A Study in Scarlet
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40 free A Study in Scarlet trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A Study in Scarlet is where it all starts. Arthur Conan Doyle's short novel brings Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson together, hands them a body in a deserted London house and a single word scrawled on the wall, then leaps across an ocean and back a generation to explain why the crime happened. This quiz follows the story the way a reader meets it: the meeting of the two lodgers, Holmes's odd habits and methods, the clues at Brixton Road, the Scotland Yard rivals, the capture, and the long American flashback. A last group of questions covers how the novel was written, published and adapted. It suits students revising for a test on the novel, teachers who want a ready-made reading check, and Holmes fans who fancy proving they remember more than the famous opening. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print it for a class.
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Q 01In A Study in Scarlet, Lestrade takes the bloody word RACHE for an unfinished name; what does Holmes say it means?
Revenge
Revenge is the German meaning, and Holmes tells Lestrade not to waste time looking for a Miss Rachel. The killer wrote it only to send the police chasing imaginary secret societies.
Q 02In A Study in Scarlet, Dr Watson has just been invalided home from which war when he meets Sherlock Holmes?
Second Anglo-Afghan War
The Second Anglo-Afghan War left Watson wounded, feverish and alone in London on an army allowance of eleven shillings and sixpence a day. That thin budget is why he goes looking for someone to share rooms.
Q 03In A Study in Scarlet, which job title does Sherlock Holmes give himself, claiming to be the only one in the world?
Consulting detective
Consulting detective is the trade Holmes invented for himself. When official and private investigators are stuck, they lay the evidence before him and he puts them back on the right scent.
Q 04In A Study in Scarlet, Watson is astonished that Holmes neither knows nor cares about which basic scientific fact?
Earth orbits the Sun
Earth orbits the Sun, Watson explains, and Holmes replies that he will now do his best to forget it. He argues that useless facts only crowd out the knowledge his work needs.
Q 05In A Study in Scarlet, what job does Jefferson Hope take in London so he can follow his two enemies unnoticed?
Cab driver
Cab driver was the ideal cover: Hope, who says driving and riding come as naturally to him as walking, could shadow Drebber and Stangerson across London while earning his keep.
Q 06Which religious community rescues John Ferrier and the child Lucy from death in the desert in A Study in Scarlet?
The Mormons
The Mormons save the pair on condition that they adopt the faith. Conan Doyle's daughter later said he would have been the first to admit the novel was full of errors about them.
Q 07Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock opened with a loose version of A Study in Scarlet retitled after which colour?
Pink
Pink replaces scarlet in A Study in Pink, the BBC opener written by Steven Moffat. It keeps the two pills and the scrawled RACHE but throws out the entire American backstory.
Q 08A Study in Scarlet is credited as the first crime story in which the investigator uses which tool?
A magnifying glass
A magnifying glass comes out of Holmes's pocket, along with a tape measure, at the Brixton Road house. He trots about the room with them, kneeling and even lying flat on the floor.
Q 09In A Study in Scarlet, what small object rolls across the floor when the police lift Enoch Drebber's body?
A wedding ring
A wedding ring of plain gold tinkles to the floor. It was Lucy Ferrier's: Hope took it from her finger the night before her funeral and held it up to Drebber as he died.
Q 10In A Study in Scarlet, Enoch Drebber lies dead in a blood-splashed room with no wound; how does Holmes say he died?
Poison
Poison, Holmes says curtly, having sniffed the dead man's lips. Drebber had been made to choose between two pills, one deadly and one harmless, while his killer swallowed the other.
Q 11In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes and Watson are first introduced in a laboratory at which London institution?
St Bartholomew's Hospital
St Bartholomew's Hospital, or Barts, was also Watson's old medical school. The link runs deep enough that a Tokyo Sherlock Holmes society gave money to the Save Barts Campaign in the 1990s.
Q 12When Watson first meets Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, Holmes is celebrating a new laboratory test that detects what?
Bloodstains
Bloodstains, old or new, show up with Holmes's reagent, which reacts to haemoglobin and nothing else. He boasts that hundreds of men then walking free would have paid for their crimes.
Q 13In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes defends forgetting useless facts by comparing a man's brain to what?
Q 21In A Study in Scarlet, who turns up at Baker Street to claim the lost property Holmes advertises in the newspapers?
An old woman
An old woman hobbles in, collects it and then vanishes from a moving carriage with Holmes perched on the back. He decides she was really an active young man and an incomparable actor.
Q 22In A Study in Scarlet, which condition does Watson diagnose in the captured Jefferson Hope just by feeling his chest?
