Fairy Tales Quiz
Grimm, Andersen and Perrault: 15 questions on the fairy tales that were far darker before Disney.
Which Danish writer created The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling and The Emperor's New Clothes?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen published more than 150 fairy tales between 1835 and 1872, and unlike the Grimms he invented most of them rather than collecting them from folk tradition.
Andersen's birthday, 2 April, is celebrated every year as International Children's Book Day, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award is the top prize for children's authors.
In which fairy tale must a miller's daughter spin straw into gold with the help of a strange little man?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Rumpelstiltskin
In the Grimm tale Rumpelstiltskin, the little man spins the straw into gold in return for the girl's firstborn child, and she escapes the bargain only by discovering his name.
In the Grimms' final version he tears himself in two in his rage, a far grislier ending than the simple disappearance in many picture books.
In which tale by Charles Perrault does a clever cat pass his poor master off as the Marquis of Carabas?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Puss in Boots
In Puss in Boots the cat uses a pair of boots, a sack and a string of lies about the Marquis of Carabas to win his master a castle and a princess.
An earlier version of the story appears in Giambattista Basile's Italian collection the Pentamerone from the 1630s, decades before Perrault published his in 1697.
Disney's Frozen was loosely inspired by which Hans Christian Andersen tale?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
The Snow Queen
Frozen grew out of decades of attempts at Disney to adapt The Snow Queen, Andersen's 1844 tale of a girl named Gerda searching for her friend Kai, whose heart has been pierced by a splinter of enchanted mirror.
Elsa was written as a villain for most of the film's development until the song Let It Go convinced the team to make her sympathetic.
In Charles Perrault's tale, what does Bluebeard forbid his new wife to do while he is away?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Open one particular room
Bluebeard hands over every key but forbids his wife to open one small room, which turns out to hold the bodies of his previous wives, and the key becomes stained with blood that will not wash off.
Bluebeard is often linked to the fifteenth-century French nobleman Gilles de Rais, though the folk tale is older than the connection.
In Hansel and Gretel, what do the children first drop to mark their way home through the forest?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
White pebbles
The first time they are abandoned, Hansel drops white pebbles that shine in the moonlight and leads Gretel home; it is only on the second attempt, with breadcrumbs, that the birds eat the trail.
In the Grimms' 1812 version the children are abandoned by their own mother; later editions changed her to a stepmother.
What happens to the mermaid at the end of Hans Christian Andersen's original The Little Mermaid?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
She becomes a daughter of the air
Having refused to kill the prince to save herself, the mermaid dissolves into sea foam at dawn but rises as a daughter of the air, a spirit who can earn an immortal soul through 300 years of good deeds.
The famous Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen harbour was unveiled in 1913 and has been beheaded by vandals twice.
In the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, what do the two stepsisters do to try to make the golden slipper fit?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Cut off part of their feet
One stepsister slices off her toe and the other her heel, and each is exposed when two doves point out the blood filling the slipper; at the wedding the doves then peck out the sisters' eyes.
In the Grimm tale there is no fairy godmother: Cinderella's dresses come from a hazel tree growing on her mother's grave.
In the Grimm tale The Frog Prince, what does the princess do that turns the frog back into a prince?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
She throws him against a wall
In the Grimms' text the disgusted princess hurls the frog against her bedroom wall, and he falls to the floor transformed into a prince; the kiss first appeared in later English retellings.
The story's original title adds the prince's faithful servant, Iron Henry, who had iron bands fitted round his heart to stop it breaking with grief.
How does Charles Perrault's 1697 version of Little Red Riding Hood end?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
The wolf eats her and the story ends
Perrault's wolf eats both grandmother and girl and the tale stops there, followed by a moral warning young ladies about charming wolves; the rescuing huntsman was added by the Brothers Grimm more than a century later.
In the Grimm version the wolf's belly is filled with stones, and a second wolf is later drowned in a trough of sausage water.
In the Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, how is the wicked queen punished at the end?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
She dances in red-hot iron shoes
At Snow White's wedding the queen is forced to put on iron slippers heated red-hot in a fire and dance in them until she drops dead.
