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60 free Roald Dahl trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Roald Dahl trivia quiz covers the whole of a very strange life, not just the books on the classroom shelf. The easy questions cover the titles every child knows, the country he was born in, the language he spoke at home, the explorer he was named after and the illustrator who drew his worlds. From there it moves through the biography: the dead mouse in the gobstopper jar, the Cadbury test boxes at Repton, the Shell job in Tanganyika, the Gladiator crash in the Libyan desert, the dogfights over Athens and the intelligence work in wartime Washington alongside Ian Fleming. The harder end covers the Hitchcock episodes, the three Edgar Awards, the Bond screenplay, the valve he helped invent for children with hydrocephalus, the honour he turned down, the words in the Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary, what he was buried with, and the £500 million Netflix deal. Fans of Matilda, The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will find plenty on how those books came to be. Every answer was checked against Dahl's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our children's books and Willy Wonka quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which country was Roald Dahl born?
Wales
He was born at Villa Marie in Llandaff, Cardiff, and a plaza in Cardiff Bay is now named after him.
Q 02Dahl's parents were immigrants from which country?
Norway
He spent most childhood summers with his mother's family there, and his first language was Norwegian.
Q 03Dahl was named after which famous explorer?
Roald Amundsen
Amundsen had beaten Scott to the South Pole in 1911, five years before Dahl was born.
Q 04Which children's author, his childhood idol, did the six-year-old Dahl meet at her Lake District home?
Beatrix Potter
The meeting at Hill Top was dramatised in the 2020 TV film Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse.
Q 05In the 'Great Mouse Plot of 1924', eight-year-old Dahl and his friends put a dead mouse in a jar of what?
Gobstoppers
The 'mean and loathsome' shopkeeper Mrs Pratchett later inspired one of the villains in Matilda.
Q 06Which Matilda villain was inspired by Mrs Pratchett, the sweet-shop owner from Dahl's childhood?
Miss Trunchbull
A prank in Trunchbull's water jug echoes the mouse plot; Emma Thompson played her in the 2022 musical film.
Q 07What is the title of Dahl's autobiography about his childhood?
Boy
He also recorded his one unhappy Norwegian memory there: having his adenoids removed without anaesthetic at about eight.
Q 08How tall was Dahl as an adult?
6 ft 6 in
He captained the squash team at Repton and also played cricket, football and golf.
Q 09Which chocolate company sent new bars to Dahl's school for testing, inspiring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
Cadbury
Dahl dreamed of inventing a bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury himself.
Q 10After school, Dahl joined which oil company and was posted to East Africa?
Shell
He was the youngest of the tiny team of Englishmen running the company in Tanganyika, and met black mambas and lions on his rounds.
Q 11Which obsolete biplane fighter was Dahl flying when he crashed in the Libyan desert in 1940?
Gloster Gladiator
He had received no combat training on the type; an inquiry later found he had been sent to entirely the wrong location.
Q 12For how long was Dahl blind after his 1940 crash fractured his skull?
Six weeks
In hospital in Alexandria he fell in love with a nurse's voice, and out of love once he could see her.
Q 13Dahl believed which event was the source of his creative genius?
His head injury in the desert crash
He wrote about the crash in his very first published story.
Q 21What was Dahl's first children's book, published in 1943?
The Gremlins
Eleanor Roosevelt read it to her grandchildren and Walt Disney commissioned a film that was never made.
Q 22Which Hollywood actress did Dahl marry in 1953?
Patricia Neal
The marriage lasted 30 years; the couple were played by Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde in a 1981 film.
Q 23Dahl helped develop the Wade-Dahl-Till valve to treat which condition, after his son Theo was hit by a taxi?
Hydrocephalus
Built with a hydraulic engineer and a Great Ormond Street neurosurgeon, the shunt valve was used on almost 3,000 children.
Q 14Dahl flew his first aerial combat in April 1941, alone over the city of Chalcis, in which country?
Greece
The RAF had only 18 combat aircraft in Greece at the time; Dahl shot down a Ju 88 on each of his first two days.
Q 15How many confirmed aerial victories did Dahl score, qualifying him as a flying ace?
Five
Post-war research cross-referenced with Axis records confirmed the tally; he may have scored more in the chaotic Battle of Athens.
Q 16In 1942 Dahl was posted to Washington, D.C. in what role?
Assistant air attaché
He hated it at first, calling it 'a most ungodly unimportant job' after coming straight from the war.
Q 17Which British novelist asked Dahl to jot down RAF anecdotes, then published them as Dahl's first story?
C. S. Forester
Dahl called it 'A Piece of Cake'; The Saturday Evening Post retitled it 'Shot Down Over Libya' even though he was never shot down.
Q 18How much did The Saturday Evening Post pay Dahl for his first published story in 1942?
US$1,000
That was worth roughly $20,000 in today's money, and launched his writing career.
Q 19Which future James Bond author worked alongside Dahl promoting Britain's interests in wartime America?
Ian Fleming
Dahl later wrote the screenplay for the Bond film You Only Live Twice, adapted from Fleming's novel.
Q 20Dahl passed intelligence to the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, who was known by what codename?
Intrepid
Stephenson's British Security Coordination was part of MI6; when embassy officials sent Dahl home, Stephenson sent him back with a promotion.
Q 24Roald Dahl's eldest daughter died aged seven in 1962 from complications of which disease?
Measles
He wrote 'Measles: A Dangerous Illness' in 1988 urging parents to vaccinate their children.
Q 25To whom is The BFG dedicated?
His late daughter Olivia
The book came out in 1982, twenty years after her death.
Q 26The heroine of The BFG is named after which member of Dahl's family?
His granddaughter
Sophie Dahl went on to become a model, author and cookbook writer.
Q 27What was the name of Dahl's home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, from 1954 until his death?
Gipsy House
His second wife Felicity moved in after their 1983 wedding at Brixton Town Hall.
Q 28Which honour did Dahl turn down in 1986, reportedly holding out for a knighthood?
An OBE
He appears on Wikipedia's list of people who have declined a British honour.
Q 29Dahl's The Vicar of Nibbleswicke is about a clergyman with a fictitious form of which condition?
Dyslexia
The vicar says words backwards; Dahl donated the rights to the Dyslexia Institute in London.
Q 30How many Edgar Awards did the Mystery Writers of America give Dahl for his macabre adult stories?
Three
They came in 1954 for Someone Like You, 1959 for 'The Landlady' and 1980 for a TV episode based on 'Skin'.