Rope
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40 free Rope trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Rope is the Alfred Hitchcock thriller that film students love to argue about. Two young men commit a murder to prove they can, hide the body in the room, and then invite the victim's family and friends to dinner. The whole story unfolds in one apartment over a single evening, staged in takes so long that the cuts are famously hard to spot. This quiz covers the film from every angle: who does what at the party and which slips give the killers away, the actors and the characters they portray, the stage original and the true crime behind it, and the tricks the crew used to keep the camera moving. There are questions on the director's cameo, the people who wrote and produced the picture, and its long absence from screens too. It is written for Hitchcock fans, classic-film buffs and anyone planning a movie quiz night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can go straight through or print the questions.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Rope, the first release from Hitchcock's new company, was also his first film shot in which process?
Technicolor
Technicolor cameras were so bulky that prop men whisked furniture out of the way mid-take, then put it back before it returned to shot.
Q 02How does Alfred Hitchcock make his trademark cameo in Rope, a story confined to a single apartment?
On a neon sign
On a neon sign: his famous profile blinks in red far across the rooftops, advertising a made-up slimming product.
Q 03The play behind Hitchcock's Rope was said to be inspired by which pair of student killers from 1924?
Leopold and Loeb
Leopold and Loeb killed 14-year-old Bobby Franks simply to prove they were clever enough to get away with a perfect crime.
Q 04In Hitchcock's Rope, Brandon insists on serving the dinner party's buffet from the top of what?
A wooden chest
A wooden chest holding David's body becomes the buffet table, so his father and aunt unknowingly eat supper off his coffin.
Q 05Which Hollywood star began a run of four Hitchcock films by playing Rupert Cadell in Rope?
James Stewart
James Stewart found the shoot exasperating, complaining that the camera, not the actors, was what really got rehearsed.
Q 06In Rope, the killers twist which philosopher's Superman idea, learned from Rupert, into a motive?
Nietzsche
Nietzsche supplied the Superman idea that Rupert once praised at school, and Rupert ends the night horrified to hear it used to justify murder.
Q 07Hitchcock's Rope unfolds in a penthouse apartment with a panoramic view of which city's skyline?
New York
New York replaced the London of the original play, and its skyline was rebuilt in miniature on the sound stage, complete with smoking chimneys.
Q 08In Rope, Phillip angrily denies ever having strangled which animal on a farm, a lie Rupert sees through?
A chicken
A chicken is the giveaway: Rupert has watched Phillip wring several necks at the Shaws' farm, so the heated denial tells him something is wrong.
Q 09Why could no single shot in Hitchcock's Rope last longer than about ten minutes?
The film magazine ran out
The film magazine ran out after about ten minutes, so each take was choreographed around that limit, with cast and crew hitting carefully planned cues.
Q 10As the police arrive at the end of Hitchcock's Rope, what does the shaken Phillip do?
Plays the piano
Plays the piano: Phillip goes back to the keys while Brandon pours another drink and Rupert sits waiting beside the body.
Q 11In Rope, Brandon uses the murder weapon to tie up which parting gift for Mr. Kentley?
First-edition books
First-edition books leave the flat bound with the very cord that killed their new owner's son, one of Brandon's private jokes.
Q 12The clouds drifting above the model skyline in Hitchcock's Rope were made from which material?
Spun glass
Spun glass clouds hung on the vast backdrop, and the crew shifted their position and shape eight times as the evening wore on.
Q 13In Rope, Rupert returns to the apartment after the party pretending to have left which item behind?
His cigarette case
Q 21Which English playwright wrote the 1929 stage thriller that Alfred Hitchcock turned into Rope?
Patrick Hamilton
Patrick Hamilton had his first real success with the play, which ran for six months in London's West End.
Q 22The playwright behind Rope also wrote which Victorian thriller, later filmed with an Oscar-winning Ingrid Bergman?
Gas Light
Gas Light reached the screen twice as Gaslight, and its title gave English the word gaslighting.
Q 23Which screenwriter of Rope went on to script the Broadway musicals West Side Story and Gypsy?
Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents was brought in to Americanise the very British play, and decades later he directed Broadway revivals of both musicals.
His cigarette case is only a pretext: once inside, Rupert asks for a drink and starts theorising aloud about where David has gone.
Q 14Which belonging of David's, handed to Rupert by mistake as he leaves, sharpens his suspicions in Rope?
A monogrammed hat
A monogrammed hat belonging to David is passed to Rupert by the housekeeper, a strong hint that the missing guest reached the flat after all.
Q 15How does Rupert summon the police after uncovering the murder at the end of Hitchcock's Rope?
Fires shots out the window
Fires shots out the window: Rupert has just wrestled Brandon's gun away from Phillip, and he uses it to raise the alarm.
Q 16What job does Rupert Cadell, the killers' old housemaster, hold by the time of the party in Rope?
Publisher
Publisher is how the film presents Rupert; the original play makes him a 29-year-old war veteran who walks with a stick.
Q 17Why is David's mother, Mrs. Kentley, missing from the dinner party in Hitchcock's Rope?
She has a cold
She has a cold, so she spends the evening at home and later phones the party, overwrought that she has not heard from David.
Q 18In Rope, the fortune-telling Mrs. Atwater studies Phillip's hands and predicts they will bring him what?
Great fame
Great fame is meant as praise for his musical talent, but Phillip, fresh from strangling a man, hears a prophecy of notoriety.
Q 19Which character in Rope almost finds the body while clearing up after dinner, until Brandon steps in?
Mrs. Wilson
Mrs. Wilson, the housekeeper, starts tidying the buffet away and goes to lift the lid before Brandon intercepts her.
Q 20What is Janet Walker's relationship to the murdered David Kentley in Hitchcock's Rope?
His fiancée
His fiancée Janet is thrown together all evening with Kenneth, her former boyfriend, whom Brandon has mischievously invited.
Q 24Which actor, seen in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, wrote the story adaptation of the play for Rope?
Hume Cronyn
Hume Cronyn made his Hollywood debut in that film, then moved behind the camera to adapt two stories for Hitchcock.
Q 25Which actor, later Peggy Cummins's partner in Gun Crazy, played the cool-headed killer Brandon in Rope?
John Dall
John Dall had already earned an Oscar nomination as a Welsh mining prodigy opposite Bette Davis in The Corn Is Green.
Q 26Farley Granger, Phillip in Rope, starred for Hitchcock again in which thriller about swapped murders?
Strangers on a Train
Strangers on a Train cast him as a tennis star drawn into a murder pact by a wealthy psychopath he meets by chance.
Q 27Rope was the first production of which company, founded by Hitchcock with his friend Sidney Bernstein?
Transatlantic Pictures
Transatlantic Pictures was meant to make films in both Hollywood and London, but its first releases flopped and the partnership was eventually dissolved.
Q 28Hitchcock formed the company behind Rope as his contract with which Hollywood producer ran out?
David O. Selznick
David O. Selznick had signed the director to a seven-year deal that brought him to Hollywood in 1939, and the new company let him produce his own pictures.
Q 29Rope was Hitchcock's second film confined to one tight setting; which earlier picture was the first?
Lifeboat
Lifeboat never leaves a small boat full of torpedo survivors, so its director had to appear in a newspaper advertisement instead.
Q 30Which costume drama, Hitchcock's very next film after Rope, reused its long takes in colonial Australia?
Under Capricorn
Under Capricorn starred Ingrid Bergman, but its nine- and ten-minute takes could not save it from failure at the box office.