Grimm Tales Trivia Quiz

Answer: A golden ball

Also known as "The Frog Prince", KHM 001 is properly translated as "The Frog King" from the German title "Der Froschkönig". A secondary title of "Iron Heinrich" is also attached to the story, for the Frog King's faithful servant.

For retrieving the golden ball, the princess promises the frog that she will take him back with him to her castle, let him eat from her plate, and sleep in her bed. Once she gets her ball back, however, she simply runs off. The next day, the frog shows up at the castle demanding his due, and the princess' father (the King) insists that she make good on her deal.

In spite of the princess' petulance and disgust at the frog, things turn out 'happily ever after'. She breaks the spell on the ugly frog when she throws him against the wall, and even with all of her mistreatment of him, the now handsome prince takes her with him to his kingdom.

Answer: He throws himself from the tower.

"Rapunzel" (KHM 012) is perhaps a bit more of a mature tale than is often fully told. The prince makes his clandestine evening visits for some time (while Frau Gothel visits during the day), bringing lengths of silk to slowly construct a ladder for a future escape. There is no mention of what else they do during his visits.

When Rapunzel accidentally lets slip that she has been having another visitor, the sorceress cuts off Rapunzel's hair in a rage and banishes her to "a wilderness where she suffered greatly." When the prince comes and the sorceress lets down Rapunzel's hair at his call, he climbs up. The sorceress gloats at him and exclaims, "The cat got her, and will scratch your eyes out as well."

In grief, the prince throws himself off the tower, blinding himself on the thorns at the base. After a long time wandering, he comes across Rapunzel in the wilderness, where she is living with twin children (now we know what they were doing!). Her tears heal his blindness, and they live happily ever after.

Answer: Crayfish shells

In "Hansel and Gretel" (KHM 015), the family is victim of a poor economy when their woodcutter father is convinced by their stepmother to leave his children in the woods to die, rather than have all of them starve. They have to do it twice after Hansel foils their plans the first time. Unable to repeat his trick with the shiny pebbles a second time, Hansel and Gretel get lost in the woods, finding their way to the witch's edible house a few days later.

When the witch is ready to eat Hansel, she also tries to trick Gretel into checking the heat level of the oven by crawling inside, thinking that she can eat them both at once. Gretel, however, tricks the witch instead, and locks her into the oven, killing her and gaining their freedom.

Of course, they find all sorts of riches in the cottage, and return to their father to find that their stepmother has died in their absence.

Answer: Flies

The hero of "The Valiant Little Tailor" (KHM 020) only kills the seven flies when they won't leave his bread and jam alone (they apparently don't understand German, according to the story). All proud of his accomplishment, he makes his banner, wraps it around his body, and goes out into the world.

In spite of the misleading claim, the tailor manages to use a real ingenuity to trick a giant, then earn a king's daughter (and half the kingdom) by killing two giants (or rather, tricking them into killing each other), and by capturing a unicorn and a giant boar.

Answer: A white bird

White birds figure quite prominently in the Grimm version of "Cindarella" (KHM 021). After her mother dies, Cinderella plants a twig of hazel on her grave, which grows into a beautiful tree. Three times a day, she would visit the grave/tree and pray and cry, and a "white bird came to the tree every time, and whenever she expressed a wish, the bird would throw down to her what she had wished for."

Later, when Cinderella wants to go to the king's festival, her stepmother requires her to pick a bowlful of scattered lentils from the hearth's ashes. A number of white birds help her complete the task (and again, a second time), but her stepmother still won't let her go. Afterwards, a wish beneath the hazel tree brings a beautiful dress.

After three days of attending the festival and dancing with the prince, Cinderella loses a GOLD slipper, which the prince uses to finally track her down. At their wedding, her two stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by two white pigeons.

