The 39 Clues
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50 free The 39 Clues trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The 39 Clues turned a treasure hunt into a publishing event: a relay of well-known children's authors, a website, and a story that sends two orphans around the world on the trail of history's most famous names. This quiz follows Amy and Dan Cahill from their grandmother's funeral to the final test. It covers the family's rival branches, the relatives who chase them from continent to continent, and the puzzles, betrayals and narrow escapes of the first clue hunt, with extra attention to The Maze of Bones, One False Note, The Sword Thief and In Too Deep. A few questions look at the later story arcs and at how the books were made. It suits readers who grew up with the books, classes and book clubs working through them now, and parents who want to see how much of the plot their children remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01At Grace Cahill's will reading in The Maze of Bones, what must each heir give up to receive the first clue?
A million dollars
A million dollars is what most of the relatives walk away with. Amy and Dan want the money too, until they decide Grace would have wanted them to take the clue.
Q 02Which Hollywood director bought the film rights to The 39 Clues in June 2008, before the first book was published?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg bought the rights about three months before The Maze of Bones went on sale. Shawn Levy, director of the Night at the Museum films, was later attached to direct.
Q 03In The 39 Clues, what are the thirty-nine clues that the Cahill family's rival branches race to collect?
Serum ingredients
Serum ingredients are what the family fights over: together they make a formula said to turn whoever completes it into the most powerful person in the world.
Q 04Which American founding father left the trail that sends Amy and Dan Cahill to Paris in The Maze of Bones?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin is the first famous relative on the trail. In the story he hid a clue beneath Paris while serving there as an American diplomat.
Q 05Which au pair follows Amy and Dan Cahill around the world in The 39 Clues and turns out to be a pilot?
Nellie Gomez
Nellie Gomez charges most of the flights and hotels to her own credit card to keep the hunt going. It later emerges that Grace herself had picked her for the job.
Q 06Which author, once a middle school teacher, wrote The Maze of Bones, the opening book of The 39 Clues?
Rick Riordan
Rick Riordan, best known for Percy Jackson, was asked by the publisher's editors to open the saga. The project was kept secret for about two years.
Q 07Which branch of the Cahill family do Amy and Dan learn they belong to at the end of The Viper's Nest?
Madrigal
Madrigal is the hidden fifth branch of the family. Dan works it out from Grace's journal, in which the letter M ties his parents to a Chinese leader.
Q 08Which underground Paris landmark hides the number puzzle that points Amy and Dan Cahill to Mozart?
The Catacombs
The Catacombs are real: an underground ossuary created to relieve the overflowing cemeteries of Paris. Alistair Oh holds off two rivals there while Amy and Dan escape.
Q 09What is the name of Grace Cahill's Egyptian Mau cat, who travels with Amy and Dan in The 39 Clues?
Saladin
Saladin shares his name with the sultan who led Muslim forces against the Crusaders. In the books the cat is very fond of red snapper.
Q 10In The 39 Clues, which convenience food is the Korean businessman Alistair Oh known for creating?
Microwavable burritos
Microwavable burritos are his claim to fame, though bad investments later swallowed much of his money. He rarely travels without a diamond-tipped cane.
Q 11Which villain of The 39 Clues, a mother of two rival hunters, set the fire that killed Amy and Dan's parents?
Isabel Kabra
Isabel Kabra is the main antagonist of the first ten books. Amy pieces the truth together from dreams and recollections on an Indonesian island in In Too Deep.
Q 12Who is unmasked in Storm Warning as the Man in Black who shadows Amy and Dan through The 39 Clues?
Fiske Cahill
Fiske Cahill is Grace's younger brother, who vanished decades before the hunt, which is why Amy and Dan had never heard of him. He later becomes one of their legal guardians.
Q 13Which rival, at first a deadly enemy, dies saving Amy and Dan Cahill from a burning house in In Too Deep?
Irina Spasky
Q 21In The Maze of Bones, the first clue is an anagram of which word from Grace Cahill's opening hint?
Resolution
Resolution rearranges into iron solute, the first clue. Dan solves the anagram from the slip of paper that came with the vial, after a rival has stolen the vial itself.
Q 22In The Maze of Bones, what does Amy Cahill use at the top of a Paris church to charge the mysterious vial?
