Curling Trivia
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70 free Curling trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This curling trivia quiz slides from a 1511 stone found in a drained Scottish pond to Sweden's record-setting skips. The basics come first: what the house, button, hacks, hog line and hammer are, why sweeping makes a stone run farther and straighter, and how an end is scored. Then the equipment: why the granite comes only from Ailsa Craig and a Welsh quarry, how heavy a stone must be, what brooms were made of before the 1950s, and the 'broomgate' row over fabric that steered stones too well. History and rules questions cover Bruegel's 1565 peasants, the Kilsyth club of 1716, the Royal Caledonian rulebook, Canada's iron stones, the retroactive 1924 Olympic gold, the free guard zone and the Spirit of Curling. The people include Kevin Martin, Jennifer Jones, Anette Norberg, Niklas Edin, Anna Hasselborg, Rhona Martin and Eve Muirhead, plus the Brier, the Scotties, wheelchair and mixed doubles curling and a James Bond cameo. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on curling, its Olympic history, governing body and individual curlers, and each explanation adds one detail worth remembering. BrainPickle has separate quizzes on the Winter Olympics and on Scotland.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the target area at the end of a curling sheet called?
The house
The house: its coloured rings carry no values of their own. Any stone in them scores a single point, provided it lies nearer the centre than every opposing stone.
Q 02Who throws the stones on a curling team?
All four players
All four players: each throws two of the team's eight stones, and whoever isn't throwing either sweeps or stands at the far end directing the shot.
Q 03What are curling stones made of?
Granite
Granite: the dense, fine-grained kind used for stones takes in almost no water, so melted ice can't seep in, refreeze and pit the stone's polished underside.
Q 04When curlers talk about a stone's 'weight', what do they mean?
How hard it was thrown
How hard it was thrown: 'weight' is a stone's speed, not its mass. Sweepers judge it as they run alongside and call out where they expect the stone to stop.
Q 05What is the last stone thrown in an end called?
The hammer
The hammer: throwing last is such an advantage that scoring costs you it. Whichever team takes points in one end hands the hammer to its opponents for the next.
Q 06What do curlers shout when they want their sweepers to brush flat out?
Hurry hard
Hurry hard: both words tell the sweepers to brush faster and press down more, and the skip bellows them from the far end of the sheet while watching the stone's path.
Q 07What does sweeping the ice in front of a moving stone do?
Makes it travel farther and straighter
Makes it travel farther and straighter: vigorous brushing warms the ice for an instant, cutting the friction that slows a stone and lets it bend.
Q 08What are modern curling brush handles usually made of?
Hollow fibreglass or carbon fibre tubes
Hollow fibreglass or carbon fibre tubes: they are lighter than the old wooden shafts, so sweepers can brush faster.
Q 09Who slides stones on ice in curling's earliest written record, from Paisley around 1540?
A monk
A monk: the record is a challenge to throw stones across the ice, written down by a Paisley notary, between a monk of the town's abbey and a man from the abbot's own circle.
Q 10If a curler releases a stone with a clockwise turn, which way does its path bend?
To the right
To the right: the stone bends the way it is spun, so throwers pick clockwise or counter-clockwise to swing a shot around a blocking stone and hide behind it.
Q 11Which painter's 1565 winter scenes show Flemish peasants playing a curling-like game?
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Pieter Bruegel the Elder: small figures play it on a frozen pond in The Hunters in the Snow, one reason the Low Countries are sometimes argued to share the game's origins.
Q 12Why is curling nicknamed 'the roaring game'?
The sound the stones make over the pebbled ice
The sound the stones make over the pebbled ice: ice-makers spray on droplets that freeze into bumps to cut friction, and a stone rumbles as it rides over them.
Q 13A 1620 elegy credited with the first use of the word 'curling' praises a Perth man's love of archery, curling and what?
Q 21Why does a curling sheet have two targets?
