50 Fun Facts About Croquet

The club that hosts which famous tennis tournament was founded in 1868 purely for croquet?

Wimbledon began life as the All England Croquet Club. Its first tennis championship, in 1877, was staged to pay for repairs to the pony roller needed to maintain the lawns.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which live birds do the players swing as croquet mallets?

Flamingos serve as the mallets while living playing-card soldiers bend over to form the hoops. Lewis Carroll published the scene in 1865, just as the croquet craze was sweeping England.

Which country supplied every one of the ten players at the only Olympic croquet tournament, in 1900?

France won every medal because nobody else entered. Only one paying spectator is recorded as turning up to watch.

Croquet at the 1900 Games was one of the first Olympic sports to include which group of competitors?

Women first competed at the Olympics in 1900, and three of them played croquet alongside seven men. In every version of croquet, both sexes compete on equal terms and are ranked together.

Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining replaced the novel's croquet-style mallet with which weapon for Jack Torrance?

A fire axe became the film's signature prop. In Stephen King's book Jack stalks the Overlook Hotel with a mallet taken from the hotel's own playing court.

Gateball, a fast team sport inspired by croquet, was invented in 1947 in which country?

Japan's Suzuki Kazunobu devised gateball during a post-war rubber shortage. Wood for mallets and balls was plentiful on Hokkaido, where he worked in the lumber trade.

Which Marx brother, an avid croquet player, was inducted into the Croquet Hall of Fame in 1979?

Harpo joined the hall's first class of inductees alongside Hollywood moguls Samuel Goldwyn and Darryl Zanuck. The hall was set up that year by the Croquet Foundation of America.

Which London street is named after a 17th-century mallet-and-ball game regarded as a forerunner of croquet?

Pall Mall took its name from the game played there, after London's first court for it was laid out nearby in 1630. The game's alleys also gave English the word mall, first for a promenade and later for a shopping centre.

Dictionaries trace the word croquet to a dialect term for the stick used in which other sport?

Hockey stick was the sense of the dialect word, which goes back to an older northern term for a shepherd's crook. Crochet and crotchet grew from the same hooked root.

Jaques of London, the firm that popularised croquet, also pioneered which indoor sport under the name Gossima?

Table tennis reached the shops as Gossima and later as Ping Pong. The same family firm had released the Staunton chess set in 1849.

In which 1988 Winona Ryder film do the members of a high-school clique play croquet?

Heathers opens with the clique aiming croquet balls at Veronica's head. Mallets later featured on the posters for the stage musical based on the film.

Which American variant of croquet, played on a hard walled court, replaced it at the 1904 Olympics?

Roque got its name when a New Yorker simply dropped the first and last letters of the older game's name. Its fans billed it as the Game of the Century.

Blue and black balls play as partners in croquet, so which colour ball teams up with red?

Yellow completes the four primary colours. In golf croquet the same four colours also fix the order of play: blue, red, black, then the last of the set.

In handicap croquet, what name is given to the free extra turn awarded to the weaker player?

A bisque lets a weaker player carry on after a mistake, which levels the odds of winning. A half-bisque is a restricted version in which no point may be scored.

Which football term describes a golf croquet ball played more than halfway to the next hoop too early?

Offside balls are moved to penalty areas. In golf croquet every ball contests the same hoop, and all move on as soon as one of them scores it.

Which North African country has been the most successful nation at golf croquet's world championships?

Egypt took to the quicker golf croquet code with such enthusiasm that Cairo has hosted the world championship more than once.

In croquet, what is the term for striking another ball with your own to earn two extra shots?

A roquet lets the striker pick up their ball and place it against the one they hit. The next stroke moves both balls, and it is the shot that gives the game its name.

Backyard nine-wicket croquet, the common North American garden game, sets out its course in which pattern?

A double diamond has a stake at each end. Players run one side of the pattern, hit the turning stake, then come home down the other side.

Which garden machine became popular at the same time as croquet, giving players the flat, fine turf they needed?

The lawn mower, in its cylinder form, caught on in the same decade as the game. Croquet can only be played well on grass that is flat and finely cut.

Which Leo Tolstoy novel shows Russian high society passing the time with games of croquet?

Anna Karenina was published in the 1870s, barely a decade after the craze swept England. Its fashionable characters are already keen players.

What do croquet players call sending a ball other than their own through its next hoop?

A peel can be chained into a triple, which sends the partner ball through its last three hoops before both balls are pegged out in a single turn.

Which croquet term names a ball left at a spot meant to tempt an opponent into shooting and missing?

A tice does what the longer word entice suggests. It sits at a distance that tempts the opponent to shoot at it but makes a miss the likely result.

When a hoop or the peg blocks a croquet ball's direct path to another ball, the balls are called what?

Wired balls cannot be aimed at each other, so a skilled player will often try to finish a turn with the opponent's two balls hidden from one another behind a hoop.

What is the croquet term for playing two separate games at the same time on one court?

Double banking works because the second game uses a different set of ball colours. When the two games get in each other's way, players mark a ball and lift it.

Which colour joins green, brown and white to complete the secondary set of croquet balls?

Pink partners white against green and brown. The second set lets another match share a court without anyone confusing the balls.

In association croquet, what is the stroke called when three balls sit in contact with one another?

