Yo-Yos
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40 free Yo-Yos trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The yo-yo is one of the oldest toys still in everyday use. It has been an eighteenth-century fashion, a Depression-era craze, a courtroom argument over who owns a word, and a competitive sport with its own world champions. Few playthings have been reinvented so many times. This quiz covers the whole story: where the toy and its name came from, the businessmen and inventors who turned it into a fad, the classic tricks every beginner learns, the styles judged at modern contests, and the simple physics that makes it climb back up the string. There are also questions on the yo-yo's odd afterlife in film, cartoons, music, video games, sports slang and even spaceflight. It is pitched for curious players of any age, whether you last threw a yo-yo in a school playground or still practise string tricks today. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up a few stories worth retelling along the way.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Middle Eastern country banned yo-yos in 1933 after locals blamed the toy for a drought?
Syria
Syria outlawed the toy only five years after Pedro Flores opened his Yo-yo Manufacturing Company in California in 1928.
Q 02Country star Roy Acuff taught which US president to yo-yo on stage at the new Grand Ole Opry House?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon got his lesson on the Opry's first night at Opryland in March 1974, and Acuff then coaxed him into playing several songs on the piano.
Q 03Which James Bond film features a deadly yo-yo whose disks are large circular saw blades?
Octopussy
Octopussy put the saw-bladed toy on screen in 1983, yet there is no sound historical evidence that yo-yos were ever used as real weapons.
Q 04In which classic yo-yo trick is the spinning toy lowered to roll along the floor?
Walk the dog
Walk the dog begins with a hard throw that leaves the yo-yo spinning at the end of its string, so it trundles forward the moment it touches the ground.
Q 05The word yo-yo probably comes from which country, the birthplace of toymaker Pedro Flores?
Philippines
Philippines-born Flores started with a dozen handmade toys in California in 1928 and never claimed to have invented the yo-yo.
Q 06A painted cup from around 440 BC shows a boy playing with a yo-yo in which ancient civilization?
Greece
Greece left the earliest firm record of the toy, in a land where children coming of age traditionally gave up their playthings as offerings to the gods.
Q 07Big-Yo, a working wooden yo-yo weighing 256 pounds, needs which machine to send it up and down?
A crane
A crane and a skilled operator work Big-Yo, a scaled-up copy of Tom Kuhn's No-Jive yo-yo that earned a place in the 1982 Guinness Book of World Records.
Q 08Which Paris-protecting heroine of the animated series Miraculous wields a yo-yo as her weapon?
Ladybug
Ladybug is the alter ego of schoolgirl Marinette, who was so unthrilled about becoming a superheroine that her first transformation happened by mistake.
Q 09Tom Kuhn, who patented the first take-apart yo-yo, worked in which day job?
Dentist
Dentist Tom Kuhn, nicknamed Dr. Yo, took patent advice from a lawyer who was one of his own patients and showed off his yo-yo collection in his office lobby.
Q 10Besides yo-yos, toy tycoon Donald F. Duncan founded a company making which street equipment?
Parking meters
Parking meters were a Duncan sideline, and he is also credited with the premium incentive, in which shoppers collect proofs of purchase to trade for rewards.
Q 11Which basic yo-yo throw, the basis of most tricks, leaves the toy spinning at the string's end?
Sleeper
Sleeper throws need a hard snap of the wrist, and a cheap fixed-axle yo-yo will then spin for 10 to 20 seconds before a tug brings it home.
Q 12Which family group took the Joe South song 'Yo-Yo' to number three on the Billboard Hot 100?
The Osmonds
The Osmonds scored the hit in 1971 with a cover version: Billy Joe Royal's original had stalled at number 117 five years earlier.
Q 13Which comedian created the mostly silent stage character 'Yo-Yo Man' and registered the name?
Tommy Smothers
Tommy Smothers dreamed up the character in the late 1960s, and his 1988 Yo Yo Man Instructional Video went on to sell over 200,000 copies.
