Werewolf Trivia
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This werewolf trivia quiz has 98 free questions with answers and runs the whole history of the shapeshifter, from Lycaon being turned into a wolf by Zeus and the Neuri of Herodotus, through the werewolf trials of Peter Stumpp and Gilles Garnier and the Beast of Gévaudan, to Wagner the Wehr-Wolf, Remus Lupin, Jacob Black and Discworld's Angua. The second half is for film and TV fans: Werewolf of London, The Wolf Man, An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers, Underworld, both Wolfman remakes, Being Human, True Blood, MTV's Teen Wolf and Marvel's Werewolf by Night, plus the Werewolf party game, Skyrim and a couple of moon-themed songs. Every answer was checked against a reference page before publishing, so you can settle arguments with it. Fifty questions, graded from easy to expert, free to play, with an explanation after each one.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01'Werewolf' descends from wer(e)wulf, a compound from which historical language in which wer meant 'man'?
Old English
Old English werwulf joined wer, 'man', to wulf; wer later dropped out of the language altogether, so the compound has outlived the word it was built from.
Q 02The word 'lycanthropy' comes from an Ancient Greek term meaning what?
Wolf-man
Wolf-man is the literal sense, from Greek lykos, 'wolf', and anthropos, 'man'; Ovid supplied the best-known ancient case, a king whom Jupiter turns into a wolf.
Q 03Which ancient historian reported that the Neuri were said to turn into wolves once a year?
Herodotus
Herodotus recorded the claim in Book 4 of his Histories, attributing it to the Scythians and to Greeks settled in Scythia, and said he did not believe it himself.
Q 04Which Roman work has a soldier urinate in a circle around his clothes and turn into a wolf?
Petronius' Satyricon
Petronius' Satyricon gives the tale to a guest at Trimalchio's dinner: a servant spears the wolf in the neck, and next morning the soldier is found in bed with a doctor dressing the wound.
Q 05In Marie de France's 12th-century lai Bisclavret, how does the knight's wife trap him in wolf form?
Steals his hidden clothing
Bisclavret cannot change back without his clothes, so his wife steals his hidden clothing with a knight's help; the king later takes the strangely noble wolf into his court.
Q 06When Bisclavret finally gets revenge on his treacherous wife, which body part does the wolf tear off?
Her nose
The wolf bites off her nose, and the lai adds that many of the wife's female descendants were born without noses afterwards.
Q 07What were the Norse warriors who fought in wolfskins, cousins of the berserkers, called?
Ulfheðnar
Ulfheðnar wore a wolf's pelt over their mail and appear in the sagas as the elite guard of Harald Fairhair, Norway's first king; the name means roughly 'wolf-skin wearers'.
Q 08Peter Stumpp, the 'Werewolf of Bedburg' executed in 1589, said the Devil gave him what to transform?
A magical belt
Stumpp said a magical belt, or girdle, from the Devil turned him into 'a greedy, devouring wolf'; after his execution his head was displayed on a pole beside a wooden wolf.
Q 09Which king's gun-bearer hunted the Beast of Gévaudan in the 1760s?
Louis XV
Louis XV sent François Antoine, who shot a huge wolf in 1765 and had it stuffed for Versailles, but the killings soon resumed and went on for nearly two more years.
Q 10Which local hunter is credited with shooting the final Beast of Gévaudan at Mont Mouchet?
Jean Chastel
Jean Chastel shot it during a hunt got up by a local marquis; the story that he used silver bullets cast from medals of the Virgin Mary is a 20th-century novelist's invention.
Q 11In Ovid's Metamorphoses, why does Jupiter turn the Arcadian king Lycaon into a wolf?
Served him human flesh
Served him human flesh: Lycaon wanted to test whether his guest was truly a god, and Ovid has him flee howling into the fields, his clothes turning to hair.
Q 12Wolfsbane, the poisonous plant of werewolf lore, is also widely known by which common name?
Monkshood
Monkshood, named for its hooded flowers, is the same plant; its other name is thought to come from hunters using its poison on arrows and bait to kill wolves.
Q 13In psychiatry, clinical lycanthropy is classified as which kind of symptom?
A delusion
Q 21The 1985 werewolf film Silver Bullet is based on a novella by which author?
Stephen King
Stephen King adapted his own novella, Cycle of the Werewolf, for the screen; the title is the nickname of the motorised wheelchair that young Marty's uncle builds him.
