Numb3rs
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50 free Numb3rs trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Numb3rs ran for six seasons on the idea that mathematics can catch criminals. Agent Don Eppes brings the cases, his younger brother Charlie brings the formulas, and a circle of professors and agents fills in the rest. It made a prime-time hero of a mathematician, and it took the sums seriously enough that real mathematicians checked them. Many fans come looking for Amita Ramanujan, the gifted student who becomes Charlie's colleague, partner and wife, so she gets plenty of questions here: her studies, her career choices, her family and her romance. The rest of the quiz covers the Eppes household, physicist Larry Fleinhardt and his eccentricities, the agents on Don's team, memorable guest stars and the story of how the series reached the screen. The questions run from easy openers to deep cuts for viewers who remember every case. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess teaches you something about the show.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A lecture by which TV science educator gave the creators of Numb3rs the idea for their crime drama?
Bill Nye
Bill Nye's talk on getting children excited about math sparked the series. He later turned up in several episodes himself, playing an engineering professor.
Q 02Which actor, once head elf Bernard in The Santa Clause, plays math prodigy Charlie Eppes on Numb3rs?
David Krumholtz
David Krumholtz beat more than a hundred actors to the part, helped by his knack for making the math sound natural. He later admitted that he had failed math in high school.
Q 03Rob Morrow, FBI agent Don Eppes on Numb3rs, first found fame as a New York doctor on which series?
Northern Exposure
Northern Exposure made Morrow a star as Joel Fleischman, a city physician startled to be posted to an icy, isolated Alaskan town. The part earned him three Golden Globe nominations.
Q 04Judd Hirsch, father Alan Eppes on Numb3rs, won two Emmys as Alex Rieger on which classic sitcom?
Taxi
Taxi ran from 1978 to 1983 with Hirsch in the lead. His Numb3rs role was a recasting: another actor played the father in a first pilot that never aired.
Q 05Which American broadcast network aired all six seasons of the crime drama Numb3rs on Friday nights?
CBS
CBS launched the series in January 2005 with a short first season of thirteen episodes. After a Sunday premiere it moved to Fridays and stayed in that slot for the rest of its run.
Q 06Numb3rs follows Don Eppes's FBI violent crimes squad as it works cases in which American city?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is home to both the squad and the Eppes family. Exterior shots of the FBI offices were filmed on a distinctive bridge at a downtown studio lot.
Q 07CalSci, where Charlie Eppes teaches on Numb3rs, is a fictional stand-in for which real university?
Caltech
Caltech let the producers film academic scenes on its campus. One of its own math professors, Gary Lorden, became the show's mathematics consultant.
Q 08Which Blade Runner director served as an executive producer of Numb3rs alongside his brother Tony?
Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott and his brother designed the look of Charlie's moments of inspiration, including the ash-yellow tint that floods the screen when an idea lands.
Q 09Before their Numb3rs romance, what was Charlie Eppes's academic role in Amita Ramanujan's studies?
Her thesis adviser
Charlie was her thesis adviser while Amita earned a doctorate in computational mathematics in season one. A CalSci division chair later disapproved of the pair dating.
Q 10In season three of Numb3rs, Larry Fleinhardt takes leave from CalSci to spend months working where?
The International Space Station
The International Space Station trip was written in because the actor playing Larry left for much of the season to film another series. Larry flew as a payload specialist.
Q 11Which La Bamba star has a recurring Numb3rs role as Ian Edgerton, the FBI's top sniper and tracker?
Lou Diamond Phillips
Lou Diamond Phillips was hired for a single closed-ended story. Cast and crew liked Edgerton so much that the show brought him back in five of the six seasons.
Q 12Which Happy Days star guest-stars on Numb3rs as Roger Bloom, a veteran FBI bank robbery agent?
Henry Winkler
Henry Winkler's agent loses his badge after stealing $10 million to draw attention to a small theft at his sister's store. He comes back twice to help crack old cases.
Q 13Before joining the FBI, Don Eppes of Numb3rs spent time as a minor league player in which sport?
Baseball
Q 21Amita Ramanujan of Numb3rs is torn at the end of season two by a job offer from which university?
Harvard
Harvard offered Amita a three-year assistant professorship. She took a similar post at CalSci instead, though she told Charlie it would be arrogant to think she had stayed only for him.