Q 21Which newspaper baron's papers publicised Duncan's early yo-yo contests as a way to win new readers?
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst gave the contests publicity on one condition: every entrant had to sell subscriptions to his newspapers.
Q 22Why did Duncan lose its exclusive trademark on the word yo-yo in a 1965 federal court ruling?
It was common speech
It was common speech by then, the appeals court decided, and the cost of the fight helped push the Duncan family to sell the company name in 1968.
Q 23The popular tale that yo-yos were once used as weapons is believed to have started as what?
A marketing gimmick
Q 14In The Simpsons, a yo-yo accident lands Bart in detention, where he finds whose personal ad?
Edna Krabappel
Edna Krabappel had placed the ad out of loneliness, and Bart, punished for smashing the class aquarium with his yo-yo, answers it as a prank in 'Bart the Lover'.
Q 15Harvey Lowe won the first World Yo-Yo Contest in 1932 in which European capital?
London
London's Empire Theatre staged the contest, won by a Canadian schoolboy who stayed in Europe until 1934 and befriended Laurel and Hardy.
Q 16Which flared yo-yo shape, named after an insect, makes the toy easier to catch on its string?
Butterfly
Butterfly yo-yos flare outward to give the string a wide target, and many modern ones respond so weakly that a plain tug will not bring them back.
Q 17In English football, what does a team nicknamed a 'yo-yo club' do again and again?
Is promoted then relegated
A side that is promoted then relegated over and over is a yo-yo club, while German fans call such a team a 'lift team' instead.
Q 18In England at the end of the 18th century, the fashionable yo-yo was commonly known by which name?
Bandalore
Bandalore, sometimes spelled bandylore, was the usual English word, and a 1791 illustration shows a woman playing with one.
Q 19Pedro Flores held which hotel job when his lunch-break yo-yo play first drew attention in the 1920s?
Bellhop
Bellhop Flores got the idea after reading about a man who had become a millionaire by selling a ball attached to a rubber band.
Q 20Pedro Flores's yo-yos could spin in place because the string met the axle with what instead of a knot?
A loop
A loop of twisted string lets the axle turn freely inside it, whereas a yo-yo tied on tightly can only run straight down and back up.
A marketing gimmick is the likely origin: Duncan's travelling demonstrators spread the weapon story in the company's early years.
Q 24Which component, fitted to yo-yo axles from around 1990, lets modern models spin for minutes?
Ball bearing
Ball bearing yo-yos took off with Tom Kuhn's SB-2 of 1990, although the bearing maker SKF had sold novelty versions as early as 1984.
Q 25Which juggling prop, spun on a string between two hand sticks, developed from the Chinese yo-yo?
Diabolo
Diabolo in its modern form was developed in the early twentieth century by Belgian engineer Gustave Philippart, who is usually credited with the name.
Q 26Which Super Smash Bros. fighter, the hero of EarthBound, attacks with a yo-yo and a baseball bat?
Ness
Ness also fights with psychic powers, and he became a fan favourite through Smash Bros. even though EarthBound sold poorly in the United States.
Q 27Engineers use a 'yo-yo de-spin', a pair of unwinding cables, to slow the spin of which machines?
Satellites
Satellites often leave their rockets spinning fast, so the cables fling out end masses to soak it up: NASA's Dawn probe dropped from 46 rpm to 3 this way.
Q 28A painting from around 1770, known as 'Lady with a Yo-yo', was made in which country?
India
India produced the watercolour, in Rajasthan, though the string toy it shows is similar rather than identical to the modern yo-yo.
Q 29In freehand yo-yo play, invented by Steve Brown in 1999, the string's free end is tied to what?
A counterweight
A counterweight takes the place of the player's finger, so it can be tossed from hand to hand or bounced off the body, and Duncan's patent on the idea ran until 2020.
Q 30Unresponsive yo-yos ignore a tug, so which move doubles the string in the gap to bring them back?
A bind
A bind jams extra string against the response system so the yo-yo grabs and winds up, a skill that opened the way to tricks using slack string.