Q 22In Werewolf of London (1935), where is botanist Wilfred Glendon bitten while hunting a rare flower?
Tibet
Glendon is bitten in Tibet while gathering the mariphasa, a plant said to bloom by moonlight and the only thing that can hold off his transformations.
Q 23Which actor played the botanist-turned-werewolf in Universal's Werewolf of London (1935)?
Henry Hull
Henry Hull played Glendon; Jack Pierce, who created Karloff's Frankenstein look, designed a lighter makeup for him, and Pierce's fuller design was used for The Wolf Man in 1941.
A delusion: some psychiatrists thought the syndrome extinct until a 1988 review at McLean Hospital turned up twelve cases, lasting anywhere from one day to 13 years.
Q 14Which actor played high-school werewolf Scott Howard in the 1985 comedy Teen Wolf?
Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox's werewolf comedy was a hit that spawned a cartoon series, a sequel and, decades later, a television drama.
Q 15Whose 1857 novel The Wolf Leader follows Thibault, a shoemaker who makes a pact with an upright-walking wolf?
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas set The Wolf Leader around 1780 in Villers-Cotterêts, his home town, building it on a folk tale he heard as a child from the gamekeeper Mocquet.
Q 16Which 1933 novel did Guy Endore write about a young man cursed with lycanthropy?
The Werewolf of Paris
The Werewolf of Paris follows Bertrand Caillet through the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune; Hammer's 1961 film of it, The Curse of the Werewolf, moved the story to 18th-century Spain.
Q 17Which werewolf bit Remus Lupin as a child in the Harry Potter series?
Fenrir Greyback
Fenrir Greyback attacked Lupin as a small boy to punish his father; Lupin's schoolfriends later became Animagi to keep him company and nicknamed him Moony.
Q 18Which actor played Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter films?
David Thewlis
David Thewlis played Lupin from Prisoner of Azkaban onward, the year Lupin taught Defence Against the Dark Arts and coached Harry to cast a Patronus.
Q 19Twilight's Jacob Black, the wolf shapeshifter played by Taylor Lautner, belongs to which tribe?
Quileute
Jacob is Quileute and lives on the tribe's reservation at La Push, Washington; Stephenie Meyer said she originally intended him as a minor plot device.
Q 20In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the werewolf Angua von Überwald serves in which organisation?
Ankh-Morpork City Watch
Angua joined the Ankh-Morpork City Watch in Men at Arms, keeps a strict vegetarian diet in human form, and falls in love with Carrot Ironfoundersson.
Q 24Who played Larry Talbot in Universal's The Wolf Man (1941)?
Lon Chaney Jr.
Lon Chaney Jr.'s Talbot returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales, and is finally beaten to death by his father with his own silver-headed cane.
Q 25Which screenwriter invented the 'Even a man who is pure in heart...' verse for The Wolf Man (1941)?
Curt Siodmak
Curt Siodmak made the verse up, along with the pentagram that marks the werewolf's next victim; the sequels kept reciting it, with a new last line about the full moon.
Q 26Who played Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)?
Bela Lugosi
Bela Lugosi played the Monster as blind and talking, but the studio cut all his dialogue after a test screening, so the finished film never explains his groping walk.
Q 27Which pub do the American backpackers enter on the moors at the start of An American Werewolf in London?
The Slaughtered Lamb
The Slaughtered Lamb's regulars turn hostile when asked about the star on the wall, then send the pair off with a warning to keep to the road and beware the moon.
Q 28Whose transformation effects in An American Werewolf in London won the first Oscar for Best Makeup?
Rick Baker
Rick Baker's transformation work won the inaugural Best Makeup award, a category introduced for 1981 films; the soundtrack is built almost entirely from songs with 'moon' in the title.
Q 29Who wrote and directed An American Werewolf in London?
John Landis
John Landis wrote the first draft in 1969 while working as a production assistant in Yugoslavia, then waited over a decade because backers found it too funny for horror.
Q 30In The Howling (1981), Karen White is sent to recover at a secluded rural retreat called what?
The Colony
Dr. Waggner's retreat, the Colony, hides a werewolf community; Rob Bottin built Eddie Quist's transformation with air bladders under latex, and the film adapts Gary Brandner's 1977 novel.