Werewolf Trivia
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This werewolf trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and runs the whole history of the shapeshifter, from Lycaon being turned into a wolf by Zeus and the Neuri of Herodotus, through the werewolf trials of Peter Stumpp and Gilles Garnier and the Beast of Gévaudan, to Wagner the Wehr-Wolf, Remus Lupin, Jacob Black and Discworld's Angua. The second half is for film and TV fans: Werewolf of London, The Wolf Man, An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers, Underworld, both Wolfman remakes, Being Human, True Blood, MTV's Teen Wolf and Marvel's Werewolf by Night, plus the Werewolf party game, Skyrim and a couple of moon-themed songs. Every answer was checked against a reference page before publishing, so you can settle arguments with it. Fifty questions, graded from easy to expert, free to play, with an explanation after each one.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01'Werewolf' descends from wer(e)wulf, a compound from which historical language in which wer meant 'man'?
Old English
Old English werwulf joined wer, 'man', to wulf, so the word is literally 'man-wolf'; it is cognate with Middle Dutch weerwolf and German Werwolf.
Q 02The word 'lycanthropy' comes from an Ancient Greek term meaning what?
Wolf-man
Lykánthrōpos joins lýkos, 'wolf', and ánthrōpos, 'man', so lycanthropy literally means wolf-man; the same root appears in the name Lycaon.
Q 03Which ancient historian reported that the Neuri were said to turn into wolves once a year?
Herodotus
Herodotus recorded the claim in Book 4 of his Histories, attributing it to the Scythians and to Greeks settled in Scythia, and said he did not believe it himself.
Q 04Which Roman work has a soldier urinate in a circle around his clothes and turn into a wolf?
Petronius' Satyricon
In Petronius' Satyricon the freedman Niceros tells the tale at Trimalchio's dinner; the soldier's clothes turn to stone until he returns to them.
Q 05In Marie de France's 12th-century lai Bisclavret, how does the knight's wife trap him in wolf form?
Steals his hidden clothing
Bisclavret cannot change back without his clothes, so his wife steals his hidden clothing with a knight's help; the king later takes the strangely noble wolf into his court.
Q 06When Bisclavret finally gets revenge on his treacherous wife, which body part does the wolf tear off?
Her nose
The wolf bites off her nose, and the lai adds that many of the wife's female descendants were born without noses afterwards.
Q 07What were the Norse warriors who fought in wolfskins, cousins of the berserkers, called?
Ulfheðnar
Ulfheðnar, literally 'wolf-coats', were Odin's wolf-skinned warriors, named alongside berserkers in the 9th-century Norse poem Haraldskvæði.
Q 08Peter Stumpp, the 'Werewolf of Bedburg' executed in 1589, said the Devil gave him what to transform?
A magical belt
Stumpp said a magical belt, or girdle, from the Devil turned him into 'a greedy, devouring wolf'; after his execution his head was displayed on a pole beside a wooden wolf.
Q 09Gilles Garnier, the 'Hermit of St. Bonnot', was convicted of lycanthropy in the 1570s in which French town?
Dole
Garnier was tried at Dole, in Franche-Comté, in 1573 after claiming a spectre's ointment turned him into a wolf, and was burned at the stake.
Q 10The Beast of Gévaudan terrorised south-central France between 1764 and which year?
1767
Attacks ran from June 1764 to June 1767; a 1987 study counted 210 attacks and 113 deaths in a region that is now largely the department of Lozère.
Q 11Which local hunter is credited with shooting the final Beast of Gévaudan at Mont Mouchet?
Jean Chastel
Jean Chastel shot the last beast at Mont Mouchet on 19 June of the final year of attacks; the royal gunbearer François Antoine had killed a huge grey wolf in 1765, but attacks resumed.
Q 12Which writer is credited with inventing the Beast of Gévaudan's silver-bullet legend?
Henri Pourrat
Henri Pourrat's 20th-century retelling introduced the silver bullets cast from Virgin Mary medals; accounts of the Beast from the 1760s say nothing about silver.
Q 13Wolfsbane, traditionally used against lycanthropy, is a common name for which flowering genus?
Aconitum
Q 21In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the werewolf Angua von Überwald serves in which organisation?
Ankh-Morpork City Watch
Angua joined the Ankh-Morpork City Watch in Men at Arms, keeps a strict vegetarian diet in human form, and falls in love with Carrot Ironfoundersson.
