Sunday Quiz 1: Answers & Explanations

Yesterday I posted a Sunday Night Quiz and promised to provide the answers with some explanation this morning. Scroll down for the answers; here is the explanation:

I am working on four books at present, reviving the online class I offered in 2017, and preparing talks for a local continuing education center for adults here in OKC, a series that will start in January. This is in addition to working three days a week at my ‘day job,’ helping my wife with her cooking business and online cooking classes (see MaryGranger.com for that), and writing here on a daily basis and a long form essay twice a month at the Hogwarts Professor Substack page. I’m in touch on a daily basis with Potter Pundits and Serious Strikers and Nick Jeffery and I talk at least once a week, largely about our ‘Rowling Studies’ podcast at the Substack site.

That’s a lot for an old man and I’ll be discussing each of these projects when there’s more to report.

Today I can share the simplest one of the book writing adventures: a Harry Potter trivia collection organized by individual chapters.

It started the year before Deathly Hallows was published when I was teaching Honors Freshman English at Valley Forge Military Academy. We read the six Harry Potter novels that school year along with most of the books discussed in my notes for what would become Harry Potter’s Bookshelf — Austen’s Emma, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, Shelley’s Frankenstein, et cetera. The cadets were hesitant at first but at Christmas break they learned that being expert in the Hogwarts Saga and attendant literature was a huge hit with every girl they met, the ultimate ice breaker. No complaints after that about the amount of reading they had to do…

Anyway, I started giving daily true and false quizzes about the reading assignments they had, quizzes that covered multiple chapters from which brief tests I could gauge who had and hadn’t done the work. My children enjoyed this much more than the cadets; they took the quizzes at night over dinner (and usually complained that they were too easy). They wanted a chapter-by-chapter quiz set that were actually questions rather than true and false exercises. I did a few of those for Order of the Phoenix but, in the madness surrounding the publication of Deathly Hallows, I let it slide.

In preparing bonuses for my 2017 online class, ‘Wizard Reading Formula,’ I found all those quizzes. I decided it would be a fun bonus for those who signed up to receive each week of the seven week course a set of quizzes for each of the chapters in one Harry Potter novel. My children and I, the three remaining at home then, went to town, so to speak, and threw together 198 chapter quizzes and one for the Deathly Hallows epilogue. I decided to throw in, on top of the ten questions for each chapter a ‘For Your Reflection’ discussion topic or essay prompt.

That last insertion proved to be no small addition. I never finished the project, though those in the class received the ten questions on time. It was a big hit with them and with my family but I put finishing the project (and my online classes aside) as I began my PhD studies and thesis writing. The only book I have ever written that might have universal appeal to Harry Potter fans has  been sitting in my filing cabinet ever since. 

My other two Rowling-related book projects are an expansion and adaptation of my Shed-heavy PhD thesis and a corresponding Lake-laden project that very serious readers will enjoy, the one a capstone project to my twenty plus years of “artistry and meaning” exploration and the other the first salvo in ‘Fourth Generation’ understanding of The Presence. I’m excited about those books, believe me, and I look forward to sharing chapters of each over at the Substack site as they are drafted and in a comprehensive online class in 2025.

Along the way, I’ll occasionally post a chapter from the trivia collection, usually on Sundays when I need a day off from posting. For the next six weeks, then, I’ll be sharing a chapter quiz with essay prompt from a different Harry Potter novel for your self-testing pleasure. Enjoy!

Answers to the quiz for Philosopher’s Stone, chapter 1, after the jump —

1. What “dull, gray” day of the week is it when “our story starts” at 4 Privet Drive? Tuesday (p.2)
2. Leaving for work, Mr. Dursley sees a tabby cat on Privet Drive doing two things cats cannot do. What are these two things? Reading a map, reading a street sign (pp 2-3)
3. Dursley’s office is on what floor at Grunnings, his drill company? 9th (p.3)
4. True or False: Dursley at lunch on Tuesday is hugged by a wizard, he is called a Muggle, and he calls his wife when he overhears conversation about the Potters and their boy, Harry. False; he doesn’t call Petunia (pp 4-5)
5. What is the name of the TV weatherman who reports that the owls are acting out of the ordinary?  Jim McGuffin (p.6)
6. What are the shapes of Albus Dumbledore’s and Minerva McGonagall’s eyeglasses? Dumbledore’s are Half-moon; McGonagall’s are square (pp 8-9)
7. How does Dumbledore put out the lights on Privet Drive? Put-outer or Deluminator (p 9)
8. What is Dumbledore’s explanation for Harry’s surviving Voldemort’s attack? “We can only guess,” said Dumbledore, “We may never know.” (p 12)
9. True or False: Professor McGonagall is convinced Dumbledore is wrong in leaving Harry with the Dursleys. False; “Yes, yes, you’re right, of course.” (p 14)
10. Hagrid arrives on Sirius Black’s motorcycle and reports that there were no problems retrieving Harry. The boy fell asleep as “we was flyin’ over” what English town? Bristol (p 15)

For Your Reflection:

The very first chapter of the seven book series introduces the great divide in Harry’s world, the chasm separating Wizards and Muggles. It does this by sharing the views of Vernon Dursley, archetypal Muggle, and both Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore, witch and wizard, about the other side. Infant Harry at chapter’s end crosses this canyon to live with his Aunt and Uncle. Given what we learn in the chapter about the Dursleys (not all we learn in subsequent chapters and books), is Dumbledore’s decision a good one?

This is really a trick question, no? Until we’re told in Half-Blood Prince about the Bond of Blood and the safety the Dursley’s home provides Harry from the Death Eaters, Dumbledore’s decision seems like cruelty to the young boy. After we learn about it, I think we all had to reconsider whether it was the Dursleys who were abused by the Headmaster’s calculus rather than Harry.

Regardless, I think the ‘right’ answer to this question hinges on whether you include the Bond of Blood and DDore’s setting a magical invisibility cloak over 4 Privet Drive by means of that relationship as part of your argument. If not, really, the old man was mad and it is a mark of the kind of fantasy fiction this is that the Boy Who Lived was not scarred emotionally and mentally for life by his abusive childhood experiences. If you do include the Bond and DDore’s protective spells, I think you’re obliged to acknowledge he was just trying to save Harry’s life from a group of more-than-capable vengeful psychopaths.