Dragon Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This dragon trivia quiz has 98 free questions with answers and ranges across everywhere dragons turn up. Mythology first: the Latin and Greek roots of the word, the snake-like beasts of Mesopotamia and Egypt, China's rain-governing five-clawed emperor's dragon, the red dragon of Wales, Saint George, Beowulf's last fight, Fáfnir, Jörmungandr, the Hydra, the constellation Draco and the order that gave Dracula his name. Then fiction: Smaug and the thrush, Toothless and Berk, Daenerys and her eggs, Mushu, Shrek's Dragon, Puff and Jackie Paper, and why Charizard is not officially a Dragon type. And the real animals: Komodo dragons that roll in dung, dragonflies with 24,000-facet eyes, and the one map that really says 'here be dragons'. It suits a fantasy-loving family, a pub round or a classroom on myths and legends. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
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Q 01'Dragon' entered English in the 13th century via Old French from a Latin word meaning what?
Huge serpent
Huge serpent is what Latin draco meant; its Greek root drakon may come from a verb for seeing clearly, perhaps naming the beast for its deadly stare.
Q 02Which hero sowed a dragon's teeth to raise the first warriors of Thebes?
Cadmus
Cadmus slew the dragon guarding a spring near the future Thebes and sowed its teeth; armed men called the Spartoi sprang from the ground and became the city's founding nobles.
Q 03Chinese dragons were traditionally thought to govern what?
Rain and the seas
Rain and the seas were the dragons' realm: in a drought a village made offerings to its local dragon king, and the Dragon Kings of the Four Seas were each said to rule an ocean.
Q 04Under the Ming and Qing dynasties, what marked a dragon as imperial?
Five claws
Five claws set the imperial dragon apart; honoured officials wore a four-clawed version that was officially no dragon at all but a mang, or python.
Q 05In Chinese legend, which fish turns into a dragon if it leaps the Dragon Gate waterfall?
A carp
A carp that fights its way upstream and clears the falls at the Dragon Gate becomes a dragon, so 'a carp leaping the Dragon Gate' came to stand for passing the imperial exams.
Q 06In the Chinese zodiac, which animal's year follows straight after the Year of the Dragon?
Snake
Snake comes sixth, right behind the Dragon; in the folk tale of the zodiac race it hid on the Horse's hoof, then startled the Horse at the finish line to slip in ahead of it.
Q 07The Dragon Boat Festival commemorates which ancient Chinese poet-statesman?
Qu Yuan
Qu Yuan, a poet and minister of the state of Chu, drowned himself in the Miluo River around 278 BC; legend says locals raced out in boats and threw rice to protect his body.
Q 08In 2009 UNESCO added the Dragon Boat Festival to which of its lists?
Intangible Cultural Heritage list
The Intangible Cultural Heritage list protects living customs rather than monuments; the 2009 entry covers the dragon boat races, the rice dumplings and the moxa and calamus hung over doors to ward off evil.
Q 09In Welsh legend, the red dragon of Wales fights an invading dragon of which colour?
White
White was the invader's colour: in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum a boy shows King Vortigern two dragons fighting beneath his collapsing fort, the red for the Britons and the white for the Saxons.
Q 10Which king won at Bosworth under a red dragon banner?
Henry VII
Henry VII, from an old Anglesey family, flew the red dragon at Bosworth and paraded it through the capital after his victory; the flag became officially Welsh only in 1959.
Q 11Which saint slays the dragon of Silene in the Golden Legend?
Saint George
Saint George wounds the dragon in the Golden Legend, has the princess lead it into Silene on her girdle, and kills it only once the king and his people have been baptised.
Q 12In Beowulf, what provokes the dragon that the aged king finally fights?
The theft of a golden cup
The theft of a golden cup starts it: a slave slips into the lair and takes the cup from the hoard, and the waking dragon burns the Geats' homes, Beowulf's own among them.
Q 13Which of Beowulf's followers alone dares to help him against the dragon?
Wiglaf
Q 21Which prince's nickname came from his father's membership in the Order of the Dragon?
Vlad the Impaler
Vlad the Impaler was called Dracula, 'son of Dracul': his father took the name Dracul, 'the dragon', on joining the Order of the Dragon, founded by Sigismund of Luxembourg to fight the Ottomans.
Q 22In British heraldry, which winged dragon-like beast has only two legs?
A wyvern
A wyvern has two legs where the heraldic dragon has four, a line British heralds draw strictly though German heraldry does not; the name comes from Latin vipera, 'viper'.
