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50 free Nancy Drew trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Nancy Drew was pitched as 'Stella Strong', written for $125 a book by an Iowa journalist nobody was allowed to name, and sold out Macy's Christmas order in days. Ninety-five years later the first four books are in the public domain, 80 million copies have sold, and two Supreme Court justices credit her with their careers. These 50 questions cover the books and everything built on them: Edward Stratemeyer and the Syndicate, Mildred Wirt Benson and Harriet Adams, Carson Drew and Hannah Gruen, Bess and George, Ned Nickerson's college, the blue roadster, the titian hair, the 1959 rewrites, the Files and On Campus years, what the French call her, Russell Tandy's flashlight covers, Bonita Granville, Pamela Sue Martin, Emma Roberts, Sophia Lillis, The CW series and the HeR Interactive games. Easy questions ask where she lives; hard ones ask which book made her 18. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a book club.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under what collective pseudonym are the Nancy Drew books published?
Carolyn Keene
The other three are Stratemeyer Syndicate pen names for the Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift.
Q 02Who created Nancy Drew as a female counterpart to the Hardy Boys?
Edward Stratemeyer
His book-packaging firm, the Stratemeyer Syndicate, hired ghostwriters to write from his outlines.
Q 03In what year did the first Nancy Drew books appear?
1930
The first four titles came out together and were an immediate success.
Q 04How many novels made up the original Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series by the time it ended in 2003?
175
It remains the longest-running series to feature the character.
Q 05In what fictional town does Nancy Drew live?
River Heights
Bayport belongs to the Hardy Boys, Lakeport to the Bobbsey Twins and Shopton to Tom Swift.
Q 06What is the profession of Nancy's father, Carson Drew?
Attorney
He is often away on business for weeks, trusting Nancy to look after herself.
Q 07What is the name of the Drews' housekeeper?
Hannah Gruen
Early books treated her as a servant; later ones made her a surrogate mother.
Q 08Nancy's two long-term best friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, are related how?
Cousins
Bess is delicate and feminine while George is a tomboy; they replaced early friend Helen Corning.
Q 09What is the full first name of Nancy's friend Bess?
Elizabeth
The Syndicate's secretary, Harriet Otis Smith, invented both Bess and George.
Q 10Nancy's boyfriend Ned Nickerson is a student at which fictional college?
Emerson
He is introduced in the seventh book of the series.
Q 11What colour is Nancy Drew's famous roadster in the original series?
Blue
In the later books it becomes a blue convertible instead.
Q 12In the revised books, Nancy's hair colour was changed from blonde to what?
Titian
Her age was raised from 16 to 18 at the same time.
Q 13How old is Nancy in the original 1930s books?
16
Sixteen was the minimum age for high school graduation at the time; she later became 18.
Q 14Which book quietly raised Nancy's age from 16 to 18 in 1953?
Q 21Which of her own characters did Benson call 'a better Nancy Drew than Nancy is'?
Penny Parker
Parker, a newspaper editor's daughter, appeared under Benson's own name from 1939 to 1947.
Q 22The Syndicate's founder died in 1930, weeks after the launch. Which daughter took over?
Harriet Adams
She ran the Syndicate for 52 years and oversaw the 1959 revisions.
Q 23Besides Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, which series did the Syndicate's founder create?
The Bobbsey Twins
Fortune wrote: 'As oil had its Rockefeller, literature had its Stratemeyer.'
The Ringmaster's Secret
It was book 31, and no in-universe explanation was given.
Q 15Which early friend of Nancy's, from the first books, was supplanted by Bess and George?
Helen Corning
She turns up only very occasionally in later volumes.
Q 16What was the series called in Stratemeyer's original pitch to the publisher?
Stella Strong Stories
Editors picked 'Nan Drew' from his alternatives and lengthened Nan to Nancy.
Q 17Which ghostwriter wrote most of the early Nancy Drew books and gave her a feisty spirit?
Mildred Wirt Benson
She contributed 23 of the first 30 books and later worked 58 years at the Toledo Blade.
Q 18How much were early Syndicate ghostwriters paid per Nancy Drew book?
$125
That was about two months' wages for a newspaper reporter; it fell to $75 in the Depression.
Q 19Which newspaper employed Mildred Benson for 58 years?
The Toledo Blade
She wrote a column called 'On the Go' and obituaries until months before her death at 96.
Q 20Mildred Benson was the first person to earn a journalism master's at which school?
University of Iowa
She had finished her English degree there in just three years.
Q 24What is the title of the first Nancy Drew book?
The Secret of the Old Clock
It was published on April 28, 1930, and the original text entered the US public domain in 2026.
Q 25In the first book, Nancy hunts for the missing will of which deceased man?
Josiah Crowley
She wants to help his struggling relatives rather than the snobbish Tophams.
Q 26Which snobbish family are the heirs presumptive Nancy dislikes in the first book?
The Tophams
In the 1930 text she discredits the sisters after they break an imported vase in a department store.
Q 27In 1959 the early books were revised at the insistence of which publisher?
Grosset & Dunlap
The aim was to modernise them and remove racist stereotypes; the new editions were bound in yellow.
Q 28In 1985 the Stratemeyer Syndicate and all its rights were sold to which publisher?
Simon & Schuster
The new owner soon launched The Nancy Drew Files spin-off.
Q 29Which 1986 spin-off series gave an older heroine more romance and more murders?
The Nancy Drew Files
124 titles appeared in 11 years, with a new book almost every month.
Q 30How many titles did The Nancy Drew Files reach before ending in 1997?
124
More than 17 million copies are in print.