Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
This Columbo trivia quiz has 49 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 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lieutenant Columbo is a detective of what specific kind?
Homicide
Columbo is a homicide lieutenant, always arriving at a murder scene after the viewer has watched the killing; Peter Falk played him for 35 years across two networks.
Q 02For which police department does Columbo work?
Los Angeles
Columbo carries an LAPD badge; the series was shot in and around Los Angeles, with the suspects' mansions in the hills above the city a fixture of almost every episode.
Q 03What 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 04Columbo drives a battered old car of which make?
Peugeot
It is a Peugeot 403 convertible.
Q 05Which food does the show repeatedly mention Columbo loving?
Chili
Chili is his standing order at the diner counters he frequents, often with crackers crumbled in; he praises it to suspects and colleagues across many episodes.
Q 06Columbo often leaves a room and returns with which catchphrase before a key question?
Just one more thing
'Just one more thing' is his habit of pausing at the door and turning back with the question that matters; Peter Falk titled his 2006 memoir Just One More Thing.
Q 07The show popularised which storytelling format, in which the viewer sees the crime committed first?
The inverted detective story
The inverted detective story shows the murder and the murderer up front, so the interest lies in how Columbo catches them; the form is sometimes called a 'howcatchem'.
Q 08Who created the character of Columbo?
Levinson and Link
Richard Levinson and William Link, writing partners since their schooldays in Philadelphia, created Columbo for a 1960 anthology episode and later the stage play and TV movies; they also co-created Murder, She Wrote.
Q 09On which network did Columbo first air as part of a rotating 'Mystery Movie' block in 1971?
NBC
It later moved to ABC for its 1989-2003 revival.
Q 10How many Primetime Emmy Awards did Peter Falk win for playing the detective?
Four
He won in 1972, 1975, 1976 and 1990, plus a Golden Globe in 1973.
Q 11Besides Lee J. Cobb, who was suggested for Columbo but turned it down to protect his golf time?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby reportedly declined because a weekly series would eat into his golf; with Lee J. Cobb also unavailable, the 40-year-old Peter Falk was cast for the 1968 film.
Q 12The 1968 TV movie that launched the character was adapted from which stage play by the creators?
Prescription: Murder
Prescription: Murder opened on stage in 1962, six years before the TV film; the creators had first written the story as 'May I Come In?', then reworked it as a live TV drama and a play.
Q 13What does Columbo call the basset hound that accompanies him in later episodes?
Dog
Q 21The very last new Columbo episode aired in which year?
2003
'Columbo Likes the Nightlife' aired on ABC on 30 January 2003, the last of the occasional TV movies the show had become; Peter Falk was 75.
Q 22In the 1971 pilot 'Ransom for a Dead Man', who played the killer?
Lee Grant
Lee Grant played the lawyer Leslie Williams, who murders her husband and stages a kidnapping; the film's ratings led to the regular series that autumn.
Q 23The 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.
He simply calls the basset hound 'Dog', never settling on a proper name; it first appeared in the 1972 episode 'Étude in Black'.
Q 14Which future blockbuster director directed the first-season episode 'Murder by the Book'?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg, then 24, directed 'Murder by the Book', the first regular-season episode in 1971; it was written by a young Steven Bochco.
Q 15Columbo's first name is almost never spoken, but identification props show it as what?
Frank
Frank appears on his police ID in 'Dead Weight' (1971) and on later props; a 1970s trivia encyclopedia planted a false first name as a copyright trap, which Trivial Pursuit then copied.
Q 16Unlike most TV detectives, Columbo does what?
Never carries a gun
Columbo never carries a gun, keeping his service revolver in a drawer at home; he relies on observation and persistence instead.
Q 17The 1979 spinoff Mrs. Columbo starred which actress as the detective's wife?
Kate Mulgrew
Kate Mulgrew, later Star Trek: Voyager's Captain Janeway, played Kate Columbo; the show was retitled Kate Loves a Mystery and cancelled after thirteen episodes.
Q 18When the pieces start to fall into place, Columbo often begins whistling which tune?
This Old Man
'This Old Man', the children's counting song, became his habitual whistle from the third season in 1973, a touch Peter Falk added himself.
Q 19What caused Peter Falk's distinctive squint?
A childhood glass eye
His right eye was removed in early childhood because of a retinoblastoma tumour, and he wore a glass eye for the rest of his life.
Q 20The show's murderers are usually drawn from which social group?
Wealthy high society
The killers are almost always wealthy high-society figures, such as surgeons, conductors and tycoons, whose contempt for the shabby lieutenant is their undoing; critics read class conflict as the show's theme.
Q 24A statue of Columbo and his dog was unveiled in 2014 in which European capital?
Budapest
The bronze stands on Falk Miksa Street in Budapest, named for a 19th-century Hungarian journalist and politician who shares the actor's surname; the sculpture shows him with his basset hound.
Q 25Richard Irving argued for Falk despite him being what, compared with the writers' idea of the character?
Much younger
Falk, at 40, was much younger than the elderly detective the writers had pictured, but director Richard Irving pushed for him; Falk had said he 'would kill to play that cop'.
Q 26For what did Peter Falk first win an Emmy in 1962?
The Dick Powell Theatre
He won for 'The Price of Tomatoes', a Dick Powell Theatre episode in which he played a truck driver; he had already been Oscar-nominated for Murder, Inc. and Pocketful of Miracles.
Q 27Falk frequently collaborated with which filmmaker friend on movies like A Woman Under the Influence?
John Cassavetes
Cassavetes even appeared as a murderer in the Columbo episode 'Etude in Black'.
Q 28Falk played the grandfather who reads the story in which 1987 fantasy film?
The Princess Bride
In The Princess Bride Falk plays the grandfather reading the tale to a sick Fred Savage; he also starred in the 1979 comedy The In-Laws.
Q 29Which 1976 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 30Between its two networks, Columbo's original NBC run lasted from 1971 to which year?
1978
The NBC run ended with 'The Conspirators' in May 1978, after seven seasons inside the Mystery Movie wheel; the show lay dormant for more than a decade before its revival.