Forks, Washington — the basics (easy)
Start where the saga does: a rainy town, a police chief's spare room and a family at the next lunch table who never eat. Anyone who has seen the first film once should sweep this round.
Forks is a real logging town on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, which is part of the joke. Meyer has said she went looking for the rainiest place in the United States, because she needed somewhere a family who cannot walk about in sunshine without being noticed could hold down jobs and go to school.
Q1.Who wrote the Twilight series of novels?Tap to reveal
Answer: Stephenie Meyer
Meyer has said the idea came to her in a dream in June 2003; the finished novel was published by Little, Brown in 2005.
Q2.Which small town does Isabella Swan move to at the start of Twilight?Tap to reveal
Answer: Forks, Washington
Forks is a real town on the Olympic Peninsula, and the books turned a quiet logging community into a stop on fans' road trips.
Q3.Where did Bella live before she moved to Forks?Tap to reveal
Answer: Phoenix, Arizona
Her mother had remarried a minor-league ballplayer and was travelling with him, so Bella volunteered to go north to her father.
Q4.What is the first name of Bella's father?Tap to reveal
Answer: Charlie
Charlie Swan is the chief of police in Forks, and Bella moves into her old childhood bedroom in his house.
Q5.What is the first name of Bella's mother?Tap to reveal
Answer: Renée
Renée Dwyer is Bella's flighty, warm, remarried mother in Phoenix — the parent Bella spent her childhood looking after rather than the other way round.
Q6.What is the surname of the family of vampires at Forks High School?Tap to reveal
Answer: Cullen
Carlisle and Esme pass the five younger Cullens off as their adopted teenagers, then repeat high school again wherever the family next settles.
Q7.What is Edward Cullen's special ability?Tap to reveal
Answer: He can read other people's thoughts
He hears the thoughts of everyone around him except Bella, and that silence is a large part of what draws him to her.
Q8.What make is Edward's silver car?Tap to reveal
Answer: A Volvo
The silver Volvo is his everyday car; the Cullens' garage also hides Rosalie's red convertible and Emmett's Jeep.
Q9.Finish this line from Twilight: "And so the lion fell in love with the ____."Tap to reveal
Answer: Lamb
Edward says it to Bella, she answers "What a stupid lamb," and he replies "What a sick, masochistic lion."
Q10.Which sport do the Cullens play during a thunderstorm?Tap to reveal
Answer: Baseball
Vampire-strength hits are loud enough to need the cover of thunder, and it is at this game that James, Victoria and Laurent turn up.
Q11.Which Quileute elder in La Push is Charlie Swan's oldest friend, and spends the first book trying to warn him off the Cullens?Tap to reveal
Answer: Billy Black
Billy is a Quileute elder in La Push who uses a wheelchair, and he spends the first book trying to warn Charlie off the Cullens.
The Cullens and the vampires who hunt Bella (easy-medium)
A few vampires in Meyer's world carry something through the change — a latent human knack that comes back amplified — and most carry nothing at all. That is why the Cullens look so unusual from the outside: one sees the future, one reads minds, one can move a room to tears, all under a single roof.
This round also covers the first book's villains. Of the three nomads who walk out of the trees at the baseball clearing, Laurent is the ordinary one — the other two are gifted, and between a tracker who cannot be shaken and a mate with an instinct for slipping away, the Cullens spend the next two books playing catch-up.
Q1.Which Cullen can see the future?Tap to reveal
Answer: Alice Cullen
Alice sees possible futures rather than fixed ones — they shift the moment someone changes their mind, and she cannot see the wolves at all.
Q2.Which of Carlisle and Esme's adopted daughters is openly cold towards Bella throughout the first novel?Tap to reveal
Answer: Rosalie Hale
Rosalie's coldness is envy in reverse: she lost her human life against her will and cannot understand Bella wanting to give hers away.
Q3.Which vampire is Alice's husband?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jasper Hale
Jasper takes the Hale name to pass as Rosalie's twin. Alice had seen him in a vision and simply waited for him in a Philadelphia diner.
