The BFG Trivia
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90 free The BFG trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Roald Dahl's The BFG is the rare children's book that is funnier and stranger every time you reread it. A lonely giant who refuses to eat people, a language he makes up as he goes, a fizzy drink with bubbles that go the wrong way, and a monarch who takes it all in her stride at breakfast. These 90 questions cover the 1982 novel first: Sophie, Giant Country and its man-eating residents, the giant's night work, the Queen and her household, and the words Dahl invented. Then they move to the screen, from the 1989 animated film that Dahl himself loved to Steven Spielberg's 2016 version, its cast, its premiere and its box-office stumble. Good for a family quiz night, a classroom that has just finished the book, or anyone who still remembers what people from Greece taste like.
30 of 90 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which green fizzy drink beloved of the BFG has bubbles that sink downwards instead of rising?
Frobscottle
Frobscottle bubbles sink rather than rise, so the gas leaves the other end — a trick the BFG proudly demonstrates at the Queen's breakfast table in the 2016 film.
Q 02What does the BFG call the thunderous flatulence that his favourite fizzy drink sets off?
Whizzpopping
Whizzpopping is the BFG's word for it, and he happily lets rip in front of the Queen of England herself over a royal breakfast.
Q 03Which revolting vegetable, the BFG's only crop, tastes to Sophie of frog skin and rotten fish?
Snozzcumber
The snozzcumber looks like a knobbly cucumber and is all the BFG has to eat since he refuses to eat people; to him it tastes of cockroaches and slime wanglers.
Q 04In which misty land does the BFG catch the dreams he later blows into children's bedrooms?
Dream Country
Dream Country is where the BFG nets good dreams and bad ones alike, and on one trip there the other giants catch him and toss him between them like a ball.
Q 05What instrument does the BFG carry with his suitcase when Sophie first spots him in the street?
A trumpet
A trumpet is how the BFG delivers dreams, blowing each one through a bedroom window, and it is his sight of Sophie at her window that makes him snatch her.
Q 06How do Sophie and the BFG convince the Queen that man-eating giants are real?
A nightmare blown into her sleep
A nightmare blown into her sleep shows the Queen events that then come true, down to Sophie waiting on her windowsill, so she believes the girl and talks to the giant over breakfast.
Q 07Which actor, first artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe, plays the BFG by motion capture?
Mark Rylance
Mark Rylance called the motion-capture process 'liberating', and Spielberg had offered him the giant while the two were shooting another film together in 2014.
Q 08The 2016 BFG was the first Steven Spielberg-directed film released under which studio's own brand?
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures only came aboard in April 2015, when the cameras were already rolling in Vancouver. Until then Disney was the one big studio name missing from Spielberg's directing career.
Q 09Which Only Fools and Horses star provided the voice of the BFG in the 1989 animated film?
David Jason
David Jason was a regular voice for the same Manchester studio, having already played Danger Mouse and Count Duckula for its animators.
Q 10What becomes of the man-eating giants at the end of Roald Dahl's novel The BFG?
Imprisoned in a huge pit
Imprisoned in a huge pit, the giants become a tourist attraction, fed only on the foul vegetable they despise. After three drunks climb the fence and are eaten, a warning sign goes up.
Q 11Which giant, the largest and leader of the BFG's man-eating neighbours, is the last to be captured?
The Fleshlumpeater
The Fleshlumpeater wakes as the others are shackled and is only subdued by a trick, having earlier been given a bad dream by the BFG as revenge for bullying him.
Q 12Why, according to the BFG, do the man-eating giants never travel to Greece for their suppers?
Greeks taste greasy
Greeks taste greasy, the BFG explains, while Turks taste of turkey, the Welsh of fish and Danes of dogs — the giants choose their country by flavour.
Q 13What name is given to the BFG's jumbled invented language, full of made-up words like 'delumptious'?
Gobblefunk
Q 21Which giant barges uninvited into the BFG's cave and bites the vegetable Sophie is hiding inside?
The Bloodbottler
The Bloodbottler's bite misses Sophie by a whisker; he spits her out unnoticed and storms off in disgust at the taste.