Play reverses each end
Play reverses each end: the ice is laid out symmetrically, so teams slide all sixteen stones one way, count the score, then throw them back again.
Q 22What is the small circle at the very centre of a curling target called?
The button
The button: before championship games each team slides stones at it, and whichever gets closer earns the right to throw last in the opening end.
Q 23What are the foot-holds a thrower pushes off from called?
The hacks
The hacks: a thrower plants the grippy shoe against one, drives off it and glides out over the ice on the slippery sole of the other foot.
Golf
Golf: in Henry Adamson's poem for his dead friend James Gall, an old companion tells his golf clubs, his bows and his curling stones to mourn along with him.
Q 14Which Scottish poet's elegy for Tam Samson praises him as a curler who could 'guard, or draw'?
Robert Burns
Robert Burns: his Kilmarnock friend was alive and well when the elegy was written, so Burns added a last verse announcing that Tam Samson was still living.
Q 15Scotland's national curling club became 'Royal' after a palace demonstration for which monarch?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria: at Scone Palace in 1842 the Earl of Mansfield had stones sent along a polished ballroom floor to show her the game, and a year later she let the club add Royal to its name.
Q 16Instead of stone, curlers in Quebec and eastern Ontario long played with heavy implements made of which metal?
Iron
Iron: their 'irons' were shaped like huge tea kettles, and the habit split Canadian curling into iron and stone camps that lasted into the twentieth century.
Q 17Which airline sponsored the Silver Broom, curling's men's world championship from 1968?
Air Canada
Air Canada: its Silver Broom replaced the Scotch Cup in 1968, and Canadian teams won the first five before going the rest of the 1970s without a title.
Q 18Curling became a full Olympic medal sport in 1998, at the Winter Games in which city?
Nagano
Nagano: after demonstration runs in 1932, 1988 and 1992 the sport finally counted, and the first men's final produced a shock, with the Swiss beating favourites Canada.
Q 19Which country was retroactively awarded the first Olympic curling gold, from the 1924 Chamonix Games?
Great Britain
Great Britain: its all-Scottish team, a father and son among them, thrashed Sweden and France, and a Glasgow newspaper's claim on the families' behalf won them official golds in 2006.
Q 20Mixed doubles curling made its Olympic debut at the Winter Games in which city?
Pyeongchang
Pyeongchang: with only two curlers a side, the format lets smaller nations contend, and Hungary had twice won its world title before the Olympics took it on in 2018.
Q 24A stone must be released before its front edge crosses which mark on the ice?
The hog line
It must also clear the far hog line or it is 'hogged' and removed from play.
Q 25The handle of a championship curling stone lights up red when the thrower does what?
Lets go too late
Lets go too late: sensors in the handle register whether a hand is still on the stone at the release line, which took the call away from the officials who once judged it by eye.
Q 26Rather than being flat, the underside of a curling stone has what shape?
Hollowed, so only a thin ring touches
Hollowed, so only a thin ring touches: with so little of a stone of up to 44 pounds meeting the ice, friction stays low enough for it to glide the length of the sheet.
Q 27Which Scottish island supplies the rock for curling stones?
Ailsa Craig
Ailsa Craig: rock this dense and water-tight is so rare that even Canada, for all its own bedrock, has never found a home-grown substitute and imports its stones.
Q 28Besides one Scottish island, rock for curling stones comes from the Trefor quarry, in which country?
Wales
Wales: Trefor's rock goes to a single Canadian maker, whose stones were used at the 2002 Winter Olympics, but every Games since 2006 has gone back to stones from the Scottish island.
Q 29Which firm in Mauchline, Ayrshire, has made curling stones since 1851?
Kays of Scotland
Kays of Scotland: it sets an insert of one island rock into a body of another, because the first shrugs off water and the second does not splinter when stones collide.
Q 30What were most curling brooms made of before the 1950s?
Corn strands
Corn strands: the brooms looked like any kitchen's and shed bits of straw on the ice as they beat it, one reason push brushes have replaced them at every level.