Q4.Which of the three nomad vampires in the first novel, Twilight, has tracking as his gift?Tap to reveal
Answer: James
Tracking is his gift: once he fixes on a target he is almost impossible to shake, which is why the Cullens split up to move Bella out of Forks.
Q5.Who is James' mate in the Twilight series?Tap to reveal
Answer: Victoria
Her grief over him drives the next two books — she wants a mate for a mate, and Bella is the one she goes after.
Q6.Which character bites Bella on the hand?Tap to reveal
Answer: James
He lures her to her old ballet studio in Phoenix; Edward sucks the venom back out before the change can take hold.
Q7.Finish the line James says when he first catches Bella's scent: "You brought a ____."Tap to reveal
Answer: Snack
He says it at the baseball clearing in the 2008 film, the moment the wind carries Bella's scent across to him.
Q8.Which character picks out Bella's prom dress for her?Tap to reveal
Answer: Alice Cullen
Alice dresses her without saying where they are going, and Bella — still in a cast from the ballet studio — only works out it is the prom on arrival.
Q9.What turns out to be literally true about the Quileute men in Jacob's family line?Tap to reveal
Answer: They are shape-shifters who turn into giant wolves
The tribe's "legends" are literal. The pack exists to keep vampires away from people, and Jacob phases for the first time in New Moon.
Q10.Edward runs cold; which character runs hot enough to be his exact opposite?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jacob Black
A shape-shifter's body sits around 108 degrees against a vampire's stone-cold skin, which is why Jacob and not Edward keeps Bella from freezing in the tent.
New Moon and Eclipse — wolves, the Volturi and a newborn army (medium)
The middle two books are where the saga stops being a high-school romance. Edward leaves, the wolf pack takes over, and an Italian coven with a rulebook enters the story to point out that a human who knows too much is a problem with only two solutions.
If your group has only seen the films, this is the round that separates the readers. Several of these turn on details the adaptations compress or skip.
Q1.What is the title of the second book of the Twilight saga?Tap to reveal
Answer: New Moon
It opens on Bella's eighteenth birthday and famously includes four almost blank pages, one per month, for the time she spends numb after Edward leaves.
Q2.What is the title of the third book of the Twilight series?Tap to reveal
Answer: Eclipse
The title works on the plot: Jacob moves across Bella and Edward's relationship while an army of newborns builds up in Seattle.
Q3.Who leaves Bella alone in the forest in New Moon?Tap to reveal
Answer: Edward
He tells her it will be as though he never existed, and the whole Cullen family leaves Forks to make that stick.
Q4.Who leads the wolf pack in New Moon?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sam Uley
Sam phased first, so he leads by default — although the alpha line actually runs through Jacob, a descendant of Ephraim Black.
Q5.What does Bella jump off in order to hear Edward's voice?Tap to reveal
Answer: A cliff
Cliff diving at La Push is a pack pastime. Bella tries it alone, and Alice's vision of the jump is what sends everyone to Italy.
Q6.Who does Edward ask to end his life?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Volturi
Believing Bella dead, he travels to Volterra to ask Aro for death; Bella and Alice reach him with minutes to spare.
Q7.Who does Bella kiss in the mountains in Eclipse?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jacob Black
She asks him to kiss her before the fight with the newborns, and admits to herself for the first time that she loves him too.
Q8.Which character is behind the newborn army that builds up in Seattle in Eclipse?Tap to reveal
Answer: Victoria
She raises the army in Seattle through Riley Biers so that she never has to face the Cullens directly herself.
Q9.What is the name of the newborn vampire who is captured in Eclipse?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bree Tanner
She surrenders and the Volturi destroy her anyway. Meyer later gave her the 2010 novella The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner.
Q10.Which character teaches the Cullens and the wolves how to fight newborn vampires?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jasper
He spent his early vampire years in the Southern wars training newborn armies, so he knows exactly how they attack and where they leave gaps.
Q11.What object is featured on the cover of Eclipse?Tap to reveal
Answer: A torn red ribbon
Each cover carries a single object: an apple for Twilight, a tulip for New Moon, the ribbon for Eclipse and chess pieces for Breaking Dawn.
