one errand he manages without trouble, at the nearest shoe store. His wife later scolds him for not having put them on in the store.
Q 12Which shopping item does Walter Mitty forget until a courtroom daydream jogs his memory?
Puppy biscuit
Puppy biscuit comes back to him when the imaginary Mitty hurls an insult at the district attorney. He says the words aloud in the street, and a passing woman laughs at him.
Q 13What does Walter Mitty use to repair a failing machine in the Thurber story's surgery daydream?
A fountain pen
Q 21Which real magazine does Walter Mitty leaf through before the Thurber story's bomber-pilot daydream?
Liberty
Liberty was a real American weekly, published from 1924 to 1950. An old copy with an article about German air power is what puts him in the cockpit.
Q 22What does Captain Mitty knock back before the lone bombing mission in the Thurber story?
Brandy
Brandy, several glasses of it, wins the admiration of the anxious sergeant who has told him he cannot fly alone. His wife's arrival at the hotel cuts the fantasy off as he leaves the dugout.
Q 23After Walter Mitty snaps that he was thinking, what does his wife say she will do at home?
Take his temperature
A fountain pen replaces a faulty piston in the failing anaesthetic machine, a fix he says will hold for ten minutes. The fantasy ends before he can make his first cut.
Q 14Which craft does Walter Mitty command through a storm in the opening daydream of the Thurber story?
Navy hydroplane
A Navy hydroplane with eight engines is his command, and its admiring crew trust him to pull them through anything. His real name is never used in this first fantasy.
Q 15Whose shout ends Walter Mitty's surgeon daydream after he drives into the wrong lane?
A parking-lot attendant
A parking-lot attendant orders him out of the exit-only lane, then parks the car for him with insulting ease. Mitty walks away painfully embarrassed by the encounter.
Q 16Which alibi does Walter Mitty's lawyer offer in the courtroom daydream of the Thurber story?
An arm in a sling
An arm in a sling is the defence, and Mitty wrecks it by boasting he could have made the shot with his left hand. The sling echoes a real plan he had just made to save face at a garage.
Q 17Walter Mitty and his wife make their weekly shopping trip to which Connecticut city?
Waterbury
Waterbury is also where a newsboy, shouting about a local trial, sets off the courtroom fantasy. Mitty always tries to reach the hotel there before his wife does.
Q 18Where does Walter Mitty's wife spend her time while he runs their errands in town?
At the hairdresser
At the hairdresser is where he drops her off at the start of the trip. They arrange to meet afterwards at a hotel, where she dislikes arriving before him.
Q 19Which item does Walter Mitty pull off at a red light once his wife has left the car?
His gloves
His gloves come off in a small act of rebellion, then go straight back on when a policeman snaps at him to hurry up. His wife had asked why he was not wearing them.
Q 20Which family doctor, later cast in a surgery daydream, does Walter Mitty's wife want him to see?
Renshaw
Renshaw is the doctor she suggests for a checkup after the first daydream. Minutes later he turns up in the imagined operating room, where even he needs Mitty's help.
Take his temperature is her whole reply to the one moment he stands up for himself. To her, a husband who answers back must have something wrong with him.
Q 24What did Walter Mitty once get wound around his car's axles, to a mechanic's amusement?
Tire chains
Tire chains defeated him so badly that a smirking mechanic had to come and free them. His wife has made him drive to a garage ever since whenever they need taking off.
Q 25In the Thurber story, Walter Mitty's imaginary patient Wellington McMillan is a millionaire what?
Banker
Banker Wellington McMillan is important enough that two outside specialists have been brought in. Even so, every doctor in the room turns to Mitty to save him.
Q 26Which James Thurber collection was the first book to include The Secret Life of Walter Mitty?
My World and Welcome to It
My World and Welcome to It later lent its title to a television series based on his work, which won two Emmys. The story had first appeared in a magazine three years before the book.
Q 27What does Captain Mitty volunteer to bomb single-handed in the Thurber story's war daydream?
An ammunition dump
An ammunition dump is the target, and he offers to fly there alone because his co-pilot is unable to fly. A nervous sergeant advises him not to go.
Q 28Which Ohio city, home of the Thurber House, was the birthplace of Walter Mitty's creator?
Columbus
Columbus is where James Thurber grew up, and his memories of a childhood there fill My Life and Hard Times, often called his finest book. His ashes are buried in the city.
Q 29Which future children's author shared an office with Walter Mitty's creator, James Thurber?
E. B. White
E. B. White, who later wrote Charlotte's Web, helped him get hired and co-wrote a spoof of solemn books about sex with him. Its drawings proved so popular that their magazine began printing his cartoons.
Q 30Which job took Walter Mitty's creator James Thurber to the US embassy in Paris in 1918?
Code clerk
Code clerk was the post he took when poor eyesight kept him out of the army. He reached France two days after the Armistice and stayed for more than a year.