Matilda Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
100 free Matilda trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
41 free Matilda trivia questions with answers. Matilda has been through four lives: a 1988 novel, a 1996 film, a Royal Shakespeare Company musical, and a 2022 screen version of that musical. This quiz covers all four, plus the man who started it. The book questions go past the famous bits: what she was reading at four, which county the village sits in, where the story placed in the BBC's Big Read, and the exact wording her mother used about clever girls. The film round covers the cast, the budget it barely made back, and the school's name. The musical round covers Tim Minchin, the seven Olivier Awards, and the four young actresses who shared a single Best Actress trophy. Every answer is written against a sourced account with the sentence that establishes it attached, so a family argument about the Chokey can be settled properly. Difficulty runs from easy to expert.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Matilda, what does Matilda hide up the chimney to fake a ghost?
A talking parrot
A talking parrot: hidden in the chimney, its voice first makes her parents think burglars have broken in, then sends the whole family fleeing in fright.
Q 02Where did Matilda author Roald Dahl write most of his children's books?
A hut in his garden
A hut in his garden at Great Missenden, built after he saw the poet Dylan Thomas's writing shed; he worked with the curtains drawn so the squirrels in the orchard couldn't distract him.
Q 03In Roald Dahl's novel, what is Matilda's surname?
Wormwood
Wormwood: her parents prefer television to books, and her father calls her a liar and a cheat when she works out his day's profits in her head in an instant.
Q 04In Roald Dahl's Matilda, which game is Matilda's mother out playing while her small daughter is left home alone?
Bingo
Bingo: with her mother out playing every afternoon, four-year-old Matilda walks to the village library on her own and starts reading her way along the shelves.
Q 05In Matilda, which Dickens novel does the village librarian give four-year-old Matilda as her first grown-up book?
Great Expectations
Great Expectations starts a run of grown-up reading: by the time she is five, Matilda has worked through Hemingway, Orwell, Faulkner and Steinbeck.
Q 06In Roald Dahl's Matilda, what is the name of Matilda's kindly class teacher?
Miss Jennifer Honey
Miss Jennifer Honey spots Matilda's gifts on the first day and asks to move her to the top form; when the headmistress refuses, she quietly gives her advanced books to study in class.
Q 07In Roald Dahl's Matilda, what is the first name of the headmistress, Miss Trunchbull?
Agatha
Agatha Trunchbull once competed for Britain as an Olympic athlete; the ghostly message that finally breaks her nerve opens by calling her by that first name.
Q 08In Matilda, what is Miss Trunchbull's nail-lined punishment cupboard called?
The Chokey
The Chokey is so narrow, and so lined with nails and broken glass, that a child locked inside has to stand bolt upright for hours.
Q 09In Matilda, why does Miss Trunchbull hurl Amanda Thripp over the playground fence?
For wearing pigtails
For wearing pigtails: the headmistress, who hates long hair, grabs Amanda by them and swings her round and round like an athlete's hammer before letting go.
Q 10In Matilda, what is Bruce Bogtrotter forced to do in front of the whole school?
Eat an enormous cake
Eat an enormous cake, his punishment for stealing a slice of the headmistress's own; to her fury he finishes every crumb, so she smashes the platter over his head.
Q 11In Matilda, what does Lavender slip into Miss Trunchbull's water jug?
A newt
A newt, caught in her own garden: Lavender slips it into the jug before the lesson, and when it lands in the headmistress's glass it is Matilda who gets the blame.
Q 12Which power does Matilda discover she has in Roald Dahl's novel?
Telekinesis
Telekinesis: it first shows when she tips over a glass just by staring at it, and it fades once she is moved to the top form, where her brain finally has enough to do.
Q 13In Roald Dahl's Matilda, Miss Trunchbull turns out to be which relation of Matilda's class teacher?
Her aunt
Her aunt: she moved in to raise the teacher as a child, and now takes almost all of her niece's salary while living in the family house.