Q 22The 1985 werewolf film Silver Bullet is based on a novella by which author?
Stephen King
The novella is Cycle of the Werewolf. Corey Haim's Marty names his souped-up wheelchair after the film's title.
Q 23In Werewolf of London (1935), where is botanist Wilfred Glendon bitten while hunting a rare flower?
Tibet
Glendon is bitten in Tibet while gathering the mariphasa, a plant said to bloom by moonlight and the only thing that can hold off his transformations.
Aconitum, also called monkshood, carries the alkaloid aconitine, so toxic that about 2 mg can be fatal; the species name lycoctonum means 'wolf-killer'.
Q 14In psychiatry, clinical lycanthropy is classified as which kind of symptom?
A delusion
Clinical lycanthropy is a delusion, a fixed false belief of turning into an animal; a 1988 study reviewed 12 such patients at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts.
Q 15In the penny dreadful Wagner the Wehr-Wolf, the title character agrees to be a werewolf for how long?
18 months
Faust offers the old shepherd Wagner youth, wealth and knowledge for 18 months of lycanthropy, turning wolf on the last day of each month in a story that ranges across Renaissance Italy.
Q 16Whose 1857 novel The Wolf Leader follows Thibault, a shoemaker who makes a pact with an upright-walking wolf?
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas set The Wolf Leader around 1780 in Villers-Cotterêts, his home town, building it on a folk tale he heard as a child from the gamekeeper Mocquet.
Q 17Which 1933 novel by Guy Endore is often called the most renowned lycanthropy novel of the 20th century?
The Werewolf of Paris
The Werewolf of Paris, set around the 1871 Commune, was adapted as Hammer's 1961 The Curse of the Werewolf, which moved the story to Spain to reuse sets already built.
Q 18Which werewolf bit Remus Lupin as a child in the Harry Potter series?
Fenrir Greyback
Fenrir Greyback attacked Lupin as a small boy to punish his father; Lupin's schoolfriends later became Animagi to keep him company and nicknamed him Moony.
Q 19Which actor played Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter films?
David Thewlis
David Thewlis played Lupin from Prisoner of Azkaban onward, the year Lupin taught Defence Against the Dark Arts and coached Harry to cast a Patronus.
Q 20Twilight's Jacob Black, the wolf shapeshifter played by Taylor Lautner, belongs to which tribe?
Quileute
Jacob is Quileute and lives on the tribe's reservation at La Push, Washington; Stephenie Meyer said she originally intended him as a minor plot device.
Q 24Which actor played the botanist-turned-werewolf in Universal's Werewolf of London (1935)?
Henry Hull
Henry Hull played Glendon; Jack Pierce, who created Karloff's Frankenstein look, designed a lighter makeup for him, and Pierce's fuller design was used for The Wolf Man in 1941.
Q 25Who played Larry Talbot in Universal's The Wolf Man (1941)?
Lon Chaney Jr.
Lon Chaney Jr.'s Talbot returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales, and is finally beaten to death by his father with his own silver-headed cane.
Q 26Which screenwriter invented the 'Even a man who is pure in heart...' verse for The Wolf Man (1941)?
Curt Siodmak
Curt Siodmak wrote the verse and most of the film's 'lore', including the pentagram sign and the silver cane, and also scripted Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.
Q 27Who played Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)?
Bela Lugosi
Bela Lugosi, who had passed on the Monster in 1931, finally played it here; the plot revives Talbot when grave robbers open his crypt under a full moon and remove the wolfsbane.
Q 28Which pub do the American backpackers enter on the moors at the start of An American Werewolf in London?
The Slaughtered Lamb
The Slaughtered Lamb's exteriors were shot in Crickadarn, in the Black Mountains of Wales, standing in for the Yorkshire village of East Proctor.
Q 29Whose transformation effects in An American Werewolf in London won the first Oscar for Best Makeup?
Rick Baker
Rick Baker's transformation work won the inaugural Best Makeup award, a category introduced for 1981 films; the soundtrack is built almost entirely from songs with 'moon' in the title.
Q 30Who wrote and directed An American Werewolf in London?
John Landis
John Landis wrote the script in 1969 and finally shot it in 1981; a sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris, arrived in 1997 from Hollywood Pictures to poor reviews.