First Line

Guess the book from its opening line. A hint unlocks after each guess.

Play 50 puzzles

1“Call me Ishmael.”
2“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
3“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
4“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
5“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
6“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
7“All children, except one, grow up.”
8“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
9“Where's Papa going with that axe?”
10“Marley was dead, to begin with.”
11“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
12“It was a pleasure to burn.”
13“All this happened, more or less.”
14“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
15“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.”
16“I am an invisible man.”
17“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”
18“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence.”
19“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
20“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”
21“Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents.”
22“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”
23“124 was spiteful.”
24“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”
25“The primroses were over.”
26“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like.”
27“1801. I have just returned from a visit to my landlord, the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.”
28“Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
29“Squire Trelawney, Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, I take up my pen.”
30“You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.”
31“A screaming comes across the sky.”
32“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”
33“We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.”
34“It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers.”
35“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
36“This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”
37“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
38“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”
39“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”
40“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”
41“The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.”
42“To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently.”
43“Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.”
44“It was a dark and stormy night.”
45“When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.”
46“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie.”
47“The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.”
48“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do.”
49“My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.”
50“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”