After the SQL Murder Mystery: SQL games to play next

You joined the tables, followed the clues and typed a name. The SQL Murder Mystery is a great first case: it turns SELECT, WHERE and JOIN into a reason to keep going. Then it ends, and the question is what to play next.

Pick the next game by the skill you want to practise: more detective puzzles, a gentler first contact with SQL, or problems shaped like real analyst work, where the answer is not a name but a number someone will act on.

Disclosure: we make Atterna, one of the options below. Facts about the other games come from their own websites as of October 2026; formats and prices change, so check before you rely on them. No answers to any game are given here.

Quick picks

• Never written a query: SQL Island, or day 1 of Atterna Start.
• More detective cases: SQL Noir.
• A story in chapters: Lost at SQL.
• Problems shaped like analyst work: Atterna’s case 1 and the Wrong Number game, both free and without an account.

The games side by side

What the Murder Mystery trains, and what it leaves out

It trains the mechanics well: reading a schema, joining several tables and filtering until one row is left. That is a real skill, and the story makes it stick.

What it doesn’t ask is the question an analyst hears every week: is this number right? In a murder case the answer is a person, so a query is either finished or not. At work the query usually runs, the chart looks fine, and the trap is somewhere else — in who was counted or what was compared with what.

Try one before reading on — it takes 30 seconds:

Try it · 30 seconds · from Atterna’s practice

A

Anna · product

Hi! Quick one — how many active buyers do we have? It’s for the monthly report.

account type	rows
shoppers	7,000
sellers	36
staff	40
QA test	60

The users table has 7,136 rows. What do you send Anna?

Preparing the practice…

7,1367,000First ask what “active” means for her report

That is the whole difference in one question. Nothing in the table is wrong, and every count of it is a correct query. Which number you send depends on who is counted and on what “active” means for the report — a definition nobody gave you yet. No query is wrong here; the number you send can still be.

How to choose

• You liked the puzzle itself. Stay with detective games: SQL Noir has more cases with a query validator.
• SQL still feels slow. SQL Island is short and friendly; Atterna’s Start begins with placing an order in a shop and turning it into a row of data, then your first query in day 2.
• You want to know if you could do this at work. Try case 1: marketing’s query is correct and the chart agrees with it. Your job is to find out who it actually compares, before the claim goes into a plan. About 17 minutes, SQL in your browser, free.
• You want something for your phone. Wrong Number takes three minutes and needs no SQL at all: three colleagues ask for a customer count, and each means something different.

All Atterna games live on one page, with the comparison above.

FAQ

Is the SQL Murder Mystery good for beginners?

Beginners can play it, but it goes faster if you already know SELECT, WHERE and JOIN. If you have never written a query, start with SQL Island or day 1 of Atterna Start, then come back to it.

Where can I find the SQL Murder Mystery answer?

Not here. The point of the game is the search, and it checks the name for you. If you are stuck, re-read the clue and check which table could hold the next fact.

Are there other SQL games like the Murder Mystery?

Yes: SQL Noir and Lost at SQL are detective and story games in the same spirit; SQL Island is a gentler text adventure. Atterna’s cases keep the investigation but move it to a marketplace’s data, where the question is whether a number holds up.

Which SQL game is closest to real analyst work?

We are biased, so judge for yourself: Atterna’s case 1 is free and takes about 17 minutes. It starts from a colleague’s request, runs real SQL in your browser and ends with a verdict you have to defend.