We recently hosted a live quiz on Crimes and Detectives. (Ever since Covid-19 lockdowns struck, we have been gathering families around the proverbial fireplace and asking questions. It snowballed into a ticketed live-edition quiz continues on alternate Saturdays even today.)

Here are a few chosen questions from the live edition (plus a few from here and there, for added drama.) Get your thinking hats and mind palaces on. Here we go. (Answers at the end.)

1. What does Sherlock Holmes do in these stories that he doesn’t in any of the other Holmes stories?
   - “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier”
   - “The Adventure of the Lion's Mane”

2. In 2016, the game CLUEDO replaced Mrs. White with a new character. Which character, represented by this colour?

3. 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' features the marvellous 'Mma Precious Ramotswe'. In which African country are these novels set?

4. Famed American basketballer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has written a couple of books featuring a famous side character as the secretary to the 19th century British Secretary for War. You might even call this a spinoff of sorts. Which character?

5. Voted Britain’s Greatest Crime Drama, the theme music of this TV series has a motif that beats out the last name of the lead detective in code.
   --/---/.-./.../.
   What’s the show called?

6. One experiment claimed the following effect:
   - Participants were asked to think about a past deed of theirs
   - They they were asked to fill in the letters of these words:
   "W__H", "SH_ _ER" and "S_ _P".
   - Those who thought of a bad deed were likely to respond with words like "wash", "shower", "soap"
   - Others picked words like "wish", "shaker" or "stop".
   This has been dubbed the _____ effect, after a famous literary character’s spouse. Which character?

7. War veteran turned private detective is the focal point of this show: 'Strike', starring Tom Burke, adapted from novels penned under a different name. Who is the original author of this series?

8. Unlike most other judicial systems, Scottish law has three types of verdicts available to it in criminal law. These are:
   Guilty
   Not Guilty
   ... and what?

9. The director of this Hindi film is said to have asked for a trailer with just sounds instead of any visuals. (The studio did not see eye-to-eye with him, so this idea was rejected.) Which film, based on a French short film, called ‘L'Accordeur’?

10. Who is the only fictional character to receive the honour of an obituary on the front page of the New York Times, upon the announcement of his death on Aug 6, 1975?

Now, here's something interesting from the world of movies. The first 'talkie' movie released in Britain back in 1929 was a crime thriller: Blackmail. It was the first real hit of a lesser-known director: Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock's directing style includes the use of camera movement to mimic a person's gaze, thereby turning viewers into voyeurs, and framing shots to maximise anxiety and fear. His films got a total of 46 Oscar nominations, but he personally never won the 'Best Director' Academy Award.

Before we go on to the answers, (if you love this genre), we totally recommend these:

Answers:

1. Narrate the stories, 2. Dr. Orchid, 3. Botswana, 4. Mycroft Holmes, 5. Inspector Morse, 6. Lady Macbeth, 7. Robert Galbraith or JK Rowling, 8. Not Proven, 9. Andhadhun, 10. Hercule Poirot.