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50 free The Hobbit trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
44 free The Hobbit trivia questions with answers. The Hobbit began as a sentence scribbled on a blank exam paper and became one of the best-selling books ever written, with a ten-year-old's book report to thank for its publication. Ninety years on it has spawned an animated TV film, a three-part blockbuster trilogy and a farm in New Zealand that never took its hobbit-holes down. This quiz covers the book first: Bilbo's hiring as a burglar, the thirteen dwarves, Thror's map, the trolls, Rivendell, the riddle game and the ring, Beorn, Mirkwood's spiders and wood-elves, Lake-town, Smaug's weak spot, Bard's black arrow, the Arkenstone and the Battle of Five Armies, plus how Tolkien later rewrote Gollum to fit The Lord of the Rings. Then it turns to the adaptations: the 1977 Rankin/Bass special, and Peter Jackson's films with Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage and Benedict Cumberbatch, from the 48-frames-per-second gamble to the invented elf Tauriel. Easy questions for anyone who has read it once, hard ones for those who know the Dvergatal. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation.
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Q 01In which year was The Hobbit first published by George Allen & Unwin?
1937
The first print run of 1,500 copies sold out by December on the strength of the reviews; a signed first edition has since fetched over £60,000.
Q 02Whose favourable report persuaded Allen & Unwin to publish The Hobbit?
The publisher's 10-year-old son
Rayner Unwin was paid a shilling per report; he later said that in those days 'if I said it was good enough to publish, it was published'.
Q 03Where did Tolkien say he wrote the line 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit'?
On a blank exam page he was marking
He was grading School Certificate papers at the time; the story was finished by late 1932 and lent to friends including C.S. Lewis.
Q 04How many dwarves make up Thorin's company that Bilbo joins?
Thirteen
Gandalf tricks Bilbo into hosting them all for supper; their names come from the Dvergatal, the dwarf-list in the Old Norse poem Völuspá.
Q 05What role does Gandalf propose that Bilbo fill on the expedition?
Burglar
The dumbfounded hobbit is later called 'thief' by both Gollum and Smaug, echoing the cup-thief of Beowulf.
Q 06Which of these is NOT one of the dwarves in Thorin's company?
Gimli
Gimli belongs to The Lord of the Rings; his father Gloin is in Thorin's company, along with Dwalin, Balin, Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Bifur, Bofur and Bombur.
Q 07The dwarves' lost kingdom under the Lonely Mountain is called what?
Erebor
Smaug pillaged it in the days of Thorin's grandfather Thror and sleeps on the hoard; the men of Dale fled to build Lake-town on stilts.
Q 08The company's first peril is three trolls arguing over how to cook them. What becomes of the trolls?
They turn to stone at dawn
Gandalf keeps them bickering until sunrise, a fairy-tale motif; the trolls' cache yields Orcrist, Glamdring and Bilbo's little blade Sting.
Q 09Where does Elrond reveal further secrets hidden in Thror's map?
Rivendell
The moon-letters can be read only by the light of a moon of the same shape and season as the one they were written under.
Q 10Lost in the goblin tunnels, Bilbo plays what kind of game with Gollum, his life at stake?
A riddle contest
Gollum's riddles come from old sources and Bilbo's from nursery books; if Bilbo lost, his life was forfeit, and if he won Gollum would show him the way out.
Q 11In the first edition of The Hobbit, how did the riddle game in the tunnels end?
The loser gave up the ring willingly
Tolkien rewrote the chapter for the 1951 second edition to fit the One Ring's corrupting power; The Lord of the Rings explains the old version as a lie Bilbo told under the Ring's influence.
Q 12The chapter in which Bilbo meets Gollum is titled what?
Riddles in the Dark
Tolkien sent Unwin the revised chapter as a sample of changes needed to align the book with The Lord of the Rings, then heard nothing back for years.
Q 13Gollum was named for 'a horrible swallowing noise in his throat'. What was he originally called?
