Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Catch-22 trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Catch-22 trivia quiz covers Joseph Heller's 1961 satire of war and bureaucracy, the debut novel that gave the English language a phrase for an impossible bind. The easy questions handle the basics: who wrote it, the name of its bombardier antihero, the island the squadron sits on, the colonel who keeps raising the mission count, and what the catch actually says. From there it moves through the characters, from Milo Minderbinder's M&M Enterprises and Major Major Major Major's resemblance to Henry Fonda to Orr's rowing trip to Sweden and the terrible secret Snowden spills over the floor of a B-25. The harder half is for devoted readers: why the book was nearly called Catch-18 (and Catch-11, and Catch-14), the 1953 morning when Heller thought of the first line, the 60 missions he really flew, the $1,500 advance, the New Yorker's savage review, the eggs bought in Sicily for a cent and sold for five, the Egyptian cotton coated in chocolate, the anachronistic loyalty oaths and IBM machines, and the school board that banned it. If you enjoyed our Slaughterhouse-Five or classic novels quizzes, this is the deep dive on Heller's masterpiece. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for Catch-22, Joseph Heller, the main characters and the film and miniseries adaptations before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote Catch-22?
Joseph Heller
It was his debut novel, begun in 1953 and published in 1961; he was later nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Q 02What is the name of the novel's antihero, a captain and B-25 bombardier?
John Yossarian
Heller took the name from a wartime friend, Francis Yohannan, and gave the character Assyrian heritage to broaden his appeal.
Q 03On which Mediterranean island is the fictional 256th Squadron based for most of the novel?
Pianosa
The real island lies in the Tuscan Archipelago 14 km from Elba, and its highest point is just 29 metres above sea level.
Q 04Which commanding officer keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly, so they can never go home?
Colonel Cathcart
He wants to look brave to his superiors despite having flown only one combat mission himself.
Q 05How many combat missions has Yossarian flown by the end of the novel?
71
He had flown 44 when the story opens, is traumatised, yet manages 27 more.
Q 06According to the catch, an airman who asks to be grounded because he is crazy proves what?
That he is sane and must keep flying
Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them.
Q 07Under what medical pretext is Yossarian hiding in hospital when the novel opens?
A chronic liver condition
He is greatly relieved to be treated for a condition that is 'almost jaundice'.
Q 08How does Yossarian's tentmate Orr finally escape the war?
He rows to Sweden after ditching his plane
Yossarian had read Orr's endless crashes as incompetence; the news of his escape ends the novel on an upbeat note.
Q 09How far into the book, by chapter number, are the full details of the gunner Snowden's death finally revealed?
41
Yossarian treats a leg wound with bandages and sulfanilamide before finding the fatal wound under the flak suit.
Q 10During which bombing mission is Snowden mortally wounded?
Avignon
Heller said the episodes where Yossarian tends the dying gunner came from his own wartime experience.
Q 11Why was the ampersand added to the name of Milo's M&M Enterprises?
To dispel any idea it was a one-man operation
The two Ms stand for his initials, and everyone 'has a share'.
Q 12Milo's syndicate begins by buying eggs in Sicily for one cent and eventually selling them to the mess halls for how much?
Five cents
In between he sells them to Malta for four and a half cents and buys them back for seven, somehow at a profit.
Q 13Milo's one disastrous deal is buying the entire crop of what, which he then tries to feed to the men coated in chocolate?
Egyptian cotton
Q 21How much was Heller paid to sign the contract for Catch-22 in 1961?
$1,500
Dell later paid $32,000 for the paperback rights, and Columbia $100,000 for the film rights.
Q 22How many combat missions did the author himself fly as a bombardier in 1944?
60
He later called most of them 'milk runs' and said he 'never had a bad officer'.
Q 23In which Brooklyn neighbourhood was the author born in 1923?
Coney Island
He was the son of poor Russian Jewish parents and worked as a blacksmith's apprentice before joining the Army Air Corps at 19.
Q 24According to Heller, the first line he thought of in 1953 had Yossarian falling madly in love at first sight with whom?
Yossarian eventually suggests selling it to the government, quoting Coolidge that the business of government is business.
Q 14Milo's maxim 'What's good for the syndicate is good for the country' parodies a 1953 remark by the president of which company?
General Motors
Charles Erwin Wilson had told the Senate 'What's good for General Motors is good for the country.'
Q 15In one of the novel's few appearances of Germans, what does Milo hire German pilots to do?
Bomb the American encampment on Pianosa
Heller portrays Milo's actions as the product of greed rather than malice, a parable of the military-industrial complex.
Q 16Which real-life film star does Major Major Major Major unfortunately resemble?
Henry Fonda
He was promoted to major by 'an I.B.M. machine with a sense of humor almost as keen as his father's'.
Q 17What promoted Major Major to the rank of major, according to the novel?
An IBM machine with a sense of humour
His father had named him Major Major Major as a joke, passing up Drum Major, Minor Major, Sergeant Major and C Sharp Major.
Q 18Under what title was the novel's opening chapter first published in 1955?
Catch-18
Heller's agent asked for a change to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's new novel Mila 18.
Q 19Which 1960 film ruled out 'Catch-11' as a title?
Ocean's Eleven
Catch-17 was dropped to avoid confusion with Stalag 17, and Catch-14 because the publisher did not think 14 was a funny number.
Q 20Which Simon & Schuster editor is credited with coming up with the number 22?
Robert Gottlieb
He championed the book against a vice president who found it 'repetitive and offensive'; Heller signed for a $1,500 advance.
The chaplain
Within a day he had envisioned the story, the characters and the plot that grew from that opening.
Q 25Heller said the antiwar and antigovernment feeling in Catch-22 came less from World War II than from what?
The Korean War and the 1950s
That is why the novel includes deliberate anachronisms like loyalty oaths and IBM machines.
Q 26Which Czech novel did Heller reportedly say he would never have written Catch-22 without first reading?
The Good Soldier Švejk
He also acknowledged the influence of Céline, Waugh and Nabokov.
Q 27Chapter 11, 'Captain Black', parodies which episode of 1950s American politics?
Red Scare-era McCarthyism
Captain Black's Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade skewers the demands for oaths; 'Who promoted Major Major?' echoes McCarthy's questions about Major Peress.
Q 28Which magazine panned Catch-22, saying it gave 'the impression of having been shouted onto paper'?
The New Yorker
The Nation, by contrast, called it 'the best novel to come out in years'.
Q 29Which novel beat Catch-22 to the 1962 National Book Award?
The Moviegoer
Walker Percy's book won; Catch-22 never made the New York Times bestseller list in hardcover but was number one in Britain.
Q 30How much did the paperback edition of Catch-22 cost when it finally made the book a national hit?
75 cents
It sold 1.1 million copies between September 1962 and April 1963; the hardcover had been $5.95.