40 Fun Facts About The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

What name does Jim Smiley give the frog he bets can out-jump any other in Calaveras County?

Dan'l Webster spends three months in Jim Smiley's back yard doing nothing but practicing his jumps. Traveled men in the camp say he beats any frog they have seen.

What does a stranger spoon into Jim Smiley's champion frog while Smiley is off finding it a rival?

Quail shot goes in by the teaspoon until the frog is full nearly to his chin and cannot leave the floor. Smiley, lifting him afterwards, swears he weighs five pounds.

Calaveras County, home of Mark Twain's jumping frog, is named with a Spanish word meaning what?

Skulls is what calaveras means: explorer Gabriel Moraga is said to have named the river after finding the remains of Native Americans along its banks in the early 1800s.

What was the birth name of Mark Twain, who first won national attention with a jumping frog story?

Samuel Clemens took the name Mark Twain from a riverboat leadsman's cry for two fathoms, the depth of safe water for a steamboat.

From which language did Mark Twain retranslate his jumping frog story word for word, as a joke?

French was the language of an 1872 translation by Thérèse Bentzon. Twain turned it back into English with its grammar intact and published all three versions together.

Jim Smiley's bull pup, a fighter that never lets go, shares its name with which American president?

Andrew Jackson, the pup, looks worthless until money is staked on him. Then he lets the other dog maul him while the bets keep doubling, and only afterwards clamps on for the win.

As the narrator escapes, the old storyteller starts a new tale about which animal of Jim Smiley's?

A one-eyed cow, yellow and with a mere banana-shaped stump for a tail, is as far as he gets. The narrator cuts him off, says good day and goes.

Jim Smiley's arrival in camp in the winter of '49 sets Mark Twain's frog tale during which event?

The California Gold Rush drew about 300,000 people to California after 1848. By the time Twain's narrator visits, the mining camp is old and its tavern is falling apart.

Mark Twain said he heard the jumping frog yarn at a hotel in which Calaveras County mining town?

Angels Camp is both the tale's setting and the place Twain said he heard it in 1865. The town is now nicknamed Frogtown and holds a Jumping Frog Jubilee every May.

Mark Twain's jumping frog story, his first national hit, belongs to which storytelling genre?

A tall tale passes off the unbelievable as plain fact, and this one made Twain's name: newspapers and magazines across the country soon reprinted it.

Which garrulous old man tells the narrator of Mark Twain's jumping frog story all about Jim Smiley?

Simon Wheeler, fat, bald and gentle-looking, is found dozing by the stove of a run-down tavern. He launches into his tale the moment he hears the name Smiley.

Jim Smiley blurts out a bet of two and a half dollars that which sick person will not recover?

The parson's wife had been gravely ill, and her husband had just reported, with thanks to Providence, that she was mending. Smiley made the offer before he stopped to think.

Jim Smiley's bull pup wins its fights by clamping onto which part of the other dog and holding on?

A hind leg was the pup's one hold, which undid him when Smiley matched him against a dog whose back legs had been lost to a circular saw. Beaten, he limped off and died.

Which sickly animal of Jim Smiley's is given a long head start yet always finishes a neck ahead?

His mare, mocked as the fifteen-minute nag, wheezed with asthma or worse, but at the tail end of a race she would turn desperate and come scrambling up to win.

The jumping frog tale's narrator asks after Leonidas W. Smiley, a boyhood companion who became what?

A minister of the Gospel is how the narrator describes Leonidas, which sharpens the mix-up: the only Smiley the old man recalls would bet on anything that moved.

What does the narrator of Mark Twain's jumping frog story come to suspect about Leonidas W. Smiley?

He was an invention, the narrator suspects: the whole errand was a prank to get him stuck listening to an endless story about a different Smiley. If so, he admits, it worked.

Where does Jim Smiley go to catch a frog for the stranger who has agreed to bet against him?

A swamp is where Smiley slops about in the mud for a long time before he catches one. That leaves the stranger alone with the champion for as long as he needs.

How does Jim Smiley's pursuit of the cheating stranger end in Mark Twain's jumping frog story?

He never catches him: Smiley learns the truth only when he lifts the oddly heavy frog and tips it upside down, and by then the stranger has left with the stakes.

According to Jim Smiley, what is the one thing a frog needs in order to do almost anything?