Q 21Tolkien called the dragon's name 'a low philological jest', the past tense of a verb meaning what?
To squeeze through a hole
He explained it in a 1938 letter to The Observer; the Old English 'smeag' also means 'penetrating' or 'crafty'.
Q 22Which heirloom jewel of Thorin's family does Bilbo secretly hand to the besiegers to prevent a war?
The Arkenstone
Thorin banishes him as a traitor; Tolkien's invented etymologies link 'Arkenstone' to 'Silmaril', another jewel that breeds ruinous greed.
Q 23Whose army arrives from the Iron Hills to reinforce Thorin just before the Battle of Five Armies?
Dain's
Sméagol
He murdered his cousin Déagol for the ring, which stretched his life far beyond natural limits.
Q 14Beorn, the 'skin-changer' in The Hobbit, can take the form of what animal?
A great black bear
His name and those of Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki all mean 'bear'; he keeps talking animals and eats no meat from his herds.
Q 15Which dwarf falls into Mirkwood's enchanted river and must be carried, unconscious, for days?
Bombur
The fattest of the company, he sleeps through the crossing and wakes hungry, dreaming of feasts.
Q 16Before it fell under the shadow of the dark sorcerer at Dol Guldur, Mirkwood had been known by what name?
Greenwood the Great
The word Mirkwood itself comes from the Myrkviðr of Norse legend, and Tolkien said he had not invented it but borrowed 'a very ancient name'.
Q 17In Mirkwood, Bilbo rescues the dwarves twice: first from giant spiders and then from whose dungeons?
The Wood-elves
He smuggles them out inside barrels floated down the river to Lake-town, one of the book's most famous set-pieces.
Q 18Bilbo names his elvish blade after using it against the spiders. What does he call it?
Sting
Critics see the naming as Bilbo's entry into the ancient world of named swords found in Beowulf; the blade later passes to Frodo.
Q 19How does Bard learn about the gap in Smaug's armour?
A thrush tells him
The bird overheard Bilbo describing the bare patch on the dragon's jewelled belly; men of Dale could understand thrush-speech.
Q 20Bard kills Smaug with a family heirloom called what?
The Black Arrow
Bard is a descendant of Girion, last lord of Dale, whose city Smaug destroyed 171 years earlier; he becomes King of Dale afterwards.
Dain is Thorin's second cousin and becomes King under the Mountain after Thorin's death; Billy Connolly played him in the films.
Q 24Who kills the goblin general in the Battle of Five Armies, fighting in bear form?
Beorn
The eagles' arrival and Beorn's charge turn the battle; Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo before he dies.
Q 25What is buried with Thorin, and what is laid upon his tomb?
The Arkenstone, and the sword Orcrist
His nephews Fili and Kili also fall in the battle defending him; his epithet comes from a Norse dwarf-name meaning 'oaken shield'.
Q 26Tolkien took the dwarves' names, and Gandalf's, from a list of dwarves in which Old Norse poem?
Völuspá
The Dvergatal in the Poetic Edda has Thorin at stanza 12 and Oakenshield (Eikinskjaldi) at stanza 13; Gandalf was a dwarf-name there too.
Q 27When Bilbo finally gets home, what does he find happening at Bag End?
His possessions being auctioned off
He had been presumed dead; the return-and-stop-the-auction ending mirrors the Scouring of the Shire in the sequel's structure.
Q 28Which prize did The Hobbit win from the New York Herald Tribune?
Best juvenile fiction
It was also nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and W.H. Auden later called it one of the best children's stories of the century.
Q 29Who drew the ten black-and-white illustrations and the two endpaper maps in the first edition?
Tolkien himself
He also designed the dust jacket, whose runic border spells out the title, author and publisher in transliterated English.
Q 30Which Moomin creator illustrated the Swedish and Finnish editions of The Hobbit?
Tove Jansson
The book has been translated into more than sixty languages, and Douglas Anderson's Annotated Hobbit collects art from some 25 of them.