These question rounds, of 8-10 questions each, are all on the content of the "minor works" - those not set in Arda. Most are from past Varsity quizzes and are thus arranged by the year they were asked.
This section contains 7 rounds, with a total of 58 questions.
2014
1. What is the Latin version of Farmer Giles’s first name?
2. How about his sword?
3. What is the name of Niggle’s rather annoying and unhelpful neighbour, who he is later reunited with?
4. Which two destinations did Artaxerxes get confused between, leading to his wanderings?
5. How often is the Feast of Good Children, at which the Great Cake is eaten and Smith gains the magic star, celebrated?
6. Farmer Giles was, in part, aimed at explaining the origin of which two English placenames?
7. What is the name of Father Christmas's secretary?
8. What is the name of the seagull who carries Roverandom to the moon?
9. Who is the Master Cook who bakes the cake Smith finds his star in?
10. Where was Leaf by Niggle first published?
2013
1. Where does Artaxerxes live?
2. What does Niggle say when he first sees his tree alive?
3. Why did Mr Bliss keep the girabbit secret?
4. Who is Father Christmas’s secretary?
5. What message does the Queen ask Smith to give to the King?
6. What order of knighthood does Giles found?
7. What theory did Tolkien describe as his “private and patent solution” to some of the problems posed by the Finnesburg fragment?
8. Who says this? “Halt! What do you want? Hell take you! Speak!”
2011
1. What did the giant mistake Farmer Giles’s blunderbuss for?
2. Who kept a girabbit?
3. When Smith returns from Faëry for the last time, how far does he tell his son he has walked?
4. Why does the porter send Niggle to the workhouse?
5. In the Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorthelm’s son, which pair of warriors does Torthelm compare Anlaf unfavourably to?
6. In On Fairy Stories, what does Tolkien say is the point of the story The Frog King?
7. How did the moon-dog first get to the moon?
8. In the cave-paintings described in the letter from Father Christmas in the year 1932, what are the goblin fighters riding?
2010
1. How many Rovers are there in Roverandom?
2. How did Niggle's painting of a tree begin?
3. When Farmer Giles first meets the dragon, how does the dragon try to trick him?
4. What line comes next? "I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,"
5. Who is being spoken of? "His head was higher than the helm of kings/with heathen crowns, his heart keener/and his soul clearer than swords of heroes/polished and proven;"
6. In Tolkien's version of the Lay of the Volsungs, after Sigurd wakes Brynhild she decides to leave him for a time. What reason does she give?
7. Before they were married, how did JRR and Edith amuse themselves with sugar-lumps in a Birmingham tea-shop?
8. What made Tolkien's swimming-race with Charles Wrenn particularly challenging?
2009
1. Of which work by Tolkien is the following the final line? “They both laughed. Laughed - the Mountains rang with it!”
2. What two weapons does Farmer Giles famously use?
3. What work by Tolkien is dedicated “To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though ’breathed through silver’.”?
4. Who are the main two characters in Tolkien’s play in alliterative verse, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son?
5. “Give me my sword!” shouted the King, finding his voice but forgetting his plural. What is the reply?
6. What kind of tree talks to Smith in Faery?
7. In the letter from Father Christmas for 1932, what is the Polar Bear astonished to find in the goblins’ caves?
8. What does the troll teach Perry-the-winkle to make?
2007
1. The Songs of Tom Bombadil mention a huge sea-monster. What’s its name?
2. What did a character in Smith of Wootton Major do with a silver coin he found in his cake?
3. What was the name of Farmer Giles’ cow trampled on by the giant?
4. What was Farmer Giles’ full name?
5. What wish does Alf grant to Nokes?
6. Which two people does Parish send Niggle to fetch?
7. Why was the Polar Bear’s nose bandaged in 1927?
8. Who is Father Christmas’s gardener?
2005
1. In Smith of Wootton Major, what did Nokes want to write on the Great Cake for the Twenty-four Feast?
2. What can you find the beyond the Merlock Mountains?
3. Why did the North Polar Bear climb the North Pole?
4. In The lay of Aotrou and Itroun, what does Aotrou hunt in the forest?
5. In Farmer Giles of Ham, how many copies of the letter about Master Ægidius does the King send?
6. At the bears’ party in Mr. Bliss, who swallowed a crumb the wrong way and was coughing in the scullery?
7. In The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, how do Torhthelm and Tídwald first recognise Beorhtnoth’s body?
8. When Smith of Wootton Major asked the people of Faery where the king was, what did they reply?