The Hobbit Quiz: How Well Do You Know the Book?

A there-and-back-again story in nineteen chapters

The Hobbit is built as a round trip. Its nineteen chapters carry Bilbo Baggins out of Bag End, over the Misty Mountains, through Mirkwood and down the Long Lake to the Lonely Mountain, and then home again. The book’s own alternative title, There and Back Again, describes that shape exactly, and it is the same title Bilbo later gives his memoir in The Lord of the Rings.

Each stage of the journey works almost like a self-contained episode: the trolls, the goblins, the riddle game, the wolves and eagles, Beorn’s house, the spiders, the Elvenking’s prison, Lake-town. What ties them together is Bilbo himself. In the first chapters Gandalf and the dwarves rescue him; by the middle of the book he is rescuing them, and by the end he is the one making the hardest moral choice in the story.

That growth is the real backbone of the book, and it is why so many questions in a Hobbit quiz turn on what Bilbo does rather than what happens to him: naming Sting, freeing the dwarves in barrels, spotting Smaug’s weak spot, and giving away the Arkenstone.

The riddle game, and why the chapter was rewritten

Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”, is the hinge between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo and Gollum trade riddles under the Misty Mountains, with a grim wager on the outcome: if Bilbo wins, Gollum must show him the way out, and if he loses, Gollum will eat him. The game ends when Bilbo asks what he has in his pocket. It is not a proper riddle by the ancient rules, but Gollum accepts it, guesses three times and fails.

What many readers do not realise is that the chapter they read today is not the one published in 1937. In the first edition, Gollum is more honest: he means to give Bilbo his ring as a prize. Once Tolkien decided that the ring was the One Ring of Sauron, that version no longer fit, so for the second edition of 1951 he rewrote the scene to show Gollum’s obsession and his despair at losing the Ring. The Lord of the Rings later explains the change as Bilbo having told a false version of the story at first.

If you want every riddle and its answer, our Hobbit riddle game guide goes through them one by one.

The Elvish names hidden in The Hobbit

The Hobbit is not an Elvish-heavy book, but the Elvish it does contain is carefully placed. The two swords taken from the trolls’ cave are read by Elrond in Rivendell: Glamdring, the Foe-hammer, once worn by the king of Gondolin, and Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver. The goblins themselves have cruder names for the same blades, Beater and Biter, which shows how long their reputation has lasted. Our guide to Elvish sword names breaks both names down into their Sindarin parts.

Rivendell, where Elrond reads the runes, is itself the English name of the Elvish Imladris, the deep dale of the cleft. The book uses the English name throughout, but the place is the same one the Fellowship sets out from in the sequel. Sting, by contrast, is not Elvish at all: Bilbo chose the word himself.

If the names of the swords make you want to read Elvish for yourself, you can start learning Elvish with short lessons on Quenya and Sindarin, or see your own name in Tengwar, the script Tolkien designed for the Elves.

Book versus films: what to watch out for

Peter Jackson turned this single short novel into three long films, and in doing so added a great deal that is not in the book. The Elf Tauriel was created for the films, Legolas does not appear in the novel at all, and the Necromancer is barely glimpsed in the book: Gandalf leaves the company at the edge of Mirkwood on business of his own, and only in the last chapter do we learn that he went to help drive the Necromancer out. Our article on Elvish in the Hobbit films covers what the films added.

Small details differ too. In the book the Elvenking is never named Thranduil; that name comes from The Lord of the Rings. The trolls are undone by Gandalf’s voice-throwing trick, and the thrush, not a stray memory of Bilbo’s, carries the secret of Smaug’s weak spot to Bard. Every question in this quiz follows the book, so if your memory comes from the films, read the explanations carefully.

How to get more out of a reread

The Hobbit rewards a second reading with an eye on the sequel. Gandalf’s absence before Mirkwood, the ring that makes Bilbo invisible, the mithril coat, and the fall of Smaug all become important again in The Lord of the Rings. Reading with that in mind turns a children’s adventure into the opening chapter of a much larger history.

Rivendell holds one of the best small details for rereaders. Elrond notices moon-letters on Thrór’s map, runes that can only be read when the moon shines behind them in the right phase and season. They tell the company to stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and that instruction only pays off many chapters later, on Durin’s Day, at the hidden door in the Mountain. Tolkien plants the clue early and lets the reader forget it.

It also helps to pay attention to the narrator. Tolkien’s storyteller speaks directly to the reader, makes jokes, and occasionally tells you what is about to happen. That voice disappears almost entirely from the later books, which is one of the clearest differences between The Hobbit and its sequel.