Q12.In which book of the saga does Bella finally say yes to Edward's marriage proposal?Tap to reveal
Answer: Eclipse
He first asks at the very end of New Moon, offering to change her himself if she marries him. Bella — who has no interest in marrying young — holds out until Eclipse, then accepts as part of a bargain: a wedding in exchange for being turned.
Breaking Dawn and the films (medium-hard)
The last book takes a hard turn: a wedding, a honeymoon, a pregnancy nobody thought was possible, and a standoff in the snow that ends without a fight. It was split into two films because there was too much of it for one.
The final questions move off the page and onto the screen, where the casting is the thing most people remember longest.
Q1.In which book of the Twilight series do Bella and Edward get married?Tap to reveal
Answer: Breaking Dawn
The wedding opens the fourth novel. Alice plans the whole thing, and the Cullen house disappears under flowers and lights.
Q2.Where do Edward and Bella go for their honeymoon?Tap to reveal
Answer: Isle Esme
Carlisle bought the island off the coast of Brazil and named it for Esme, who lends it to the newlyweds as a wedding present.
Q3.Which unexpected guest turns up at Bella and Edward's wedding reception?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jacob Black
He comes back to dance with Bella, then loses his temper when he realises the honeymoon is not going to be a pretence.
Q4.In Breaking Dawn, how many children does Bella have?Tap to reveal
Answer: One
The pregnancy nearly kills her, and Edward turns her with his venom within minutes of the birth.
Q5.What is the name of Bella and Edward's child?Tap to reveal
Answer: Renesmee
Renée plus Esme, after both grandmothers. Jacob shortens it to Nessie, which Bella cannot stand.
Q6.Aro, Caius, Marcus and Demetri are all members of which group?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Volturi
Aro, Caius and Marcus are its three leaders and Demetri is the guard's tracker. They rule from Volterra in Tuscany and enforce one law above all others: humans must not learn that vampires exist.
Q7.Who plays Isabella Swan in the Twilight films?Tap to reveal
Answer: Kristen Stewart
Stewart played Bella across all five films released between 2008 and 2012, opposite Robert Pattinson as Edward and Taylor Lautner as Jacob.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Twilight books and films are there?
Four novels in the main saga — Twilight (2005), New Moon (2006), Eclipse (2007) and Breaking Dawn (2008). Around them Meyer has published the novella The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (2010), Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined (2015), which retells book one with the genders swapped, and Midnight Sun (2020), which retells it from Edward's side, plus The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide (2011) and the graphic novels. There are five films, released between 2008 and 2012, because Breaking Dawn was split into two parts.
What order should I read or watch the Twilight saga in?
Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn. The films follow the same order, with Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Part 2 last. Save Midnight Sun for after you have finished — it covers the same events as book one but assumes you already know how the saga ends.
Are the Quileute pack werewolves or shape-shifters?
Shape-shifters. They take a wolf form because that is what their ancestors took, but they can phase at any time rather than at the full moon. Meyer's true werewolves are a separate species, the Children of the Moon, which is why Caius of the Volturi reacts so badly when he mistakes the pack for them.
Why do the vampires live somewhere as rainy as Forks?
Sunlight does not burn them, it gives them away — their skin throws off light like cut glass. A town with that much cloud cover lets the Cullens hold jobs, attend school and move around in daylight without being noticed.
Who does Jacob imprint on?
Renesmee, shortly after she is born at the end of Breaking Dawn. Imprinting binds a shape-shifter to protect one person for life, and it settles the pack's argument about the baby instantly — no wolf can harm the object of another's imprinting.
What is a good Twilight tiebreaker question?
Use a number so the closest answer wins. "In what year was Edward born?" (1901) works well, as does "How old was he when Carlisle turned him?" (17, during the 1918 influenza epidemic) or "How many leaders do the Volturi have?" (three).
How do I run a Twilight trivia night?
Split the room into Team Edward and Team Jacob, then play one round per book so the difficulty climbs on its own. Keep a short book-versus-film round in reserve as a decider — lines people quote from the films do not always come back word for word in the books, and that round usually separates the readers from the rewatchers.