An aortic aneurysm
An aortic aneurysm, brought on by years of exposure and hunger in the mountains, was close to bursting. It did so in his cell on the night after his capture, sparing Hope a trial.
Q 23In A Study in Scarlet, how does Joseph Stangerson die in his room at Halliday's Private Hotel?
An empty attic
An empty attic, Holmes says, should be stocked only with the furniture you choose. A fool crams in every sort of lumber until the useful knowledge is jumbled up or lost.
Q 14A Study in Scarlet introduced Sherlock Holmes; which novel, commissioned as its sequel, brought him back next?
The Sign of the Four
The Sign of the Four followed in 1890, written for Lippincott's Magazine. Real fame arrived only a year later, when the short stories began running in The Strand.
Q 15In A Study in Scarlet, on what does Holmes test the two pills found in Joseph Stangerson's hotel room?
A dying terrier
A dying terrier, already due to be put out of its pain, laps up the first pill in milk and is none the worse. The second kills it in an instant, and Holmes's theory is proved.
Q 16In A Study in Scarlet, which old acquaintance bumps into Watson at the Criterion Bar and introduces him to Holmes?
Stamford
Stamford had once been Watson's dresser, a junior who bandaged wounds for a surgeon. On the way to the meeting he warns that Holmes is a little too scientific for his tastes.
Q 17A Study in Scarlet was first published not as a book but inside which British magazine?
Beeton's Christmas Annual
Beeton's Christmas Annual carried it in November 1887, after its owners bought the copyright outright for £25. Only eleven complete copies of that issue are known to survive.
Q 18In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes lures the killer up to the Baker Street rooms by asking for help with what?
His luggage
His luggage, a small portmanteau, needs strapping, Holmes says without turning his head. As the man bends down to help, a pair of steel handcuffs clicks shut on his wrists.
Q 19In A Study in Scarlet, which Scotland Yard inspector writes to Holmes asking for help at the Brixton Road house?
Tobias Gregson
Tobias Gregson is, by Holmes's reckoning, the smartest of the Scotland Yarders, which is faint praise. He and Lestrade are jealous rivals, and Holmes expects some fun if both take the case.
Q 20In A Study in Scarlet, Enoch Drebber has no wound, so where does Holmes say the blood on the floor came from?
The killer's nosebleed
The killer's nosebleed burst out in his excitement, and he dipped a finger in it to write on the wall. From that Holmes guessed the man was robust and ruddy-faced.
Stabbed with a knife
Stabbed with a knife, Stangerson dies only after flying at his visitor's throat. Hope had climbed in at the window and offered him the same choice of pills as Drebber.
Q 24In A Study in Scarlet, which street urchin leads the gang of boys Holmes pays to hunt for information?
Wiggins
Wiggins marshals half a dozen ragged boys, each paid a shilling for the day's search. After they clatter up the stairs, Holmes orders that in future only their leader comes up to report.
Q 25In A Study in Scarlet, whom does Scotland Yard first arrest, wrongly, for the murder of Enoch Drebber?
His landlady's son
His landlady's son, a young navy officer named Arthur Charpentier, had chased Drebber off with a cudgel for grabbing at his sister. He was still locked up when the second body was found.
Q 26In A Study in Scarlet, the murderer returns to the Brixton Road house and fools Constable Rance by posing as what?
A drunk
A drunk too far gone to stand was all Rance saw, so he propped the man up and let him go. Holmes tells the constable he has just thrown away his sergeant's stripes.
Q 27In A Study in Scarlet, a Jezail bullet strikes Watson in which part of the body at the battle of Maiwand?
His shoulder
His shoulder, where the bullet shattered the bone and grazed an artery. In the very next Holmes novel, Conan Doyle has Watson nursing a bullet wound in his leg instead.
Q 28In A Study in Scarlet, which fictional detective does Holmes dismiss as a very inferior fellow?
C. Auguste Dupin
C. Auguste Dupin gets the insult just as Watson offers the comparison as a compliment. Holmes calls the Poe sleuth's trick of breaking in on a friend's thoughts showy and superficial.
Q 29In A Study in Scarlet, what warning appears at John Ferrier's farm each morning after Lucy is ordered to marry?
A shrinking number
A shrinking number shows how many days remain of the month's grace: pinned to his bedclothes, scrawled on the ceiling, painted on the door. Ferrier keeps watch with a gun and never sees who leaves it.
Q 30In A Study in Scarlet, Lucy Ferrier dies within a month of her forced marriage; what cause does the novel give?
A broken heart
A broken heart is what the story blames: after John Ferrier's death Lucy never held up her head again. Her husband, who had married her chiefly for the property, showed no great grief.