Q 22As Numb3rs ends, Charlie Eppes and Amita Ramanujan leave California to teach at which university?
Cambridge
Cambridge offered Charlie a visiting professorship, a long-held academic dream of his. The couple moved their wedding date forward so they could make the move to England together.
Q 23Charlie Eppes of Numb3rs enrolled at which Ivy League university at just thirteen years old?
Princeton
Baseball took Don through college on a scholarship and into Single-A ball as a utility player. The day after deciding he would never rise higher, he signed up for the FBI entrance exam.
Q 14Which Hollywood labor dispute cut the fourth season of Numb3rs to just eighteen episodes?
A writers' strike
A writers' strike halted production after twelve episodes had been made. Once it ended, the network ordered six more, which aired in April and May 2008.
Q 15Which real moonwalker makes a silent cameo on Numb3rs to wish physicist Larry Fleinhardt well?
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin appears as himself without speaking a word. The scene comes as Larry sets off on the adventure of his life, leaving Charlie the most emotional of his friends.
Q 16Which Top Gun actor guest-stars in the Numb3rs season four premiere as torture expert Mason Lancer?
Val Kilmer
Val Kilmer played the interrogator in the episode Trust Metric, in which the team races to rescue a colleague from Chinese spies aboard a ship heading out to sea.
Q 17On Numb3rs, physicist Larry Fleinhardt goes through spells of eating food of only which color?
White
White food, he reasons, helps him maintain supersymmetry, a focus of his research. After a life-changing trip he vows to live without such obsessions.
Q 18In the Numb3rs pilot, which backyard object inspires Charlie's formula for locating a criminal?
A sprinkler
A sprinkler on the family lawn gives Charlie the idea: the pattern of its drops points back to the source, just as a string of crime scenes can point back to where an offender lives.
Q 19Which Nobel-winning physicist did the creators of Numb3rs name as the inspiration for Charlie Eppes?
Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman, noted as both a genius and an eccentric, was the model for Charlie. The show also makes him a former acquaintance of Charlie's mentor Larry.
Q 20Which actress, known as Theresa Diaz on The O.C., plays mathematician Amita Ramanujan on Numb3rs?
Navi Rawat
Navi Rawat nearly lost the part to a clash with another series, so Amita began as a recurring guest. She joined the main cast in season two.
Princeton is where the young Charlie took a quantum physics course taught by Larry Fleinhardt, who became his mentor and best friend. He graduated at sixteen.
Q 24Alan Eppes, the father on Numb3rs, is retired from which career that later proves useful to the FBI?
Urban planner
Urban planner Alan knows infrastructure inside out. He ends up advising his son's team on traffic engineering and even on how a building's elevator system works.
Q 25At which game do Alan and Don Eppes need to team up, plus a distraction, to beat Charlie on Numb3rs?
Chess
Chess is one of Charlie's great talents. Spelling is not, which is why his father prefers to take him on at a word game instead.
Q 26On Numb3rs, Charlie Eppes loses his security clearance after sending research to which country?
Pakistan
Pakistan was where Charlie sent genetic research to help clear a colleague accused of terrorism, knowing the cost. He was arrested and, for a time, shut out of his brother's cases.
Q 27Which Numb3rs agent is jailed as a spy for China, then revealed to be a loyal triple agent?
Colby Granger
Colby Granger had been working for American counterintelligence all along, but the one handler who could vouch for him was dead. Cleared, he turned down a Washington job to stay.
Q 28The actor behind Larry Fleinhardt left Numb3rs mid-season three to play Tom Lennox on which series?
24
24 cast him as Tom Lennox for its sixth season. He appeared in only the first eleven Numb3rs episodes that year before returning near the end of the run.
Q 29What part does Larry Fleinhardt play when Charlie Eppes weds Amita Ramanujan in the Numb3rs finale?
The minister
The minister is Larry himself, ordained by the Universal Life Church just for the occasion. His address links the fundamental forces of the universe to the couple's love.
Q 30Which famous unsolved case does the Numb3rs episode Old Soldiers reopen with ex-agent Roger Bloom?
D. B. Cooper
D. B. Cooper hijacked an airliner in 1971, parachuted out with the ransom and was never identified. The episode makes Roger Bloom one of the agents who once worked the case.