Education was all a frog wanted, Smiley said, and the old storyteller agrees: he calls the animal modest and straightforward for one so gifted.

How does the old storyteller deliver the whole absurd tale of Jim Smiley to the narrator?

Without ever smiling or frowning, he keeps one gentle tone throughout and treats the story as a really important matter. The narrator finds that earnestness the funniest thing of all.

Jim Smiley, it is said, would follow a straddle-bug as far as which country to settle a bet?

Mexico is how far Smiley would trail the bug, the old man says, simply to learn where it was bound and how long it was on the road. He would also bet on which of two birds left a fence first.

In what does Jim Smiley carry his champion frog downtown when he goes looking for a bet?

A lattice box was his bait: when the stranger asked what was inside, Smiley answered offhandedly that it might be a parrot or a canary, but was only a frog.

Besides jumping, Jim Smiley's frog will spring up on command and snatch what off the counter?

Flies were the frog's party trick: at Smiley's call he would leap straight up, take one off the counter and drop back to the floor as solid as a lump of mud.

Given a good start, Jim Smiley's frog can whirl in the air like a doughnut and perform which trick?

A somersault, or even a couple, was within his powers, and he always came down flat-footed and all right, like a cat.

What would Jim Smiley do if nobody in camp would bet against him on something?

Switch sides is what he did: Smiley cared about having a wager, not about which outcome he backed, and by the old man's account he still came out the winner most of the time.

How does the old storyteller stop the narrator of Mark Twain's jumping frog story from getting away?

The old man blocks him with a chair, having first backed him into a corner, then sits down and reels off his story in one unbroken monotone.

Who asks the narrator of Mark Twain's jumping frog story to call on the old storyteller?

A friend from the East wrote with the request, and the narrator did as he was asked. The result, he says dryly, is the story that follows.

What is the stranger's verdict when Jim Smiley first shows him his champion frog?

It looks like any other frog to him, he says, and he repeats the remark word for word as he walks out of the door with the winnings.

How do Jim Smiley and the stranger set their two frogs going once the count reaches three?

A nudge from behind is all each man gives, and the new frog hops off smartly. Smiley's champion only heaves and hoists his shoulders, planted as solid as an anvil.

The 1985 film The Adventures of Mark Twain retells the jumping frog story in which animation style?

Claymation brought the frog to the screen under director Will Vinton, whose film has Twain tell the tale to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher aboard an airship.

Which humorist, a favorite of Abraham Lincoln, asked Mark Twain to write up the jumping frog story?

Artemus Ward wanted the sketch to fill out a book of his own. It never made the book, and was handed on to a New York weekly instead, where it made Twain famous.

Which New York weekly, run by the so-called King of Bohemia, first printed the jumping frog story?

The Saturday Press ran it under the title Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog. Twain later joked that his story killed the paper, which did close the following year.

Which writer, later estranged from Mark Twain, ran the revised frog story in The Californian?

Bret Harte ran the revision a month after the original, and his paper was the first to use the title the story has kept ever since.

In the revised version printed in The Californian, Jim Smiley's surname was briefly changed to what?

Greeley replaced Smiley for that one printing. When Twain put the story in his own collection in 1867, he changed the name back.

A textbook once fooled Mark Twain into thinking his jumping frog tale was a story from where?

Ancient Greece was only a disguise: Professor Sidgwick had retold Twain's tale with an Athenian and a Boeotian as a translation exercise, without saying where it came from.

Mark Twain's jumping frog story has also been published with which word in place of 'Celebrated'?

Notorious is one of three titles the tale has carried: it first appeared as Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog, and gained the Celebrated name a month later.

Which German-born American composer made Mark Twain's jumping frog story into a two-scene opera?

Lukas Foss set a libretto by Jean Karsavina, and the opera had its premiere at Indiana University in May 1950, when he was still in his twenties.

Which protected species, an official state amphibian, is thought to be Twain's Calaveras jumper?

The California red-legged frog is now so scarce that entering one in the Calaveras jumping contest the story inspired is illegal.

Why does the old storyteller break off his tale about Jim Smiley, letting the narrator slip away?

Someone calls his name from the front yard, and he gets up to see what is wanted, promising to be back in a second. The narrator heads for the door at once.

The Calaveras County town that stages the Jumping Frog Jubilee honors each winner with what downtown?

A plaque for each champion is set into the downtown sidewalk, a walk of honor the town calls the Frog Hop of Fame.