Croquet
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50 free Croquet trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Croquet looks like the gentlest game in the garden, and it has a reputation for being one of the most ruthless. It swept Victorian England in a single decade, put both sexes on the same court at a time when almost no sport did, and then lost its ground to a newer craze almost as quickly as it had arrived. This quiz covers the whole story: where the game and its name came from, how the association, golf and backyard versions differ, the colours, hoops and curious vocabulary that players use, and the sport's brief moment at the Olympics. There are questions on the world game and its trophies, and on croquet's many appearances in novels, paintings, films, cartoons and music videos. It is pitched for curious general players, with a run of rules-and-jargon questions for club members and garden-party regulars. Good for a pub quiz round, a club social or a summer afternoon when rain stops play.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The club that hosts which famous tennis tournament was founded in 1868 purely for croquet?
Wimbledon
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.
Q 02In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which live birds do the players swing as croquet mallets?
Flamingos
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.
Q 03Which country supplied every one of the ten players at the only Olympic croquet tournament, in 1900?
France
France won every medal because nobody else entered. Only one paying spectator is recorded as turning up to watch.
Q 04Croquet at the 1900 Games was one of the first Olympic sports to include which group of competitors?
Women
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.
Q 05Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining replaced the novel's croquet-style mallet with which weapon for Jack Torrance?
A fire axe
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.
Q 06Gateball, a fast team sport inspired by croquet, was invented in 1947 in which country?
Japan
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.
Q 07Which Marx brother, an avid croquet player, was inducted into the Croquet Hall of Fame in 1979?
Harpo
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.
Q 08Which London street is named after a 17th-century mallet-and-ball game regarded as a forerunner of croquet?
Pall Mall
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.
Q 09Dictionaries trace the word croquet to a dialect term for the stick used in which other sport?
Hockey
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.
Q 10Jaques of London, the firm that popularised croquet, also pioneered which indoor sport under the name Gossima?
Table tennis
Table tennis reached the shops as Gossima and later as Ping Pong. The same family firm had released the Staunton chess set in 1849.
Q 11In which 1988 Winona Ryder film do the members of a high-school clique play croquet?
Heathers
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.
Q 12Which American variant of croquet, played on a hard walled court, replaced it at the 1904 Olympics?
Roque
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.
Q 13Blue and black balls play as partners in croquet, so which colour ball teams up with red?
Yellow
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.
Q 21What do croquet players call sending a ball other than their own through its next hoop?
A peel
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.
Q 22Which croquet term names a ball left at a spot meant to tempt an opponent into shooting and missing?
A tice
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.
Q 23When a hoop or the peg blocks a croquet ball's direct path to another ball, the balls are called what?
Wired
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.
Q 14In handicap croquet, what name is given to the free extra turn awarded to the weaker player?
A bisque
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.
Q 15Which football term describes a golf croquet ball played more than halfway to the next hoop too early?
Offside
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.
Q 16Which North African country has been the most successful nation at golf croquet's world championships?
Egypt
Egypt took to the quicker golf croquet code with such enthusiasm that Cairo has hosted the world championship more than once.
Q 17In croquet, what is the term for striking another ball with your own to earn two extra shots?
A roquet
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.
Q 18Backyard nine-wicket croquet, the common North American garden game, sets out its course in which pattern?
A double diamond
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.
Q 19Which garden machine became popular at the same time as croquet, giving players the flat, fine turf they needed?
The lawn mower
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.
Q 20Which Leo Tolstoy novel shows Russian high society passing the time with games of croquet?
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina was published in the 1870s, barely a decade after the craze swept England. Its fashionable characters are already keen players.
Q 24What is the croquet term for playing two separate games at the same time on one court?
Double banking
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.
Q 25Which colour joins green, brown and white to complete the secondary set of croquet balls?
Pink
Pink partners white against green and brown. The second set lets another match share a court without anyone confusing the balls.
Q 26In association croquet, what is the stroke called when three balls sit in contact with one another?
A cannon
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.
Q 27In American six-wicket croquet, which word describes being barred from hitting a ball again until you score a hoop?
Deadness
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.
Q 28In backyard croquet's alternative endgame, what does a ball become once it can knock rivals out of the game?
Poison
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.
Q 29What name is given to nine-wicket croquet when every player competes alone instead of in partnerships?
Cutthroat
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.
Q 30Which word, also used on a snooker table, names the lines from which croquet balls first enter play?
Baulk
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.