170 free Bowling trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
50 free Bowling trivia questions with answers. Bowling trivia for league night, a birthday party at the lanes or anyone who has ever argued about what a turkey is. This quiz covers the whole sport: the 5,000-year-old Egyptian game, why Martin Luther settled on nine pins, how ten-pin bowling dodged an American ban, the year the perfect 300 was written into the rules, and the White House lanes that were built for Harry Truman. It also covers the numbers every bowler should know, from lane length to pin weight to the 7-10 split, plus the legends of the PBA: Don Carter, Earl Anthony, Walter Ray Williams Jr., Pete Weber and Jason Belmonte. Candlepin, duckpin, five-pin and kegeln get their turn too, along with The Big Lebowski, Kingpin and Wii Sports. Questions run from easy to expert, each labelled by difficulty. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
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Q 01What is the maximum score in a single game of ten-pin bowling?
300
It takes twelve consecutive strikes: one in each of the first nine frames and three in the tenth.
Q 02In bowling slang, what is a 'turkey'?
Three consecutive strikes
Four in a row is a 'hambone', a term credited to announcer Rob Stone in the mid-2000s.
Q 03How long is a ten-pin bowling lane from the foul line to the centre of the head pin?
60 feet
The lane is 41.5 inches wide and made up of 39 boards, with the guide arrows about 15 feet from the foul line.
Q 04What is the maximum weight of a regulation ten-pin bowling ball?
16 pounds
The limit was set by the American Bowling Congress in 1895, along with the 300-point scoring system.
Q 05A regulation ten-pin weighs roughly how much?
3 lb 8 oz
Pins stand 15 inches tall and 4.75 inches wide, and are usually maple coated in plastic.
Q 06Which civilisation left the earliest bowling evidence, miniature pins and balls in a child's grave, around 3200 BCE?
Ancient Egypt
Herodotus later credited the Lydians of Asia Minor with inventing bowling games.
Q 07Which religious reformer is credited with fixing the number of bowling pins at nine?
Martin Luther
Before that the pin count varied anywhere from three to seventeen.
Q 08Which English king banned bowling for the lower classes in 1511 while remaining an avid bowler himself?
Henry VIII
Edward III had earlier banned bowling because it distracted men from archery practice.
Q 09Which English captain reportedly finished his game of bowls at Plymouth Hoe as the Armada was sighted in 1588?
Francis Drake
'We have time enough to finish the game and beat the Spaniards too,' he is supposed to have said.
Q 10Which 1819 Washington Irving story gave American literature its first mention of ninepin bowling?
Rip Van Winkle
The thunder in the Catskills is the sound of Henry Hudson's ghostly crew at their ninepins.
Q 11The ten-pin game is said to have been invented in America to get around what?
City bans on nine-pin games
Several US cities banned nine-pins in the 1830s over gambling and organized crime, though a painting shows ten pins in a triangle in Ipswich, England, around 1810.
Q 12Which organization set modern ten-pin rules in 1895, raising the top score from 200 to 300?
The American Bowling Congress
It merged with the Women's International Bowling Congress in 2005 to form the United States Bowling Congress.
Q 13Before rubber balls arrived in 1905, bowling balls were made of which dense hardwood?
Q 21Australia's Jason Belmonte, PBA major titles record holder, is famous for delivering the ball how?
With two hands
He is one of only two bowlers, with Mike Aulby, to complete the Super Slam of all five majors.
Q 22Norm Duke became the youngest PBA Tour winner in 1983 at what age?
18
He was 18 years and 345 days old, and finished with 40 titles.
Q 23Who was the first bowler to convert the 7-10 split on television, in January 1980?
Mark Roth
Only a handful of pros have ever done it on air; the split is nicknamed 'goal posts', 'bedposts' or 'snake eyes'.
Lignum vitae
Polyester 'plastic' balls came in 1959, urethane in the 1980s and reactive resin in the early 1990s.
Q 14Which company began marketing automatic pinsetter machines in 1952, putting most 'pin boys' out of work?
AMF
The first mechanical pinsetter was invented by Gottfried 'Fred' Schmidt, who sold the patent to AMF in 1941.
Q 15Two bowling lanes were installed in the West Wing in 1948 as a birthday gift for which president?
Harry S. Truman
Their old spot became the Situation Room in 1961; friends of Richard Nixon later built him a one-lane alley under the North Portico.
Q 16The Professional Bowlers Association was founded in 1958 in which Ohio city?
Akron
Sports agent Eddie Elias persuaded 33 bowlers, including Don Carter and Dick Weber, to sign up.
Q 17Which bowler, 'Mr. Bowling', was the first athlete to sign a $1,000,000 endorsement deal, in 1964?
Don Carter
The deal was with Ebonite; he had learned the game as a childhood pinsetter in St. Louis.
Q 18Which crew-cut left-hander, the first bowler to earn $1 million, has the PBA World Championship trophy named for him?
Earl Anthony
He won 43 titles in just 15 seasons on tour.
Q 19Who holds the record for most PBA Tour titles, with 47, and is also a champion horseshoes pitcher?
Walter Ray Williams Jr.
He won at least one title in a record 17 straight seasons and is the only player to be Player of the Year in four different decades.
Q 20Which bowler's outburst "Who do you think you are? I am!" went viral after his fifth U.S. Open win in 2012?
Pete Weber
The record he broke belonged to his father Dick Weber, who had won the event four times.
Q 24Which five-pin split including the 4, 6, 7 and 10 is the least-converted in professional bowling?
The Greek church
Only Doug Kent and Alan Bishop have ever converted it on television.
Q 25A 'Brooklyn' is a ball that does what?
Crosses to the wrong side of the head pin
In New York it is called a Jersey and in Detroit a Windsor, each named for the place across the water.
Q 26A game of alternating strikes and spares always ends with what score, giving it a national nickname?
A Dutch 200
A game with a strike or spare in every frame is called a 'clean game'.
Q 27'Sandbagging' in league play means doing what?
Rolling badly early to inflate your handicap
'Scratch' scores are the opposite: what you actually rolled with no handicap added.
Q 28A pin hiding directly behind another pin, such as the 8 behind the 2, is called what?
A sleeper
The pair together is called 'double wood', or, less formally, a 'ninja pin'.
Q 29Oil is applied to roughly how much of a lane's length so the ball skids before it hooks?
The first two-thirds
'Sport' patterns used by the pros spread the oil flat from side to side, so the lane gives no help steering the ball to the pocket.
Q 30According to a 2008 USBC study, a ball ideally strikes the head pin centred where for maximum pin carry?
Board 17.5
That is 2.5 boards off the centre of the head pin, into the famous 'pocket'.