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50 free Don Quixote trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Don Quixote trivia for anyone who has tilted at a windmill, hummed 'The Impossible Dream', or actually made it through all 900-odd pages. The quiz starts inside the book: the hidalgo who read too many chivalric romances, the innkeeper who dubbed him a knight, the barber's basin he took for a magic helmet, the squire promised an island, the peasant girl renamed Dulcinea, the duke and duchess who read Part One and staged pranks for their own amusement, and the Knight of the White Moon who finally sent him home. Then it widens out to the man and the afterlife. Cervantes lost the use of a hand at Lepanto, spent five years as a captive in Algiers, sold his rights for a pittance and died a pauper - and still wrote what a 2002 poll of writers called the greatest work of fiction ever. There are questions on the pirated sequel that goaded him into Part Two, the first English translation, the Motteux pudding proverb, and on Petipa's ballet, Strauss's tone poem, Massenet's opera, Picasso's sketch, Orson Welles's unfinished film, Terry Gilliam's cursed one, and Man of La Mancha. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Spanish literature and classic novels quizzes.
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Q 01Who wrote Don Quixote?
Miguel de Cervantes
It came out in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, and is often called the first modern novel.
Q 02Don Quixote's real name, before madness sets in, is what?
Alonso Quixano
He is a hidalgo nearing 50 who lives with his niece and housekeeper in an unnamed village of La Mancha.
Q 03What drives Don Quixote mad?
Reading chivalric romances
His niece, housekeeper, priest and barber later burn most of his library and blame a wizard for walling it up.
Q 04What is the name of Don Quixote's horse?
Rocinante
The name puns on 'rocín', a workhorse or nag: he was 'a hack before' and is now the 'first and foremost' of hacks.
Q 05Who does Don Quixote choose as his lady love, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso?
A pork-salting farm girl
Aldonza Lorenzo never appears in the book; Dulcinea exists only in his head.
Q 06Who dubs Don Quixote a knight in the first sally?
An innkeeper
He mistakes the inn for a castle and the prostitutes there for ladies, and holds vigil over his armour at the horse trough.
Q 07What does Don Quixote promise Sancho Panza to recruit him as his squire?
A governorship
Sancho eventually gets one - a fake, courtesy of the duke - and turns out to be a wise, practical ruler before it all ends in humiliation.
Q 08What does Don Quixote believe the windmills are?
Giants
The scene gave English the phrase 'tilting at windmills'; 'tilt' means to joust.
Q 09What does Sancho's surname, Panza, mean in Spanish?
Belly
His comments, mixing proverbs and earthy wit, are known as sanchismos.
Q 10What is Sancho Panza's wife called?
Teresa Cascajo
She is described as more or less a female version of Sancho, and he dictates letters to her from the road since he cannot write.
Q 11What everyday object does Don Quixote take for the legendary helmet of Mambrino?
A barber's basin
The helmet comes from Orlando Furioso; Picasso's famous 1955 sketch shows the knight wearing it.
Q 12What happens to Sancho at the inn of Juan Palomeque after his master leaves without paying?
He is tossed in a blanket
Don Quixote had explained that the inn was enchanted, then followed the knights of his books in skipping the bill.
Q 13Cervantes claims the story is translated from which fictional Moorish historian's Arabic text?
Cide Hamete Benengeli
Q 21Which chivalric romance does the priest call 'the best book in the world' during the library purge?
Tirant lo Blanch
Exactly what he meant by 'best' has been called the most difficult passage in the whole novel.
Q 22In 2004, academics deduced Don Quixote's unnamed village was which town?
Villanueva de los Infantes
Cervantes said he left it vague so every town in La Mancha could claim him, as seven Greek cities claimed Homer.
Q 23How was 'Quixote' originally pronounced in the Old Castilian of Cervantes's day?
With a 'sh' sound
The 'archives of La Mancha' supposedly run out at a cliffhanger in chapter 8, and the manuscript turns up in chapter 9.
Q 14Which group of prisoners does Don Quixote free, later earning him an arrest warrant?
Galley slaves
The officer of the Santa Hermandad is talked into mercy on account of the knight's insanity, and he is taken home in a cage.
Q 15How is Don Quixote finally brought home at the end of Part One?
In a cage he thinks is enchanted
Along the way he debates the merits of chivalric books with a canon of Toledo.
Q 16What is unusual about many characters in the 1615 sequel?
They have read the first book
The duke and duchess stage elaborate pranks precisely because they know the book.
Q 17In Part Two, Sancho is told Dulcinea can be freed from enchantment only if he does what?
Gives himself 3,300 lashes
He resists, and the friction with his master becomes one of the running jokes of the second half.
Q 18Who defeats Don Quixote on the beach at Barcelona and orders him to give up chivalry for a year?
The Knight of the White Moon
He is a young man from Quixote's own village who had earlier posed as the Knight of Mirrors.
Q 19What condition does the dying hidalgo put in his will regarding his niece?
No marrying a reader of chivalry books
The author then declares that any further books about Don Quixote would be spurious.
Q 20In 1614, a fake sequel appeared under which pen name, goading Cervantes into finishing Part Two?
Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda
In Part Two, Don Quixote visits a Barcelona printing house and finds the counterfeit being printed - an early stroke of metafiction.
French, Portuguese and Italian kept the old sound - hence Massenet's Don Quichotte - while modern Spanish shifted to the throaty 'j'.
Q 24Which English proverb first appeared in Motteux's 1700 translation rather than in Cervantes's Spanish?
The proof of the pudding
The original literally says 'you will see when the eggs are fried'.
Q 25Who published the first translation of Don Quixote into any language, in 1612?
Thomas Shelton
He was a Dublin Catholic who had come to the attention of English intelligence for offering his services to Irish rebels.
Q 26Whose 2003 English translation did Carlos Fuentes call a 'major literary achievement'?
Edith Grossman
She said she wept at the book as a young reader and laughed out loud at her computer while translating it.
Q 27Roughly how many copies is Don Quixote believed to have sold worldwide?
500 million
Most of the first print run of 400 was shipped to the Americas, and much of it sank near Havana.
Q 28A 2002 poll of writers from 55 countries, run by the Norwegian Nobel Institute, voted Don Quixote what?
The greatest work of fiction ever written
Mark Twain credited it with sweeping away the world's admiration for medieval 'chivalry-silliness'.
Q 29At which 1571 naval battle was Cervantes wounded, losing the use of his left hand?
Lepanto
He was nicknamed 'El manco de Lepanto' and said he had 'lost the movement of the left hand for the glory of the right'.
Q 30Cervantes spent five years as a captive after being seized in 1575 by whom?
Barbary pirates
He was held in Algiers, made four escape attempts, and was finally ransomed by the Trinitarian order in 1580.