Snow White is not woken by a kiss in the Grimm tale: a servant stumbles while carrying her coffin and the piece of poisoned apple is jolted from her throat.
In the Grimm version of Rapunzel, what happens to the prince when he leaps from the tower?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
He is blinded by thorns
The prince jumps from the tower in despair, lands in a thicket of thorns and is blinded, then wanders for years until Rapunzel's tears fall into his eyes and restore his sight.
The Grimms cut the detail that Rapunzel's dress grew tight, a hint that she was pregnant, from later editions to make the tale suitable for children.
Under what title did Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first publish their famous collection of tales in 1812?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Children's and Household Tales
Kinder- und Hausmärchen, or Children's and Household Tales, appeared on 20 December 1812 with 86 stories, and grew through seven editions to around 200 tales by 1857.
The other three titles belong to Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen and the Scottish collector Andrew Lang respectively.
In Charles Perrault's version of Sleeping Beauty, what is the prince's mother?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
An ogress
Perrault's story continues after the wedding: the prince's mother is an ogress who orders the cook to serve up Sleeping Beauty's children, and then the princess herself, while her son is away at war.
In Giambattista Basile's earlier version, Sun, Moon, and Talia, the sleeping heroine is not even woken by a kiss but by the birth of her twins.
Which Italian writer's collection, published in Naples in the 1630s, contains early versions of Cinderella, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Giambattista Basile
Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone, published after his death in 1634 and 1636, is the first European book made up entirely of fairy tales and was mined by both Perrault and the Grimms.
Basile wrote in Neapolitan dialect under the anagram pen name Gian Alesio Abbatutis, and his Rapunzel is called Petrosinella, meaning little parsley.
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All Literature quizzes →About the Fairy Tales Quiz
In the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to fit the slipper, Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood is simply eaten, and Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid never gets her prince. The stories we know from Disney were polished from something much stranger.
These 15 questions start with the authors and tales everyone knows, then test how well you know the original endings: the Frog Prince who was thrown rather than kissed, the queen who danced in red-hot iron shoes, and the Italian collection that recorded Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty two centuries before the Grimms. It suits anyone who read these stories as a child and suspects they were never quite as sweet as they seemed.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Who were the Brothers Grimm?
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were German scholars who collected folk tales and published them as Children's and Household Tales from 1812, revising the collection repeatedly until 1857.
Did Hans Christian Andersen collect folk tales like the Grimms?
Mostly not. Andersen invented most of his tales himself, including The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Snow Queen and The Emperor's New Clothes, though a few were based on stories he heard as a child.
Why are the original fairy tales so violent?
They were told to adults as well as children and worked as warnings, so punishments were harsh and vivid. Later editors, including the Grimms themselves, softened them for family reading.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Which Danish writer created The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling and The Emperor's New Clothes?
Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen published more than 150 fairy tales between 1835 and 1872, and unlike the Grimms he invented most of them rather than collecting them from folk tradition. Andersen's birthday, 2 April, is celebrated every year as International Children's Book Day, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award is the top prize for children's authors. - In which fairy tale must a miller's daughter spin straw into gold with the help of a strange little man?
Rumpelstiltskin In the Grimm tale Rumpelstiltskin, the little man spins the straw into gold in return for the girl's firstborn child, and she escapes the bargain only by discovering his name. In the Grimms' final version he tears himself in two in his rage, a far grislier ending than the simple disappearance in many picture books. - In which tale by Charles Perrault does a clever cat pass his poor master off as the Marquis of Carabas?
Puss in Boots In Puss in Boots the cat uses a pair of boots, a sack and a string of lies about the Marquis of Carabas to win his master a castle and a princess. An earlier version of the story appears in Giambattista Basile's Italian collection the Pentamerone from the 1630s, decades before Perrault published his in 1697. - Disney's Frozen was loosely inspired by which Hans Christian Andersen tale?
The Snow Queen Frozen grew out of decades of attempts at Disney to adapt The Snow Queen, Andersen's 1844 tale of a girl named Gerda searching for her friend Kai, whose heart has been pierced by a splinter of enchanted mirror. Elsa was written as a villain for most of the film's development until the song Let It Go convinced the team to make her sympathetic. - In Charles Perrault's tale, what does Bluebeard forbid his new wife to do while he is away?
