Tug of War Trivia
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50 free Tug of War trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This tug of war trivia quiz covers a sport most people have played and almost nobody has studied. It starts with the rules used at World Championships (eight a side, an 11-centimetre rope, the four-metre marks, locking fouls, the driver and the hang command) and the physics of why heavy teams win and why ropes snap. Then it digs into origins: Tang emperors with 500 pullers a side, Greek names built on the verb 'I pull', a temple carving in India, Vikings over fire pits and Mohave dispute-settling. The Olympic section covers all six Games from 1900 to 1920: the Danish-Swedish mixed team with a journalist on the rope, the American hammer throwers who quit over a scheduling clash, the 1908 all-police podium and the boots protest, Sweden's win when exhausted Londoners sat down, and the gold medal still kept in a police museum. There are questions on juldarigi, Naha's 40-ton rope, Burmese monk funerals, TugFest across the Mississippi, Battle of the Network Stars and the NFL Pro Bowl. Try our Olympic Games and Highland games quizzes too. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on tug of war, its Olympic tournaments and its regional traditions, and each explanation adds one more detail.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In tug of war, what is the puller at the very back of the rope called?
Anchor
The anchor alone runs the rope across the back and over the opposite shoulder, a hold that would be a foul for any of the seven pullers in front.
Q 02Under international rules, a competition tug of war rope must be free of what?
Knots
Knots are banned along with any other handhold, so pullers have nothing but a bare-handed grip on a rope about 11 centimetres round, though resin on the hands is allowed.
Q 03In formal tug of war, what must cross the centre line to win a pull?
A rope marker
A rope marker: outdoors, tapes sit 4 metres either side of the centre mark, so a pull is won once the rope has moved just 4 metres and nobody has to be dragged over the line.
Q 04In tug of war, what is the foul called when a puller drops an elbow below the knee?
Locking
Locking: an elbow braced against the leg stops the rope running freely, and judges signal the foul by touching an elbow to a raised thigh.
Q 05In formal tug of war, the rope must pass under which part of each puller's body?
The arms
The arms: every puller grips palms-up with bare hands and keeps the rope between body and upper arm, and looping it round a hand, a cause of the sport's worst injuries, is banned.
Q 06Which physical property explains why heavier tug of war pullers have an advantage?
Static friction with the ground
Static friction with the ground rises with weight, so a heavier team can push harder against the turf before its feet slip, which is why formal contests are split into weight classes.
Q 07The line 'When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war' comes from a 1677 play about which ruler?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great is the hero of Nathaniel Lee's The Rival Queens, where the phrase meant the decisive struggle; only in the 1800s did it become the name of the rope game.
Q 08Which name did Victorian boys' game books give the rope-pulling contest now called tug of war?
French and English
French and English: Every Boy's Book set two parties on a strong rope under that name and called it an old Greek game, and 'tug of war' only took over as the usual name later in the 1800s.
Q 09A Tang dynasty book says the state of Chu used tug of war for what purpose?
Training warriors
Training warriors: the book says a Chu general used the game, then called 'hook pulling', to drill troops before attacking rival Wu, and Tang emperors later staged it with over a thousand pullers.
Q 10In the Hindu myth carved at Angkor Wat, gods and demons pull from opposite ends of what?
A giant serpent
A giant serpent: gods and demons haul on either end of the naga Vasuki, coiled round a mountain as a churning rope, to raise the elixir of immortality from the ocean of milk.
Q 11In Homer's Iliad, which god challenges all the others to a tug of war on a golden chain hung from heaven?
Zeus
Zeus boasts that every god and goddess hauling together could not drag him down from heaven, while he could pull them all up, earth and sea included, and leave them dangling from Olympus.
Q 12Which city hosted the last Olympic tug of war contest, in 1920?
Antwerp
Antwerp: Britain, beaten in the 1912 final, came back after the war to win every one of its pulls there and take the last Olympic tug of war gold.
Q 13Why could the USA sweep the 1904 Olympic tug of war medals?
Entries were by club, not just by nation
Q 21Which Netflix series has contestants play tug of war on raised platforms, with the losers falling to their deaths?
Squid Game
Squid Game: in the third of its deadly children's games, the hero's weaker-looking team survives thanks to an old man's tug of war strategy and a teammate's quick thinking.