Q 23The Komodo dragon is native to islands of which country?
Indonesia
Wiglaf, a young kinsman of Beowulf, alone stands by him when the other retainers flee; he stabs the dragon's belly and receives the dying king's collar and armour.
Q 14In Norse legend, Fáfnir became a dragon to guard a hoard taken from which dwarf?
Andvari
Loki seized the dwarf Andvari's gold, including a cursed ring, as weregild for Ótr; Fáfnir killed his father Hreiðmarr to keep it and was later slain by Sigurð with the sword Gram.
Q 15Jörmungandr, the Norse World Serpent, is the child of Loki and which giantess?
Angrboða
Angrboða, a giantess of Jötunheimar, bore Loki three children: the wolf Fenrir, Hel who rules the dead, and the serpent Jörmungandr, whom Odin cast into the sea around Midgard.
Q 16What does Jörmungandr do that makes him an example of an ouroboros?
Bites his own tail
Jörmungandr grew so large that he encircles Midgard and bites his own tail, the tail-eating loop that defines an ouroboros; his letting go is a sign of Ragnarök.
Q 17The Hydra slain by Heracles as his second labour lived at Lerna, reputedly an entrance to what?
The Underworld
Lerna's bottomless lake was reputed to be an entrance to the Underworld, which the Hydra guarded; Heracles's nephew Iolaus cauterised each neck so the heads could not regrow.
Q 18According to Hyginus, which goddess hurled a dragon into the sky, where it became the constellation Draco?
Athena
Athena, as the Roman Minerva, caught the dragon the Giants threw at her in battle and flung it, still twisted, to the stars, where Hyginus says she fixed it at the very pole of heaven.
Q 19Which star in Draco was the north pole star when Egypt's pyramids were being built?
Thuban
Thuban sat nearest the sky's north pole when the Great Pyramid went up; the slow wobble of Earth's axis, called precession, has since carried the pole away and handed the job to Polaris.
Q 20Which sea monster of the Hebrew Bible descends from Lotan, a serpent defeated by the Canaanite storm god Baal?
Leviathan
Leviathan is the Hebrew form of Lotan, the 'fugitive serpent' of the clay tablets from Ugarit; Isaiah gives Leviathan the same title, a fleeing serpent, in a verse about the beast God will slay.
Indonesia's Komodo, Rinca and Flores are among the few islands where the giant lizard lives; a 1926 American expedition to catch them gave its leader's friend the idea for the film King Kong.
Q 24Young Komodo dragons live in trees and roll in what to deter cannibalistic adults?
Faeces
Faeces give the youngsters a smell that adult dragons are primed to avoid, a defence they need because big Komodos readily eat small ones; the trees keep them out of reach.
Q 25At which zoo did a reptile curator stroll the grounds in the late 1920s with a tame Komodo dragon named Sumbawa?
London Zoo
London Zoo's reptile curator Joan Procter trusted Sumbawa around children, and in 1928 the dragon ate a chicken and eggs from her hand, letting her pat it as it swallowed, in front of a scientific meeting.
Q 26Roughly how many facets, or ommatidia, does each of a dragonfly's compound eyes have?
24,000
Each compound eye holds roughly 24,000 ommatidia, some species approaching 30,000, giving dragonflies near all-round vision; damselflies fold their wings at rest while dragonflies hold theirs out flat.
Q 27What does a thrush reveal to Bard that lets him kill Smaug in The Hobbit?
A bare patch on his belly
A bare patch on his belly, in the hollow of the left breast, was the one gap in Smaug's armour of gems; Bilbo spotted it after flattering the dragon into rolling over to show off.
Q 28Which treasure, the Heart of the Mountain and heirloom of Thorin's family, lay in Smaug's hoard?
The Arkenstone
The Arkenstone lay in the hoard until Bilbo found it, hid it and then slipped it to the armies besieging the mountain, hoping they could trade it to Thorin and head off a war.
Q 29Who voiced Smaug, with performance capture, in Peter Jackson's Hobbit films?
Benedict Cumberbatch
Benedict Cumberbatch wore a motion-capture suit to act out the dragon's movements himself; his scenes opposite Bilbo reunited him with Martin Freeman, his Watson in the series Sherlock.
Q 30Which Longfellow poem, where a bird reveals a weak spot, has been suggested as a source for Smaug's death?
The Song of Hiawatha
In The Song of Hiawatha a woodpecker tells Hiawatha to aim at the one unprotected spot, the tuft of hair, on the wampum-armoured Megissogwon; critics have likened this to the thrush and Smaug.