Unusual Sports
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98 free Unusual Sports trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
16 free unusual sports trivia questions with answers. Think you know about sports? Test your knowledge with our unusual sports trivia quiz featuring 16 challenging questions about the world's strangest athletic competitions. From extreme niche sports to bizarre international games, this quiz covers unique sports you've probably never heard of. Can you score a perfect game?
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Wife Carrying World Championships are held in the village of Sonkajärvi in which country?
Finland
Finland's village of Sonkajärvi first staged the race in 1992; local tales trace it to a 19th-century forest robber whose gang was said to carry off women from nearby villages.
Q 02Which hip-hop group released 'Da Mystery of Chessboxin'' in 1993, a decade before chess boxing became a real sport?
Wu-Tang Clan
Wu-Tang Clan took the title from a 1979 kung fu film, The Mystery of Chess Boxing; the real sport arrived in 2003, when performance artist Iepe Rubingh staged the first bouts of alternating chess and boxing rounds.
Q 03Which team sport, known as Octopush in the UK, is played on the bottom of a swimming pool?
Underwater Hockey
Underwater Hockey was first called Octopush because its original rules had eight players a side, the 'octo', pushing a lead puck along the pool floor with a small bat known as a pusher.
Q 04Which Southeast Asian sport has players use feet, knees, chest and head to send a rattan ball over a net?
Sepak Takraw
Sepak Takraw got its name by committee: officials from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Myanmar met in 1960 to standardise the game, joining Malay 'sepak', kick, to Thai 'takraw', the woven ball.
Q 05What Central Asian equestrian sport has horse-mounted players dragging a headless goat carcass to a scoring area?
Buzkashi
Buzkashi is Afghanistan's national sport; the Taliban banned it as immoral during their first spell in power, and matches resumed once they were ousted in 2001.
Q 06Which sport did Phil Shaw invent in his Leicester garden in 1997 by taking a household chore to wild places?
Extreme Ironing
Extreme Ironing began when Shaw came home from a hard day at a knitwear factory to a pile of ironing; he would rather have gone rock climbing, so he combined the two.
Q 07Zorbing, rolling downhill inside a giant inflatable ball, was first commercialised in the 1990s in which country?
New Zealand
New Zealand's ZORB company was set up in 1994 to build balls big enough for people and opened the first zorbing site at Rotorua, where riders still slosh downhill with water inside the ball.
Q 08Which company's trademark on the word 'quidditch' helped push the real-life sport to rename itself quadball in 2022?
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. owns the name, so the leagues chose 'quadball', after the game's four balls, both to avoid a trademark dispute and to step away from J.K. Rowling.
Q 09What do racers chase down Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire each spring?
A wheel of cheese
A wheel of cheese, a 7 to 9 lb Double Gloucester given a one-second head start, is never actually caught: the first runner to the foot of the steep hill wins it.
Q 10Which sport, played on an inflatable court with trampolines, combines volleyball, soccer and gymnastics?
Bossaball
Bossaball took shape in Spain in 2004; its name borrows from bossa nova because the game sets out to blend sport with music.
Q 11In the Frisian sport of fierljeppen, athletes use a long pole to vault across what?
A canal
A canal is the obstacle: the name is Frisian for 'far leaping', and jumpers sprint to a tall pole, climb it as it tips across the water and drop onto a sand bed on the far bank.
Q 12Which horseback game, once played with a live duck in a basket, is Argentina's official national sport?
Pato
Pato was banned several times for its violence, which killed riders as well as ducks, before President Juan Perón declared it Argentina's national game in 1953; today a ball with handles replaces the bird.
Q 13What sport combines basketball with trampolines on a spring-loaded court?
SlamBall
Q 21At Turkey's Kırkpınar festival near Edirne, wrestlers grapple covered in what?
Olive oil
Olive oil makes skin too slippery to grip, so wrestlers work for a hold inside each other's kispet, heavy leather trousers; the winner takes a golden belt and the title of chief pehlivan.
Q 22Why must a kabaddi raider keep chanting 'kabaddi'?
To prove it is done on a single breath
To prove it is done on a single breath: the chant, known as the cant, shows officials that the raider is not inhaling, and a raider who breaks it hands a point to the other side.
Q 23Which South Asian country, where kabaddi is known as ha-du-du, designated it the national sport in 1972?