Answer: True

How the wolf manages to stay asleep while the huntsman cuts his belly open (with a pair of scissors) is beyond me, but the wolf stays asleep through the whole ordeal, and does not wake up until after Little Red Cap refills his stomach with stones. When he wakes up, he tries to jump up and run away, but the weight of the rocks kills him dead. Then the huntsman skins the wolf, and everyone goes home happy.

"Little Red Cap" (KHM 026) also includes a second tale with another wolf, only this time Little Red Cap is not fooled by the wolf and goes straight to her grandmother's house. The two then devise a plot to drown the wolf in the trough.

Answer: False

Each of "The Bremen Town Musicians" (KHM 027) is facing death in their current homes, due to age or ineffectiveness, and the first one to leave (the donkey) convinces each of the others in turn to join him in his plan to become a musician in Bremen.

Unable to reach Bremen in one night, the four travelers prepare themselves for a night in the woods, but they spot a light. Investigating, they discover a house full of robbers, and come up with a scheme to scare them away. Later, the robbers try to return, but the one that goes in the house is scratched by the cat, bitten by the dog, kicked by the donkey, and 'cock-a-doodle-dooed' by the rooster.

The robber interprets this as, "a horrible witch sitting in the house, she blew at me and scratched my face with her long fingers. And there is a man with a knife standing in front of the door, and he stabbed me in the leg. And a black monster is lying in the yard, and it struck at me with a wooden club. And the judge is sitting up there on the roof, and he was calling out, 'Bring the rascal here.'"

After that, the robbers never come back, and the four friends just stay in their new house together, never actually making it to Bremen.

Answer: A wall of thorns

The curse in "Little Brier-Rose" (KHM 050) occurs because of a wise woman feeling marginalized. The king and queen apparently only have twelve golden plates, so can only invite twelve of the thirteen wise women in the kingdom to celebrate the birth of their daughter. Spurned, the thirteenth arrives to pronounce that Little Brier-Rose will die on her fifteenth birthday when pricked by a spindle. One other wise woman had yet to give her gift, but she is only able to alter the previous curse to a hundred-year slumber.

Despite having all the spindles in the kingdom burned, Little Brier-Rose finds the wise woman in a tower spinning flax, and the curse is subsequently enacted, and it unexpectedly affects the entire castle. A wall of thorns then grows up to hide the entire castle, and anyone who tries to penetrate it is caught and dies.

Many princes over the years try their luck (and die), and eventually one arrives at just the right time (lucky him), wakes the princess, and marries her.

Answer: To dance to death

In "Little Snow-White" (KHM 053), our innocent is quite naïve, first allowing herself to be led out into the forest by the huntsman, who (at the last minute) decides he cannot kill her, and instead leaves her in the forest to die on her own. After she finds her way to the home of the seven dwarfs, the evil queen comes and attempts to kill her three separate times. First, she cuts off her air with a bodice lace, then she sticks a poison comb in her hair, and lastly she gets her to eat a poison apple.

Little Snow-White isn't revived by a kiss, but rather has the bit of poison apple jolted out when the prince's bearers drop her coffin.

At their wedding feast (to which the evil queen was invited), they heat up a pair of iron shoes, then force the evil queen to step into them and dance until she dies.

Answer: Miller

The miller's daughter in "Rumpelstiltskin" (KHM 055) only gets into her predicament through her father's boasting to the king that his daughter can spin gold from straw. The king subsequently imprisons her and forces her to perform this feat upon pain of death. Luckily for her, the imp Rumpelstiltskin arrives and does the job for her.

The first time, he takes a necklace for his labour, the second time it is a ring. With nothing further to give, she promises him her firstborn child for his service the third (and last) time. After that, the king is content, and takes her for his wife.

When Rumpelstiltskin comes to collect after her child is born, the queen makes such a fuss that the imp gives her three days grace and the opportunity to guess his name in that time. When she actually manages to do it on the third day (thanks to a messenger who overheard the imp say his own name), Rumpelstiltskin rips himself in two in a fit of rage.