A cannon arises when a struck ball stops touching a third ball. Skilled players seek them out in the corners as a way of getting a ball back into the action.

In American six-wicket croquet, which word describes being barred from hitting a ball again until you score a hoop?

Deadness carries over from turn to turn in the American game, so a separate board is kept beside the court to track it for all four balls.

In backyard croquet's alternative endgame, what does a ball become once it can knock rivals out of the game?

Poison balls eliminate any ball they hit, but they are out themselves if they strike a stake or pass through a wicket. The last player left wins.

What name is given to nine-wicket croquet when every player competes alone instead of in partnerships?

Cutthroat is won by the first player to hit the finishing stake. In team play a player may instead put off staking out in order to help a lagging partner.

Which word, also used on a snooker table, names the lines from which croquet balls first enter play?

Baulk lines run along half of the south boundary and half of the north. A player entitled to a lift may pick a ball up and play it from either one.

The MacRobertson Shield, croquet's premier team trophy, is named after an Australian tycoon who made which product?

Chocolate and confectionery made Sir Macpherson Robertson's fortune, through brands such as Freddo Frog and Cherry Ripe. He set up the shield in 1925 for Tests between Australia and England.

Reg Bamford, the first player to hold both croquet world titles at once, represents which country?

South Africa is Bamford's native country, although he settled in England. In 2013 he added the golf croquet world title to the association crown he already held.

Which author of Whisky Galore served as president of the Croquet Association from 1953 to 1966?

Compton Mackenzie is best known for comic novels set in Scotland, including The Monarch of the Glen. He was also president of the Siamese Cat Club.

Officer trainees from which US armed service meet St. John's College each April in a famous croquet match?

The Navy trains its officers at an academy across the street from St. John's in Annapolis, Maryland. The croquet rivalry draws thousands of spectators.

Which university's 2011 'Cuppers' event, with over 1,800 players, claimed to be the largest croquet tournament ever?

Oxford also called the inter-college contest the largest sporting event in the university's history. Its croquet club meets Cambridge each year in a varsity match.

Which American painter, best known for marine subjects, produced a series of croquet pictures in the 1860s?

Winslow Homer based several of the croquet scenes on his uncle's mansion in Belmont, Massachusetts. He painted them shortly after sketching the front lines of the Civil War.

Which early science-fiction author wrote The Croquet Player, a 1936 novella described as a sort of ghost story?

H. G. Wells made the title character an idle croquet lover who is told of a haunted English marshland. It has been read as a short allegory prompted by the Spanish Civil War.

Croquet historian Dr Prior insisted in 1872 that the game had reached England from which neighbouring country?

Ireland has records of a similar game called crookey being played in County Louth around 1834, more than twenty years before any rules were registered in London.

The Earl of Eglinton's Scottish variant of croquet fitted its eight hoops with which noisy extras?

Small bells rang the changes as balls went through, and the layout added two pegs and two tunnels. One complete set survives and is used for demonstration games.

Which English spa town is home to the headquarters of the national governing body for croquet in England?

Cheltenham houses the body formed in 1897 as the United All England Croquet Association. It picks the players invited to contest the President's Cup.

Which band's 1971 album Nursery Cryme shows a girl with a croquet mallet and severed heads on its cover?

Genesis took the cover from The Musical Box, the album's opening song, a macabre Victorian tale in which a girl takes off a boy's head with her mallet during a game of croquet.

Which band's members appear as bullied, croquet-playing nerds in the music video for I'm Not Okay (I Promise)?

My Chemical Romance shot the video as a trailer for a teen film that was never made. Director Marc Webb took his inspiration from the film Rushmore.

Which cartoon character sneaks onto a croquet field to play in the 1951 animated short Wicket Wacky?

Woody Woodpecker gets no peace in the short, because a gopher bothered by the noise does everything it can to stop the game.

Which Wonderland ruler owns the croquet court that Alice reaches through a locked garden door?

The Queen of Hearts keeps a guard of living playing cards around her croquet court. Alice gets in only after she finally manages to use the key to the garden.

In which US state is the National Croquet Center, home of the Croquet Hall of Fame?

Florida's West Palm Beach has housed the United States Croquet Association since 2002, at a centre with twelve lawns and a 19,000-square-foot clubhouse.

Which John Steinbeck novel features croquet at the government camp where the Joad family stays?

The Grapes of Wrath places the scene at Weedpatch, a real camp built south of Bakersfield, California, in 1936 to house migrant workers during the Great Depression.

Which painter's 1873 canvas The Croquet Game hangs in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt?

Édouard Manet posed fellow painter Alfred Stevens and two artists' models as the players. He had already painted a croquet party at Boulogne two years earlier.

The last hoop on an association croquet lawn, marked with a red top bar, goes by which name?

The rover is the twelfth hoop a ball runs, after which the ball can be pegged out to finish. The first hoop is the one with the blue top.

Which croquet fault is called when the mallet makes more than one audible sound as it strikes the ball?

A double tap means the mallet has hit the ball twice in one swing. A crush, by contrast, is a fault in which mallet, ball and hoop are all touching at once.

Which sporting goods name published the first official American croquet rules in its Athletic Library in 1894?

Spalding printed the rules as adopted by the National American Croquet Association. The American game always plays its four balls in the same colour order.