Pool Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This pool trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and starts at the table: how eight-ball and nine-ball are racked and won, why the cloth is green, what balls were made of before plastic, how long a cue is and why you chalk it, plus the people who made the game famous, from Willie Mosconi's 526-ball run and Minnesota Fats to Efren Reyes, Jeanette Lee and Paul Newman's Fast Eddie. Snooker and carom get a look-in for context. Because 'pool trivia' means two things, the last stretch heads to the swimming pool: the Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro, Rome's first heated pool, Olympic dimensions and the largest pool on Earth. It works for a pool-hall league night, a bar quiz or a poolside party. Easy questions any casual player will get; the hard ones dig into records, dates and equipment specs. Every answer was checked against encyclopedic sources before publishing, and each question explains itself as soon as you pick.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In pool, what is it called when the cue ball drops into a pocket?
A scratch
A scratch. In nine-ball it is a foul that gives the opponent 'ball in hand': the right to place the cue ball anywhere on the table for the next shot.
Q 02In eight-ball, what does pocketing the 8 before clearing your group cost you?
The game
The game. That rule is one of the two changes that turned pyramid pool into eight-ball around 1900: the 8 had to go down last.
Q 03In eight-ball, which balls are the stripes?
9 through 15
9 through 15. Nobody starts with a group: whichever kind a player first pockets legally becomes theirs, and all seven must be gone before they may shoot at the 8.
Q 04Where must the 8 ball sit in a standard eight-ball rack?
In the centre of the third row
In the centre of the third row. Only two other places are fixed, a stripe in one back corner and a solid in the other; every remaining ball must go in at random.
Q 05In nine-ball, which object sits at the front of the diamond rack?
The 1
The 1. The 9 sits in the middle of the diamond, and because it is the money ball, sinking it on a legal break ends the rack on the spot.
Q 06In nine-ball, what must the cue ball contact first on every shot?
The lowest-numbered ball on the table
The lowest-numbered ball on the table. The balls need not fall in order, though: hit the lowest one first and anything that drops counts, so the 9 can be won early.
Q 07Straight pool is also known by what name?
14.1 continuous pool
14.1 continuous pool. The name is the rule: once fourteen balls are down they are re-racked around the fifteenth and the shooter carries on, so a run can go on from rack to rack.
Q 08Which body governs the game as an international competitive sport?
The World Pool-Billiard Association
The WPA specifies balls of 2 1/4 inches weighing 5.5 to 6 ounces.
Q 09The playing surface of a regulation pool table has the proportions of what?
Two squares side by side
Two squares side by side. The two-to-one ratio became standard in the 18th century; before then tables had no fixed dimensions at all.
Q 10On a quality pool table, the playing surface under the cloth is made of what?
Slate
Slate. The earliest beds were cloth-covered wooden boards; slate took over around 1835, and tournament tables now use three matched slabs at least an inch thick.
Q 11Why is billiard cloth traditionally green?
It recalls the grass of lawn games
It recalls the grass of lawn games. Billiards began outdoors as a game like croquet; when play moved indoors onto a table in the 15th century, green cloth stood in for the lawn.
Q 12Which Shakespeare heroine suggests a game of billiards, centuries before billiards was invented?
Cleopatra
Cleopatra. 'Let's to billiards', she tells her attendant in Antony and Cleopatra, a slip that shows how familiar the game was to Shakespeare's audience.
Q 13The word 'billiard' may come from the French 'billart', meaning what?
Stick
Q 21Willie Mosconi set the straight-pool record in 1954 by running how many consecutive balls?
526
526. He did it without a miss at an exhibition, and dozens of people in the room signed a sworn statement to prove it; the mark stood for 65 years.
Q 22The Mosconi Cup, founded in 1994, pits the United States against which team?
Europe
Europe. It began as a television exhibition meant to interest British viewers in pool, with a team format borrowed from golf's Ryder Cup.
Q 23Which 1961 film starred Paul Newman as pool shark 'Fast Eddie' Felson?
The Hustler
The Hustler. The film rescued a game that seemed to be dying out: new pool rooms opened all over America and the boom lasted through the 1960s.
Stick. Dictionaries trace the word to Old French bille, a piece of wood, the name passing from the stick to the game; a rival theory derives it from bille meaning a ball.
Q 14Until the early 20th century, high-quality billiard balls were made from what?
Elephant ivory
Elephant ivory. Demand grew so fast that the industry feared running out of tusks, and its hunt for a replacement produced one of the first plastics.
Q 15Which inventor, seeking a new material for billiard balls in the 1860s, patented celluloid?
John Wesley Hyatt
John Wesley Hyatt. His celluloid was the first plastic to succeed commercially, so a hunt for a better billiard ball ended up giving the world dentures, film stock and much else.
Q 16Under what brand does Belgian firm Saluc make the balls used at most professional tournaments?
Aramith
Aramith. The maker claims more than 85% of the world's players use its balls, so one Belgian factory supplies pool, snooker and carom tables almost everywhere.
Q 17Under world rules, what material must tournament pool balls be cast from?
Phenolic resin
Phenolic resin. The hard plastic is the last in a long line: earlier balls were turned from wood, moulded from clay or carved from ivory.
Q 18What is the tip of a pool cue traditionally made from?
Leather
Leather. Chalked cues came first; the leather tip, perfected by the 1820s, was what finally let players strike the ball off-centre and make it spin.
Q 19Why do players apply chalk to the tip of a cue?
To add friction and avoid miscues
To add friction and avoid miscues. Players were chalking cues for grip before cues even had tips, and that grip is what lets a player strike off-centre to spin the ball.
Q 20The shaft of a snooker cue is traditionally made from which wood?
Ash
Ash. Pool players go the other way and favour straight-grained hard maple for their shafts, a wood that some snooker players use as well.
Q 24Paul Newman won his only competitive Academy Award for reprising Fast Eddie in which 1986 sequel?
The Color of Money
The Color of Money. With Tom Cruise as the young hotshot, it set off a second pool boom a quarter-century after the first film, this time in smart new upscale rooms.
Q 25Real-life player Rudolf Wanderone took the name Minnesota Fats from where?
The character in the 1961 film
The character in the 1961 film. Known until then as New York Fats, he claimed the screen character was based on him, which the novel's author always denied, and became a celebrity anyway.
Q 26Which Filipino pool player is nicknamed 'The Magician' and 'Bata'?
Efren Reyes
Efren Reyes. 'Bata', meaning kid, told him apart from an older player of the same name; 'The Magician' came later, for the escape shots he seemed to conjure off the cushions.
Q 27Jeanette Lee, world No. 1 in the 1990s, is known by which nickname?
The Black Widow
The Black Widow. A club owner coined it because the mild-mannered Lee would 'eat people alive' once she reached the table, and she played up to it by always dressing in black.
Q 28British Army officers stationed in which country are credited with inventing snooker in the 1870s?
India
India. By tradition the name comes from army slang for a raw cadet, turned on a fellow player by a young officer called Neville Chamberlain, not the later prime minister.
Q 29What is the maximum break in snooker?
147
147. It takes all fifteen reds, each followed by the black for eight points a pair, and then the six colours in order for 27 more, with no miss anywhere.
Q 30Since 1977 the World Snooker Championship has been staged at which Sheffield venue?
The Crucible Theatre
The Crucible Theatre. It is a working playhouse whose stage is wrapped by seats on three sides, so nobody in the audience is more than about 20 metres from the table.