Open one particular room Bluebeard hands over every key but forbids his wife to open one small room, which turns out to hold the bodies of his previous wives, and the key becomes stained with blood that will not wash off. Bluebeard is often linked to the fifteenth-century French nobleman Gilles de Rais, though the folk tale is older than the connection. - In Hansel and Gretel, what do the children first drop to mark their way home through the forest?
White pebbles The first time they are abandoned, Hansel drops white pebbles that shine in the moonlight and leads Gretel home; it is only on the second attempt, with breadcrumbs, that the birds eat the trail. In the Grimms' 1812 version the children are abandoned by their own mother; later editions changed her to a stepmother. - What happens to the mermaid at the end of Hans Christian Andersen's original The Little Mermaid?
She becomes a daughter of the air Having refused to kill the prince to save herself, the mermaid dissolves into sea foam at dawn but rises as a daughter of the air, a spirit who can earn an immortal soul through 300 years of good deeds. The famous Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen harbour was unveiled in 1913 and has been beheaded by vandals twice. - In the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, what do the two stepsisters do to try to make the golden slipper fit?
Cut off part of their feet One stepsister slices off her toe and the other her heel, and each is exposed when two doves point out the blood filling the slipper; at the wedding the doves then peck out the sisters' eyes. In the Grimm tale there is no fairy godmother: Cinderella's dresses come from a hazel tree growing on her mother's grave. - In the Grimm tale The Frog Prince, what does the princess do that turns the frog back into a prince?
She throws him against a wall In the Grimms' text the disgusted princess hurls the frog against her bedroom wall, and he falls to the floor transformed into a prince; the kiss first appeared in later English retellings. The story's original title adds the prince's faithful servant, Iron Henry, who had iron bands fitted round his heart to stop it breaking with grief. - How does Charles Perrault's 1697 version of Little Red Riding Hood end?
The wolf eats her and the story ends Perrault's wolf eats both grandmother and girl and the tale stops there, followed by a moral warning young ladies about charming wolves; the rescuing huntsman was added by the Brothers Grimm more than a century later. In the Grimm version the wolf's belly is filled with stones, and a second wolf is later drowned in a trough of sausage water. - In the Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, how is the wicked queen punished at the end?
She dances in red-hot iron shoes At Snow White's wedding the queen is forced to put on iron slippers heated red-hot in a fire and dance in them until she drops dead. Snow White is not woken by a kiss in the Grimm tale: a servant stumbles while carrying her coffin and the piece of poisoned apple is jolted from her throat. - In the Grimm version of Rapunzel, what happens to the prince when he leaps from the tower?
He is blinded by thorns The prince jumps from the tower in despair, lands in a thicket of thorns and is blinded, then wanders for years until Rapunzel's tears fall into his eyes and restore his sight. The Grimms cut the detail that Rapunzel's dress grew tight, a hint that she was pregnant, from later editions to make the tale suitable for children. - Under what title did Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first publish their famous collection of tales in 1812?
Children's and Household Tales Kinder- und Hausmärchen, or Children's and Household Tales, appeared on 20 December 1812 with 86 stories, and grew through seven editions to around 200 tales by 1857. The other three titles belong to Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen and the Scottish collector Andrew Lang respectively. - In Charles Perrault's version of Sleeping Beauty, what is the prince's mother?
An ogress Perrault's story continues after the wedding: the prince's mother is an ogress who orders the cook to serve up Sleeping Beauty's children, and then the princess herself, while her son is away at war. In Giambattista Basile's earlier version, Sun, Moon, and Talia, the sleeping heroine is not even woken by a kiss but by the birth of her twins. - Which Italian writer's collection, published in Naples in the 1630s, contains early versions of Cinderella, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty?
Giambattista Basile Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone, published after his death in 1634 and 1636, is the first European book made up entirely of fairy tales and was mined by both Perrault and the Grimms. Basile wrote in Neapolitan dialect under the anagram pen name Gian Alesio Abbatutis, and his Rapunzel is called Petrosinella, meaning little parsley.
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