We can use the past perfect and the past perfect continuous to ask questions about the past. Simple questions in the past perfect are formed using:
| had | Subject | Past Participle | |
| Had | I you he she it we you they |
flown | to London before? |
Simple questions in the past perfect continuous are formed using:
| had | Subject | been | Present Participle | |
| Had | I you he she it we you they |
been | flying | to London before? |
We can use these simple questions to ask about experiences in the past. Here are some examples of questions and answers in the past perfects.
Had they won any games before yesterday?
No, they hadn't. This was their first win!
Had you been hiding for long before they found you?
Yes, I'd been hiding for a whole hour.
Had she come down by the time you arrived?
No, she was still stuck in the tree.
Notice that these simple sentences are always answered with yes or no.
For longer and more complicated questions, we can use the question words:
- what
- where
- when
- who
- why
- how
Past perfect questions are formed using:
| Question | had | Subject | Past Participle | |
| What | had | I you he she it we you they |
eaten | before dinner that day? |
Past perfect continuous questions are formed using:
| Question | had | Subject | been | Present Participle | |
| What | had | I you he she it we you they |
been | eating | before dinner that day? |
Look at some example questions and their answers.
What had they done to the wall when you came home?
They had painted some cute cartoons on it.
Where had you been biking?
I'd been biking on mountaintops in Greece.
Where had the dog buried her bone?
She'd buried it in the neighbour's garden!
Who had he been talking to on the phone?
I think he had been talking to the President.
Why had you been crying in class?
Walter had taken my juice!
How had the moose escaped from the zoo?
It had stolen the key from the zookeeper's pocket.