Line 1
“This is the saddest story I have ever heard.”
Opening Lines #74 · Tuesday, 13 October 2026
Opening Lines
Five first sentences from public-domain classics. Which book does each one open?
Replaying an archived puzzle. Play today’s
Line 2
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
Line 3
“About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income.”
Line 4
“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”
Line 5
“When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself,”
Archive · Your stats · First lines are from works published before 1930.
A few playing notes
- How do you play Opening Lines?
Read the opening sentence and choose the novel it belongs to. Look for the narrator, setting and tone as clues. A remembered first sentence can help, but a line can also be a starting point for finding a new book to read.
- When do the daily book games change?
New puzzles arrive at midnight UTC. That may be morning, afternoon or evening in your time zone. The date on the game identifies the puzzle everyone is playing.
- Can I play without an account?
You can play the daily games as a guest. Sign in if you want to keep your streaks across devices, and use the archive links when you want an earlier puzzle. Avoid posting an answer where people who have not played will see it.