A lightning rod
A lightning rod on the church gives the vial the electric charge it calls for. Amy and Dan climb the bell tower with the Holts chasing them.
Q 23What does a rival use to escape from a Paris bell tower with the charged vial in The Maze of Bones?
A kite
Irina Spasky, a former KGB agent, had grown fond of the children over the hunt. She had lost her own young son while she was away on a mission.
Q 14Which member of the Holt family rescues Amy Cahill when a villain dangles her over sharks in In Too Deep?
Hamilton
Hamilton steps in because of the alliance he struck with Amy and Dan in Russia one book earlier. The eldest Holt child is a football player and a master of parkour.
Q 15Which lawyer runs the reading of Grace Cahill's will that launches the hunt in The Maze of Bones?
William McIntyre
William McIntyre switches the will to its alternate version at the dying Grace's request. He is also behind the tracking device hidden in the family cat's collar in One False Note.
Q 16In The 39 Clues, what is the rival clue hunter Jonah Wizard famous for around the world?
Hip-hop
Hip-hop made him a teenage celebrity who also appears in action films, with his father Broderick as his manager. His mother, Cora, is a leader of the Janus branch.
Q 17Which talent of Dan Cahill's saves Mozart's sheet music after the Holts wreck it on a train in One False Note?
A photographic memory
A photographic memory is Dan's great weapon in the hunt, along with a head for numbers and puzzles. He rewrites the whole piece on a napkin.
Q 18What breed of dog is Arnold, who goes along with the athletic Holt family on the hunt in The 39 Clues?
Pit bull
Pit bull Arnold travels with a family of Tomas athletes from Milwaukee, led by Eisenhower Holt, a security guard who was once expelled from West Point.
Q 19Which great-aunt is Amy and Dan Cahill's legal guardian when The 39 Clues begins?
Beatrice
Beatrice is Grace's sister. Once the children vanish on the hunt, she sends a private investigator after them.
Q 20Which ancestor, father of Luke, Katherine, Thomas and Jane, began the feuding family at the heart of The 39 Clues?
Gideon Cahill
Gideon Cahill made his great discovery in 1507 while hunting for a cure for the plague. He died in a fire, and his children blamed one another and split apart.
A kite carries Ian out of the tower like a glider moments after Amy has charged the vial. The liquid inside later turns out to be a Lucian poison.
Q 24At the end of The Maze of Bones, which city do Amy and Dan Cahill head for on the trail of Mozart?
Vienna
Vienna is where the second book picks up. There the siblings learn that Mozart had a gifted sister whose diary has gone missing from a museum.
Q 25In One False Note, which sister of Mozart kept the diary that Amy and Dan take back from Jonah Wizard's hotel?
Nannerl
Nannerl, born Maria Anna, toured Europe as a child prodigy alongside her younger brother. In the novel, three pages of her diary turn out to be missing.
Q 26Which hard metal, forged into two swords hidden in a merchant's house, is the second clue in One False Note?
Tungsten
Tungsten is spelled out by a note Grace left: strike three letters from the French word for cake and the two that remain stand for the metal.
Q 27In One False Note, which booby-trapped instrument blows up when a rival plays Mozart's piece on it?
A harpsichord
A harpsichord once owned by the merchant Fidelio Racco is rigged at a single key. Amy decodes the warning too late, then finishes the tune herself to open a hidden passage.
Q 28In One False Note, a record shop in which Italian city conceals the entrance to a Janus stronghold?
Venice
Venice gives the siblings a gondola chase across the canals after they steal the missing diary pages from the stronghold. Jane Cahill's branch first settled in the city.
Q 29Which Canadian author, first published at fourteen, wrote One False Note and The Emperor's Code for The 39 Clues?
Gordon Korman
Gordon Korman wrote his first novel as an assignment for a seventh-grade English class, then mailed the manuscript to a publisher himself. He went on to open the second 39 Clues story arc with The Medusa Plot.
Q 30At the end of One False Note, a pair of samurai swords points Amy and Dan Cahill towards which city?
Tokyo
Tokyo is where the swords came from. The siblings nearly miss the trip when two rivals pose as them at the airport and take their seats on the plane.