Q 22In an 1845 Royal Navy tug of war between two steamships, which new invention out-pulled the paddle wheel?
The screw propeller
The screw propeller: HMS Rattler, tied stern to stern with the paddle sloop Alecto, towed her backwards while Alecto's wheels thrashed ahead, a show the Admiralty staged to convince sceptics.
Q 23Why was the 1912 Olympic tug of war decided by a single match?
Entries were by club, not just by nation: four of the six teams were American clubs, with Milwaukee Athletic Club taking gold ahead of two St. Louis sides, and only Greek and South African Boer teams came from abroad.
Q 14The 1900 Paris Olympic tug of war gold went to a mixed team from which two countries?
Denmark and Sweden
Denmark and Sweden: three pullers came from each, and one Dane, Edgar Aabye, was only in Paris as a sports journalist until the team drafted him in.
Q 15Why did the United States team withdraw from the 1900 Olympic tug of war?
It clashed with the hammer throw
It clashed with the hammer throw: three of the six Americans were entered in that event, and they stayed with it and swept its medals.
Q 16Three of France's six tug of war pullers at the 1900 Olympics won gold that year in which team sport?
Rugby
Rugby: Jean Collas, Charles Gondouin and Émile Sarrade lost the tug of war final in July, then won the Olympic rugby title with France that October.
Q 17Why do some record books wrongly list the USA as 1900 Olympic tug of war medallists?
It pulled an unofficial match afterwards
It pulled an unofficial match afterwards: with the real contest over, an American team took on the winners, and some reports recorded that friendly as if it had been the final.
Q 18In a Polish twist on tug of war, two crews sit facing each other in a single craft of which kind?
A dragon boat
A dragon boat: two crews of six sit face to face in a single boat and paddle against each other until one side drives it their way, a craze quickly nicknamed 'tug of oars'.
Q 19At the 1908 London Olympics, all three medal-winning tug of war teams came from which profession?
Police officers
Police officers: Germany and Greece withdrew, leaving three British police teams to face only Sweden and the United States, and City of London Police beat Liverpool Police in the final.
Q 20What did the Americans protest about after losing their 1908 Olympic tug of war to a Liverpool team?
The winners' heavy service boots
The winners' heavy service boots were ruled legal as everyday work footwear; Liverpool then offered to pull again barefoot, but the Americans declined and withdrew.
Three entered teams never turned up
Three entered teams never turned up: Austria, Bohemia and Luxembourg were all missing, so a planned round-robin of ten matches shrank to hosts Sweden against Britain.
Q 24How did Sweden win the second pull of the 1912 Olympic tug of war final?
British pullers sat on the ground
British pullers sat on the ground in a long stalemate, which the rules forbade, so the judges gave Sweden the pull and the gold; reports differ on whether exhaustion or a bid for leverage put them there.
Q 25Which Canadian pop singer's 2008 debut album was called Tug of War?
Carly Rae Jepsen
Carly Rae Jepsen made the folk-pop album Tug of War after finishing third on Canadian Idol, three years before 'Call Me Maybe' turned her into a global star.
Q 26Since 1981, tug of war has been on the programme of every edition of which multi-sport event?
The World Games
The World Games exist to showcase sports left off the Olympic programme, so tug of war, dropped by the Olympics after 1920, has been pulled at every edition since the first in Santa Clara, California.
Q 27The Basque rural sport of rope pulling is known by what name?
Sokatira
Sokatira belongs to the Basque herri kirolak, rural sports that grew out of everyday farm and fishing work, alongside contests in log-chopping and stone-lifting.
Q 28Korea's traditional tug of war, juldarigi, is typically played with two giant ropes made from what?
Rice straw
Rice straw: whole villages spend up to a month twisting it into ropes as much as a metre thick, though some regions use hemp or kudzu vine instead.
Q 29In Korea's juldarigi, what is driven through the looped ends of the two giant ropes to join them?
A wooden log
A wooden log, the binyeomok, pins one rope's loop inside the other's; the teams trade bawdy taunts over the suggestive join, which ties the contest to hopes of fertility.
Q 30Tugging rituals from Korea, Cambodia, the Philippines and Vietnam joined which list in 2015?
UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage
UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list took in all four countries' rituals in one joint file, as farming customs enacted to ensure abundant harvests and prosperity.