Columbo Trivia
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This Columbo trivia quiz has 88 free questions with answers and covers the beloved detective series and its star, Peter Falk. It takes in Lieutenant Columbo's trademarks (the beige raincoat, the cigar, the battered Peugeot, the basset hound, the unseen wife), his catchphrases and habits, the inverted 'howcatchem' format that shows the murder first, the creators Richard Levinson and William Link, the actors who turned the role down, and the guest stars and directors (including a young Steven Spielberg) who worked on it. Early questions are for anyone who has caught a few reruns. Later ones reward fans who know the detective's obscured first name and the theme he whistles. Use it for a classic-TV trivia night or a mystery-lover's quiz. Every answer has been checked against a documented source shown under the explanation.
30 of 88 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01For which police department does Columbo work?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles in the series is half invented: its creators called it a mythical city and set out never to show him at police headquarters or at home.
Q 02What is Columbo's most famous item of clothing?
A rumpled beige raincoat
The rumpled beige raincoat was Peter Falk's own coat, which he brought to the role; with the cigar and the battered old car it completed the character.
Q 03Columbo drives a battered old car of which make?
Peugeot
Peugeot sold its 403 convertible as a costly, leather-trimmed luxury model in small numbers; Columbo's is such a wreck that other characters keep taking it for scrap.
Q 04Which food does the show repeatedly mention Columbo loving?
Chili
Chili is what he orders even in a smart restaurant in 'Publish or Perish'; stung by the bill, he queries it, and the waiter puts it up because he had left off the iced tea.
Q 05Columbo often leaves a room and returns with which catchphrase before a key question?
Just one more thing
Just one more thing began as a shortcut: a scene in the writers' stage play ran short, and rather than retype it they had him put his head back round the door with another question.
Q 06Which Star Trek actor played the murderous heart surgeon in the Columbo episode 'A Stitch in Crime'?
Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy's surgeon stitches a colleague up with dissolving thread so he will die days later; when the doctor laughs at him, Columbo for once drops the bumbling act and loses his temper.
Q 07Who created the character of Columbo?
Levinson and Link
Levinson and Link, friends since school, first wrote him for a 1960 TV play; when the network pressed them to give him a young sidekick, they answered with a basset hound.
Q 08On which network did Columbo first air as part of a rotating 'Mystery Movie' block in 1971?
NBC
NBC bought it as one spoke of a rotating wheel, alongside McCloud and McMillan & Wife, so a new Columbo came round only about once a month.
Q 09Besides four Emmys, which award did Columbo bring Peter Falk just once?
Golden Globe
Golden Globe voters chose him only once; Falk had gone back to television reluctantly, and had to be talked into committing to a full series at all.
Q 10Besides Lee J. Cobb, who was suggested for Columbo but turned it down to protect his golf time?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby liked the script but would not give up his hours on the course; Falk, a golfer himself, said he simply went over and talked to the writers instead.
Q 11The 1968 TV movie that launched Columbo was adapted from which stage play by his creators?
Prescription: Murder
Prescription: Murder toured American theatres in 1962 and was itself reworked from a live TV mystery of 1960, so Peter Falk was the third actor to play the detective.
Q 12What does Columbo call the basset hound that accompanies him in later episodes?
Dog
Dog is all he ever calls it, after trying out names that never stick. Falk first resisted the hound as one gimmick too many, then met the drooling rescue from the pound and gave in.
Q 13Which future blockbuster director made the 1971 Columbo episode 'Murder by the Book'?
Steven Spielberg
Q 21In the 1971 Columbo pilot 'Ransom for a Dead Man', who played the killer?
Lee Grant
Lee Grant's lawyer shoots her husband and fakes his kidnapping, keeping the ransom for herself; she is caught when she uses that same cash to pay off her stepdaughter.
Q 22The creators said Columbo was partly inspired by a character in which Dostoevsky novel?
Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment's investigator Porfiry Petrovich, who wears down Raskolnikov with polite persistence, was one model; the creators also cited G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown.
