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50 free The BFG trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 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 50 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 of England that the 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 took the film over from its Touchstone banner in 2015, making it the first Disney-branded film Spielberg directed, though he had produced several for the studio.
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 500 feet deep and the size of a football field, the giants become a tourist attraction, fed nothing but the one vegetable Giant Country grows.
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 is Dahl's own term for his made-up words, and The BFG alone contains more than 300 of them, from 'biffsquiggled' to 'trogglehumper'.
Q 14Which illustrator of more than 300 children's books gave the BFG and Sophie their look on the page?
Quentin Blake
Quentin Blake drew the BFG and Sophie for the 1982 original, and his pictures of the pair appeared on Royal Mail commemorative stamps in 2012.
Q 15Which composer scored the 2016 BFG, the 27th time he and Steven Spielberg had worked together?
John Williams
John Williams likened the BFG's dream-catching scene to 'a child's ballet', and the score was his 27th collaboration with Spielberg.
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 in 2016, the year of the film's 1 July release; Dahl was born in September 1916.
Q 17Why does the BFG carry Sophie off to his cave rather than leave her at the orphanage window?
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 is where the giant leaves Sophie in the Queen's bedroom, and a breakfast there follows once the Queen is convinced the giants are real.
Q 20What does the Queen send to Giant Country to carry off the sleeping man-eating giants in The BFG?
Helicopters
Helicopters shackle the sleeping giants, and the fleet then flies all of them, plus the BFG's dream collection, back to England.
Windsor Great Park is where the grateful nation builds the pair's new homes, while tourists flock to watch the captured giants eat.
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 a spoonerism that swaps the opening sounds, as in 'catasterous disastrophe' and 'jipping and skumping', two more of the giant's favourites.
Q 27In the BFG's invented speech, what is a 'trogglehumper', rendered 'trollenklopper' in Dutch?
A very bad dream
A very bad dream is a trogglehumper, and the word has also been translated as 'troglogoblo' in Italian and 'jorobanoches' in Spanish.
Q 28Whose 2016 BFG screenplay was her last, the film being dedicated to her after her 2015 death?
Melissa Mathison
Melissa Mathison died in November 2015, eight months before release, and the BFG was her sole posthumous film.
Q 29Which ten-year-old Cheshire schoolgirl learned six pages of dialogue to win Sophie in the 2016 BFG?
Ruby Barnhill
Ruby Barnhill was cast in December 2014 after a lengthy search, and her own father Paul appears in the film as one of the Queen's footmen.
Q 30At which film festival did the 2016 BFG premiere out of competition, weeks before its July release?
Cannes
Cannes hosted the premiere on 14 May 2016, with Spielberg walking the red carpet alongside his giant and his young Sophie.