Bangladesh
SlamBall was sketched on a napkin by Mason Gordon, who wanted a real sport that played like a video game; four trampolines in front of each hoop launch players into mid-air collisions.
Q 14The 2016 World Drone Prix, a drone race with a record $1 million prize fund, was flown in which city?
Dubai
Dubai staged what was then the biggest and richest drone race; pilots steer wearing goggles that show a live feed from the craft's camera, so they see only what the drone sees.
Q 15American stone-skipping records count bounces; what do Scotland's World Stone Skimming Championships measure instead?
Distance
Distance decides it on Easdale Island, whose abandoned slate quarries left both a flooded arena and millions of flat stones; the best throws reach the quarry's back wall.
Q 16In what contact sport do teams of skaters on an oval track score by having a 'jammer' lap opponents?
Roller Derby
Roller Derby began in 1935 as Leo Seltzer's skating marathon, a simulated cross-country race; sportswriter Damon Runyon then urged him to play up the collisions, and a contact sport was born.
Q 17Calcio storico, a brawling early form of football with 27 players a side, is played each June in which Italian city?
Florence
Florence stages the matches in Piazza Santa Croce, with the final on 24 June, its patron saint's day; in 1530 the city famously played a match in defiance of the imperial army besieging it.
Q 18In wife-carrying, what is the 'Estonian style' hold?
Passenger upside-down on the back
Passenger upside-down on the back, legs over the carrier's neck and shoulders; piggyback and fireman's carry are the alternatives, and there are generally no rules about gender or marital status.
Q 19Which sport's world championship is raced along a water-filled trench at Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales?
Bog Snorkelling
Bog Snorkelling racers must cover two 60-yard lengths of a trench cut through peat on flipper power alone: masks and snorkels are compulsory, and conventional swimming strokes are banned.
Q 20Chess boxing was inspired by Froid Équateur, Enki Bilal's 1992 work in which medium?
Graphic novel
Graphic novel pages by the Belgrade-born French artist showed a chess boxing world championship; they inspired performance artist Iepe Rubingh, who staged his first real competition in 2003.
Bangladesh designated kabaddi its national sport in 1972, the year after independence; in India, where the modern game took shape, it is the official game only of individual states.
Q 24Why was Octopush invented in 1954?
To keep sub-aqua club members active in winter
To keep sub-aqua club members active in winter was Alan Blake's aim: open-water diving lost its appeal in the cold, so his Southsea club took to a Portsmouth pool, and by early 1955 Bournemouth and Brighton had joined a tournament.
Q 25Ashbourne's Shrovetide footballers are Up'ards or Down'ards depending on which side of what they were born?
The brook
The brook, the Henmore, splits the sides: those born north of it are Up'ards, those to the south Down'ards, and a goal means tapping the ball three times on a millstone three miles from the other goal.
Q 26Ferret-legging, keeping live ferrets inside one's trousers, is said to have been popular among which workers?
Yorkshire coal miners
Yorkshire coal miners are said to have made it a pastime; Barnsley's Reg Mellor set a record of 5 hours 26 minutes in 1981 that stood until 2010, though his bid for six hours ended when the bored crowd drifted off.
Q 27Oina, a bat-and-ball game said to date back to 14th-century Wallachia, is a traditional sport of which country?
Romania
Romania's education minister Spiru Haret put oina on the school timetable in 1899 and organised the first annual competitions, turning a village pastime into an organised sport.
Q 28Shin-kicking is a star event of which English games, first held around 1612 and revived for 1951's Festival of Britain?
The Cotswold Olimpicks
The Cotswold Olimpicks, begun by lawyer Robert Dover near Chipping Campden, have softened since: iron-capped boots are banned, and today's shin-kickers pad their trousers with straw.
Q 29Remote-controlled robot jockeys replaced child riders in the 2000s in the racing of which animal?
Camels
Camels now carry small robots that work the whip and reins, steered by operators driven alongside the track; Gulf states brought them in after banning the child jockeys whose treatment had drawn international condemnation.
Q 30Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest is traditionally held each Fourth of July at which location?
Coney Island
Coney Island's original Nathan's Famous stand is the contest's home; its promoter admitted in 2010 that the tale of a first contest in 1916 had been made up in the 1970s as a publicity stunt.