Q 23A bronze statue of Columbo was unveiled in 2014 in which European capital?
Budapest
Budapest put him on Falk Miksa Street, named for a 19th-century Hungarian politician; officials floated a family link to the actor that has never been proved, and a bronze basset hound sits at his feet.
Steven Spielberg was in his mid-twenties with only TV episodes to his name; he later said the producers urged him to shoot it like a feature film, not a TV show.
Q 14Columbo's first name is almost never spoken, but identification props show it as what?
Frank
Frank can be read on the badge he holds out in the first-season episode 'Dead Weight' if you freeze the frame; it is never spoken, and Falk liked to joke that the name was Lieutenant.
Q 15Unlike most TV detectives, Columbo does what?
Never carries a gun
Columbo never carries a gun because his creators resolved to keep the series nonviolent: no shootings, no car chases, no fights, only talk, like an English drawing-room mystery.
Q 16The 1979 spinoff Mrs. Columbo starred which actress as the detective's wife?
Kate Mulgrew
Kate Mulgrew was cast over the objections of Columbo's creators, who said the magic of the wife was never seeing her; the show went through four titles and ended up divorcing her from him.
Q 17When the pieces start to fall into place, Columbo often begins whistling which tune?
This Old Man
'This Old Man' was just a tune Falk liked to sing: one day, he said, it came out of Columbo, and the show's arrangers later worked it into the scores.
Q 18What caused Peter Falk's distinctive squint?
A childhood glass eye
A childhood glass eye: a tumour cost him his right eye as a small boy, and a studio boss later turned him down, saying that for the same price he could get an actor with two eyes.
Q 19Columbo's murderers usually come from which walk of life?
Wealthy high society
Wealthy high society was chosen for drama, not politics, his creators said: a rumpled cop is simply more fun set against a Noel Coward type than against someone like himself.
Q 20Columbo's final case in 2003 sent him into which world?
Underground raves
Underground raves: in 'Columbo Likes the Nightlife' the killer is a club promoter, and Columbo finds a body under a fish tank set in the dance floor after noticing it holds fewer koi than the rest.
Q 24Peter Falk recalled being told he was wrong for Columbo because, next to the detective the writers pictured, he was what?
Much younger
Much younger than the detective they had pictured, Falk was told he was too young and not right; he rang one of the writers anyway and said he would kill to play that cop.
Q 25Peter Falk won his first Emmy in 1962 for 'The Price of Tomatoes', playing what?
A truck driver
A truck driver with a kind heart, who stops for a pregnant hitchhiker: quite a change from the hit man and the comic mobster that had just brought him two Oscar nominations.
Q 26Falk frequently collaborated with which filmmaker friend on movies like A Woman Under the Influence?
John Cassavetes
John Cassavetes, a close friend, also directed him in Husbands, then turned up in Columbo as a murderous conductor given away by the carnation that fell from his lapel.
Q 27Falk played the grandfather who reads the story in which 1987 fantasy film?
The Princess Bride
In The Princess Bride his sick grandson asks warily whether the story will have a lot of kissing in it; by the end the boy wants it read again the next day.
Q 28Which Columbo episode breaks the format by hiding the killer's identity until the end?
Last Salute to the Commodore
Last Salute to the Commodore (1976) is a true whodunit: the man shown disposing of the body is later murdered himself, and Columbo names the real culprit only in the final scene.
Q 29In Columbo's last 1970s case, an Irish poet secretly does what?
Buys IRA guns
Buys IRA guns, and whiskey undoes him: he scratches each bottle with his diamond ring to mark how far he will drink, and one marked bottle places him at the murder.
Q 30Who played the psychiatrist who murders his wife in the 1968 Columbo TV movie?
Gene Barry
Gene Barry's Dr Ray Flemming has his young mistress pose as his wife for an alibi; Columbo turns the same trick on him with a decoy, and she overhears him say he never cared for her.