Q 22What official title does the Queen bestow on the BFG once the man-eating giants are safely captured?
Royal Dream-Blower
Royal Dream-Blower becomes the BFG's official post, and rulers of every country the giants had raided send him and Sophie gifts of thanks.
Q 23Where are homes built for Sophie and the BFG by a grateful nation at the end of Dahl's novel?
Windsor Great Park
Gobblefunk began as a verb: to gobblefunk is to play around with words. In 2016 Dahl's invented words were given an Oxford dictionary of their own.
Q 14Which illustrator gave the BFG and Sophie their look on the page?
Quentin Blake
Quentin Blake drew the pair for the 1982 original in simple line drawings. The 1989 animated film chose not to copy them, its director wanting a giant who looked more believable and scary.
Q 15Which composer wrote the score for Steven Spielberg's 2016 film of The BFG?
John Williams
John Williams was back for his 27th Spielberg film after a health problem kept him off Bridge of Spies, one of the very few the director has made without him.
Q 16The 2016 film of The BFG reached cinemas in the same year as which Roald Dahl milestone?
The centenary of his birth
The centenary of his birth fell on 13 September 2016, and that was the point of the timing: organisers of the worldwide celebrations billed Spielberg's film as one of the year's highlights.
Q 17Why does the BFG carry Sophie off to his cave?
To stop her revealing giants exist
To stop her revealing giants exist is his only motive: anyone who had seen a real giant could get him caught and put in a zoo, so Sophie can never go home.
Q 18In what does the BFG keep his caught dreams, each labelled and sorted onto shelves in his cave?
Jars
Jars hold every dream, and boys' and girls' dreams sit on separate shelves because, the BFG says, a boy given a girl's dream wakes up thinking it rotten.
Q 19Where does the BFG set Sophie down on a windowsill so the sleeping monarch finds her on waking?
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace has so many bedrooms that the BFG has to find the Queen by ear, listening at the windows until he hears a woman asleep.
Q 20What does the Queen send to Giant Country to deal with the sleeping man-eating giants in The BFG?
Helicopters
Helicopters are sent because the Queen will not have the giants killed: two wrongs don't make a right, she tells the commanders who want to bomb them. The giants are flown home alive.
Windsor Great Park gets two new homes side by side: a giant-sized house for the BFG and a small cottage for Sophie, so the friends stay neighbours for good.
Q 24Who turns out to have written the novel The BFG itself, under another's name, in its final pages?
The BFG himself
The BFG himself, having learned to speak and write properly, pens the book under another's name — the same trick Dahl used to end James and the Giant Peach.
Q 25The BFG began as a bedtime story told by a father in which earlier Roald Dahl novel?
Danny, the Champion of the World
Danny, the Champion of the World has the hero's father describe a Big Friendly Giant who collects good dreams and blows them into bedrooms, a tale Dahl expanded seven years later.
Q 26What does the BFG call Charles Dickens, whose books he loves, in one of his muddled mispronunciations?
Dahl's Chickens
Dahl's Chickens is how the BFG names the author of Nicholas Nickleby, the book he taught himself to read from. He 'borrowed' it from a boy's bedroom eighty years ago.
Q 27In the BFG's invented speech, what is a 'trogglehumper'?
A very bad dream
A very bad dream is a trogglehumper, and the BFG turns the one he catches into a weapon, blowing it at the giants' sleeping leader in revenge for being bullied.
Q 28Which earlier Spielberg film did Melissa Mathison, the 2016 BFG's screenwriter, also write?
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was Mathison's too, another story of a lonely child and an otherworldly friend. She died in November 2015, eight months before the BFG opened, and it is dedicated to her.
Q 29Sophie, the BFG's young heroine, is named after which member of Roald Dahl's own family?
His granddaughter
His granddaughter Sophie Dahl lent the heroine her name, and the 1989 film's animators copied the round glasses she wore as a child. The book itself is dedicated to his late daughter Olivia.
Q 30At which film festival did the 2016 BFG premiere out of competition, weeks before its July release?
Cannes
Cannes gave the film a red-carpet launch on 14 May 2016, but the glamour did not carry over: in American cinemas it became one of the biggest flops of Spielberg's career.