Q 21In Roald Dahl's Matilda, what is the name of the school ruled by Miss Trunchbull?
Crunchem Hall
Crunchem Hall is run by terror: Matilda starts there late, is put in the bottom class, and her teacher cannot persuade the headmistress to move her up.
Q 22In Roald Dahl's Matilda, what does Matilda line her father's hat with to punish him?
Superglue
Superglue: the hat stays stuck to his head all day and night, and next morning Matilda's mother has to cut it off, taking chunks of his hair with it.
Q 23Who wrote the music and lyrics for Matilda the Musical?
Tim Minchin
Tim Minchin, the Australian comedian and songwriter, collected the show's Best New Musical prize at the 2012 Oliviers and thanked its child stars as 'the little twerps'.
Q 14In Roald Dahl's Matilda, how does Matilda's father earn his living?
Selling used cars
Selling used cars, and cheating at it: he boasts to his children that he winds the mileage back on worn-out bangers before he sells them.
Q 15For Matilda's 30th anniversary in 2018, a statue showed her facing down which figure, chosen in a public poll?
Donald Trump
Donald Trump topped a poll asking whom Matilda would stand up to today, so her statue in Dahl's home village of Great Missenden was set glaring at one of the president.
Q 16In Roald Dahl's Matilda, what kind of home does Matilda's class teacher live in?
A farm labourer's cottage
A farm labourer's cottage, tiny and bare, rented for ten pence a week: it is all she can afford on the pound a week she is left once her salary has been taken from her.
Q 17Who directed the 1996 film of Roald Dahl's Matilda?
Danny DeVito
Danny DeVito also narrated the film and cast himself as Matilda's swindling father, moving Dahl's English village story to the United States.
Q 18Which child actress played the title role in the 1996 film Matilda?
Mara Wilson
Mara Wilson's mother was dying of cancer during the production, so the director took an unfinished cut to her in hospital; the film is dedicated to her memory.
Q 19Which actress played Miss Trunchbull in the 1996 film Matilda?
Pam Ferris
Pam Ferris meant to stay aloof from the child actors so that their fear would look real, but the plan collapsed when the bolder ones marched straight up to her.
Q 20Which song plays as little Matilda makes herself pancakes in the 1996 film?
Send Me on My Way
Send Me on My Way by Rusted Root plays as Matilda, left home alone, cooks for herself, and returns at the end once her teacher has adopted her.
Q 24Which organisation first staged Matilda the Musical, in 2010?
The Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company first tried the show out for a winter season at its Stratford-upon-Avon home, then transferred it to London's West End the following year.
Q 25Which show's nine Oliviers in 2017 broke the record set by Matilda the Musical?
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child won big, and its director John Tiffany even beat himself to the directing prize: he was also nominated for The Glass Menagerie.
Q 26Four girls from Matilda the Musical jointly won which 2012 Olivier Award?
Best Actress in a Musical
Best Actress in a Musical went jointly to Cleo Demetriou, Kerry Ingram, Sophia Kiely and Eleanor Worthington-Cox, who took turns in the title role and collected the prize together.
Q 27Which London venue hosted the West End debut of Matilda the Musical in 2011?
The Cambridge Theatre
The Cambridge Theatre needed structural work before the production could move in, which pushed the show's first West End preview back by a week.
Q 28Who directed both Matilda the Musical on stage and its 2022 film version?
Matthew Warchus
Matthew Warchus won the 2012 Olivier for Best Director for the stage show, accepting it by live link from New York, then made the film of it himself a decade later.
Q 29Who played the title role in the 2022 film of Matilda the Musical?
Alisha Weir
Alisha Weir, an 11-year-old from Dublin when she was cast, had first caught attention singing on Irish television's Late Late Toy Show.
Q 30On which streaming service did the 2022 film Matilda the Musical arrive in the United States?
Netflix
Netflix, which had bought the whole Roald Dahl Story Company the year before, streamed it from Christmas Day 2022 after a short American cinema run.