Multiple choice fairy tale trivia questions and answers in four rounds: what a fairy tale is, the tellers and collectors, the Brothers Grimm and their book, and Grimm tales by their German names.
Read the full guide
Grimm fairy tales trivia questions and answers
Two rounds are the Grimms'. The Brothers Grimm and their book asks its first title, how many stories each volume held and who drew the pictures. Grimm tales by their German names asks which tale is Aschenputtel, Rotkäppchen or Dornröschen.
The tales as written, not as filmed
No film, show or stage version is a question or a choice. Tellers and collectors runs from Basile and Perrault to the collectors of Norway, Russia and England.
Tips
Start a family table on Grimm tales by their German names: Aschenputtel and Rotkäppchen are easy to guess.
Questions and answers
Are these printable fairy tale trivia questions and answers?
Yes. After ten answers the end card shows Print question sheet, which prints questions with lettered choices. Print answer key is under More options and adds the reason for each answer.
What are some easy fairy tale trivia questions?
Which tale do the Grimms call Aschenputtel? When do fairy tales take place? What was the Grimms' book first called? The answers are Cinderella, once upon a time, and Children's and Household Tales.
How many tales did the Brothers Grimm publish?
The first volume of 1812 held 86 stories and the second, in 1815, held 70. By the seventh edition of 1857 the book had 200 tales and 10 children's legends.
How were the answers checked?
Each was read on October 3, 2026 in the English Wikipedia article Fairy tale or Grimms' Fairy Tales, linked under the question. Readings of what a tale means are not asked.
Fairy tales have ancient roots, older even than which Middle Eastern collection of magical tales?Answer: The Arabian Nights. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
The German word for a fairy tale, Märchen, comes from an old word "Mär". What did Mär mean?Answer: News or tale. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
How many "functions" did Vladimir Propp find in his analysis of the folktale?Answer: 31. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which feature did the scholar Steven Swann Jones name as the mark that sets fairy tales apart from other folktales?Answer: The presence of magic. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which index do folklorists use to classify fairy tales by type?Answer: The Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which of these is another name for a fairy tale?Answer: A wonder tale. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which stock phrase sets a fairy tale in no actual time?Answer: Once upon a time. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which tale appears to date from the Bronze Age, some 6,000 years ago?Answer: The Smith and the Devil. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which tale was traced back more than 5,000 years, to the split of Eastern and Western Indo-European?Answer: Jack and the Beanstalk. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Who first used the French name "conte de fées", fairy tale, in the late 17th century?Answer: Madame d'Aulnoy. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Tellers and collectors 10
The Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn collected the folklore of which two peoples?Answer: Albanian and Greek. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
In which of his fairy books did Andrew Lang include The Monkey's Heart?Answer: The Lilac Fairy Book. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
In which year did Charles Perrault fix the forms of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella?Answer: 1697. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Karel Jaromír Erben, a poet who lived from 1811 to 1870, published the folktales of which people?Answer: The Czechs. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Petre Ispirescu, a collector who followed the Brothers Grimm, gathered the tales of which country?Answer: Romania. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
What were the women of the French salons called who took up writing literary fairy tales?Answer: The précieuses. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which American collected Irish tales, first published in 1890?Answer: Jeremiah Curtin. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which English collector of fairy tales was first published in 1890?Answer: Joseph Jacobs. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which pair of Norwegians collected their country's folktales in the 1840s?Answer: Asbjørnsen and Moe. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
Which Russian collector of folktales followed the example of the Brothers Grimm?Answer: Alexander Afanasyev. Source: Wikipedia: Fairy tale
The Brothers Grimm and their book 12
At which university did Jacob Grimm begin to study law in 1802?Answer: Marburg. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
By its seventh edition of 1857, the Grimms' collection held 200 tales and ten of what?Answer: Children's Legends. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
By what title were Grimms' Fairy Tales originally known?Answer: Children's and Household Tales. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
The Grimms' "small edition" of 1825 was a selection for child readers. How many tales did it hold?Answer: 50. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
How many stories were in the second volume of Grimms' Fairy Tales, which followed in 1815?Answer: 70. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
In later editions of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel, the wicked mother of the first edition became what?Answer: A stepmother. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
In which year was the first volume of Grimms' Fairy Tales first published?Answer: 1812. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
On which UNESCO register is the Grimms' collection of tales listed?Answer: The Memory of the World Register. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
To which city did Jacob Grimm return in 1806, turning from law to German literature?Answer: Kassel. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
Which poet praised the Grimms' collection during World War II as one of the founding works of Western culture?Answer: W. H. Auden. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
Which two friends of the Brothers Grimm asked them to collect oral tales?Answer: Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
Who illustrated the small edition of Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1825?Answer: Ludwig Emil Grimm. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
Grimm tales by their German names 9
"Der Meisterdieb", tale 192, is about which kind of man?Answer: A master thief. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
"Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten" tells of the musicians of which town?Answer: Bremen. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
"Rotkäppchen" is the German title of which tale?Answer: Little Red Cap, or Little Red Riding Hood. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
Under which name does the sleeping princess appear in the Grimms, in the tale "Dornröschen"?Answer: Briar Rose. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
What does the title "Das Wasser des Lebens" mean?Answer: The Water of Life. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
What is the German title of Snow White?Answer: Schneewittchen. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
Which king has a tale named after him, "König Drosselbart"?Answer: King Thrushbeard. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
Which tale do the Grimms call "Aschenputtel"?Answer: Cinderella. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
Which tale stands first in the Grimms' collection, as KHM 1?Answer: The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich. Source: Wikipedia: Grimms' Fairy Tales
How this list was compiled
Written for this site; nothing was copied from another list. Questions and wrong choices are our own. Each explanation restates, in our own sentences, a fact from the English Wikipedia article named and linked beside the question (https://en.wikipedia.org, text under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license): Fairy tale and Grimms' Fairy Tales. The text of each article was fetched on October 2 or 3, 2026, and on October 3, 2026 the passage that states each fact was read in it before the question was kept. Left out on purpose: every film, show and stage version of a tale, books first published after 1930, readings of what a tale means, the passages on how the Grimms edited tales for children, and what other trivia sets on this site already ask (who wrote the Mother Goose tales, the Danish author of The Ugly Duckling, the little man who spins straw, the Grimms' dictionary, the tale behind the gingerbread house). Levels are our estimate: easy is fair for any table, medium suits people who know the subject, hard will stump most tables. Each question also carries the date its article was read (checkedOn). Licence: own work