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60 free Close Encounters of the Third Kind trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the film Steven Spielberg made right after Jaws, and it nearly broke Columbia Pictures before becoming the studio's biggest hit. This quiz covers the whole story: Roy Neary's sunburn and his living-room mountain, little Barry Guiler's abduction, the Flight 19 planes in the desert, the five-note phrase, and the mothership finale at Devils Tower. It also digs into how the film got made. You'll be asked about the actors who turned down Roy Neary, the French director who was cast as Lacombe, the synthesizer engineer who ended up on screen, the Star Wars in-joke hidden on the mothership model, and why there are three different cuts of the movie. A few questions cover Devils Tower itself and the real UFO scale that gave the film its name. The questions run from easy to expert, so casual viewers can score well while superfans get properly tested. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and related reference pages, and each question shows the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01Which studio turned the project down before Spielberg struck his deal with Columbia in late 1973?
20th Century Fox
Fox passed on it a few years before it released Star Wars; Columbia's finished film became the studio's most successful release up to that time.
Q 02Which actor plays Roy Neary, the Indiana everyman whose life is upended by a UFO?
Richard Dreyfuss
Dreyfuss lobbied for the part while shooting his previous film for Spielberg, telling Spielberg things like 'Al Pacino has no sense of humor' to talk him out of other choices.
Q 03What is Roy Neary's job when the film begins?
Electric-utility lineman
He is sent out to investigate widespread power outages, which is how he ends up parked at a railroad crossing when the UFO passes over his truck.
Q 04Near which Indiana city does three-year-old Barry Guiler live when he is abducted?
Muncie
The abduction house itself was actually a location outside Fairhope, Alabama, near where the film's giant hangar sets were built.
Q 05The film's climax takes place at Devils Tower, a real monument in which state?
Wyoming
The film's popularity produced a lasting jump in visitors and climbers at the monument.
Q 06Who composed the film's score, including its famous five-tone motif?
John Williams
Williams wrote more than 300 candidate five-note phrases before Spielberg picked the one used in the film.
Q 07How many notes make up the musical phrase the scientists use to greet the mothership?
5
Williams reasoned that four notes was a fragment and seven notes was a song, so five sat mathematically in between.
Q 08Which celebrated French film director plays the scientist Claude Lacombe?
François Truffaut
It is his only acting role in a film he did not direct; between takes he wrote the script for The Man Who Loved Women.
Q 09Lacombe was modelled on which real-life UFO researcher?
Jacques Vallée
Gérard Depardieu, Philippe Noiret, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Lino Ventura were all considered for the role before it went to a director.
Q 10The film's title comes from a UFO classification scale devised by which astronomer?
J. Allen Hynek
He served as a scientific consultant on the film and can be spotted at the end, bearded and with a pipe in his mouth, stepping forward to watch the mothership.
Q 11On that scale, what does a close encounter of the 'third kind' actually mean?
Sighting of the craft's occupants
Abduction is the 'fourth kind', a category added later that was not part of the original scale.
Q 12Which Italian effects artist designed the film's extraterrestrials?
Carlo Rambaldi
He built a marionette for the tall alien that first steps out of the mothership and an articulated puppet for the one that trades hand signs at the end.
Q 13Who supervised the film's visual effects?
Douglas Trumbull
He joked that the $3.3 million effects budget could have funded an entire extra film, and the work advanced motion-control photography.
Q 21Who plays Ronnie Neary, Roy's increasingly exasperated wife?
Teri Garr
Both Streep and Irving auditioned for Ronnie; Garr had actually wanted to play the other female lead.
Q 22What wakes Barry and draws him out of the house at the start of the film?
His toys switching on by themselves
The kitchen fridge has also been ransacked; the boy's unscripted delight was coaxed by showing him real toys off camera.
Q 23In the opening scene, the missing planes of Flight 19 turn up intact where?
The Sonoran Desert
Spielberg originally planned to have Lacombe find the planes hidden in the Amazon rainforest.
Q 14Which Star Wars character was hidden on the underside of the mothership model as an in-joke?
R2-D2
Model makers also tucked a pea-sized TIE fighter, a mailbox, a great white shark, a Volkswagen bus and a small graveyard onto the miniature.
Q 15Where did the original mothership model go on permanent public display?
The Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center
It was placed steps away from the space shuttle Discovery at the Smithsonian annex beside Washington Dulles Airport.
Q 16Who designed the mothership?
Ralph McQuarrie
The model itself was built by Greg Jein; the emphasis was on luminescence rather than the metallic hardware look of Star Wars.
Q 17The look of the mothership was inspired by something Spielberg saw at night in India. What?
An oil refinery
One of the smaller UFO models was an oxygen mask with lights attached, chosen for its irregular shape.
Q 18What physical mark does Roy's first UFO encounter leave on him?
A sunburn on one side of his face
His wife Ronnie tries to hide the sunburn and wants him to forget the whole thing.
Q 19What is the name of Barry's mother, who is drawn to the same mountain shape as Roy?
Jillian
She fights off the unseen visitors trying to get into her house, but Barry is taken anyway.
Q 20Which actress earned an Oscar nomination for playing Barry's mother?
Melinda Dillon
She was cast only three days before filming began, on the recommendation of director Hal Ashby.
Q 24Which vanished ship is discovered sitting in the middle of the Gobi Desert?
SS Cotopaxi
The ship's discovery scene was one of the additions made for the 1980 Special Edition.
Q 25What does the repeating string of numbers received after the five tones turn out to be?
Geographic coordinates
Laughlin, the cartographer, is the one who works it out.
Q 26What cover story does the Army plant in the media to clear civilians away from the landing site?
A train wreck spilled nerve gas
Roy and Barry's mother see the mountain on the very news reports meant to keep people away.
Q 27Witnesses in which Indian town report the UFOs' distinctive five-tone sound?
Dharamsala
The Indian exteriors were shot at a small village called Hal near Khalapur, about 35 km outside Mumbai.
Q 28What gestural system does Lacombe use to 'sing' the five notes to the alien?
Curwen hand signs
The signs pair one hand shape with each note of the scale; the alien answers in kind and smiles.
Q 29Which Disney song shaped Spielberg's writing of E.T. and was briefly in the credits until a preview audience laughed?
When You Wish Upon a Star
Spielberg called the finished score 'When You Wish Upon a Star meets science fiction'.
Q 30Which screenwriter's first draft, titled Kingdom Come, did Spielberg later call 'not about UFOs at all'?
Paul Schrader
That draft's hero was a 45-year-old Air Force officer whose job was to debunk flying saucers.