Learning SQL with The SQL Murder Mystery

I just solved the SQL Murder Mystery, a fun 'whodunnit' game designed to practice basic SQL concepts and commands. If you've been wanting to learn SQL, I highly recommend it!

I thought I'd finally pick up some SQL skills. I got the book SQL QuickStart Guide by Walter Shields, and read and followed along for 30m to 1h per day, for 3 days. After a total time of two hours, in the middle of chapter 5, I started to get a little bored with the theory.

I googled 'fun SQL games' and found SQL Murder Mystery. Despite setting a learning goal of only 30mins, I found myself wanting to continue because it was so fun. It's a Sunday morning, so why not?

After 1.5h of querying tables like the crime scene report, table of members, drivers' licenses, etc. I solved it!

Of course, the game requires only super basic SQL queries using SELECT, FROM, WHERE, and wildcard characters, as well as understanding how different tables within a database relate to each other (with 'Entity Relationship Diagrams' or ERDs, and primary and foreign keys). You're not going to be an expert after you solve it!

Related: See this post by Megan Lieu about The Dunning-Kruger effect, as explained by her SQL learning journey.

But it sure is a fun way way to practice writing basic queries. I feel motivated to keep learning. Not a bad way to spend 30m to 1h per day for a 3-5 days.