Bowling Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

Trivia quiz questions and answers about bowling

Bowling Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

What is bowling?
A: Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls or throws a bowling ball toward pins or another target.

What is the goal in pin bowling?
A: The goal is to knock over pins at the end of a lane, with either two or three balls per frame allowed to knock down all pins.

What is a strike?
A: A strike is achieved when all the pins are knocked down on the first roll.

What is a spare?
A: A spare is achieved when all the pins are knocked over on a second roll.

Lanes have what type of surface?
A: Wood or synthetic surfaces onto which protective lubricating oil is applied in different specified oil patterns that vary ball path characteristics.

Common types of pin bowling include what?
A: Ten-pin, candlepin, duckpin, nine-pin, and five-pin bowling.

In target bowling, the aim is usually what?
A: To get the ball as close to a mark as possible.

What type of surface is used in target bowling?
A: It may be grass, gravel, or synthetic.

Bowling is played by 100 million people in how many countries?
A: 90.

In the U.S. and Canada, the term bowling usually refers to what?
A: Ten-pin bowling, whereas in the U.K. and Commonwealth countries the term often denotes lawn bowls.

The earliest known forms of bowling date back to where?
A: Ancient Egypt.

Remnants of balls used at the time were found among artifacts in ancient Egypt going back to what period?
A: The Egyptian protodynastic period in 3200 BC.

Balls were made using what materials?
A: The husks of grains, covered in a material such as leather, and bound with string.

Other balls made of porcelain have also been found, indicating what?
A: That these were rolled along the ground rather than thrown due to their size and weight.

Some of these resemble the modern day what?
A: Jack used in target bowl games.

About 2,000 years ago, in the Roman Empire, a similar game evolved between Roman legionaries entailing what?
A: The tossing of stone objects as close as possible to other stone objects, which eventually evolved into Italian Bocce, or outdoor bowling.

Around 400 AD, bowling began in Germany as a what?
A: A religious ritual to cleanse oneself from sin by rolling a rock into a club (kegel) representing the heathen, resulting in bowlers being called keglers.

What was built in 1299?
A: The oldest known Bowling Green for target style bowling to survive to modern times was built.

In 1325 laws were passed in Berlin and Cologne limiting what?
A: Bets on lawn bowling to five shillings.

In 1366 the first official mention of bowling in England was made, when King Edward III did what?
A: Banned it as a distraction to archery practice.

In the 15th-17th centuries lawn bowling spread from Germany into where?
A: Austria, Switzerland, and the Low Countries, with playing surfaces made of cinders or baked clay.

In 1455 lawn bowling lanes in London were first what?
A: Roofed-over, turning bowling into an all-weather game.

In Germany, they were called kegelbahns, often attached to what?
A: Taverns and guest houses.

In 1463 a public feast was held in Frankfurt, Germany, with a venison dinner followed by what?
A: Lawn bowling.

In 1511 whom was an avid bowler?
A: English King Henry VIII.

He banned bowling for the lower classes and imposed what?
A: A levy for private lanes to limit them to the wealthy.

Another English law, passed in 1541 (repealed in 1845), prohibited workers from doing what?
A: Bowling, except at Christmas, and only in their master's home and in his presence.

In 1530 he acquired Whitehall Palace in central London as his new residence, having it extensively rebuilt complete with what?
A: Outdoor bowling lanes, indoor tennis court, jousting tiltyard, and cockfighting pit.

Protestant Reformation founder Martin Luther set the number of pins (which varied from 3 to 17) at what?
A: Nine.

He had a bowling lane built next to his home for his children, sometimes doing what?
A: Rolling a ball himself.

On 19 July 1588 English Vice-Admiral Sir Francis Drake allegedly was playing bowls at Plymouth Hoe when the arrival of the Spanish Armada was announced, replying What?
A: "We have time enough to finish the game and beat the Spaniards too."

In 1733 Bowling Green in New York City was built on the site of a Dutch cattle market and parade ground, becoming the city's what?
A: Oldest public park to survive to modern times.

In 1819, New York writer Washington Irving made the first mention of what?
A: Nine pin bowling in American literature in his story Rip Van Winkle.

On 1 January 1840, Knickerbocker Alleys in New York City opened, becoming what?
A: The first indoor bowling alley.

In 1841, the state of Connecticut banned nine-pin bowling to stop gambling, causing what?
A: Causing ten-pin bowling to be created to get around the law.

In 1846, the oldest surviving bowling lanes in the United States were built as part of what?
A: Roseland Cottage, the summer estate of Henry Chandler Bowen (1831-1896) in Woodstock, Connecticut.

 The lanes are now part of Historic New England's what?
A: Roseland Cottage House Museum.

In 1848, the Revolutions of 1848 resulted in accelerated German immigration to the U.S., reaching 5 million by 1900, bringing their love of what with them?
A:   and bowling.

By the late 19th century they made New York City a what?
A: A center of bowling.

In 1875, the National Bowling Association (NBA) was founded by 27 local clubs in New York City to standardize rules for what?
A: Ten-pin bowling.

In 1880, Justin White of Worcester, Massachusetts invented what?
A: Candlepin Bowling.

In the 1880s, Brunswick Corporation (founded 1845) of Chicago, Illinois, maker of billiard tables began making what?
A: Bowling balls, pins, and wooden lanes to sell to taverns installing bowling alleys.

On 9 September 1895, the modern standardized rules for ten-pin bowling were established in New York City by whom?
A: The new American Bowling Congress (ABC) (later the United States Bowling Congress), who changed the scoring system from a maximum 200 points for 20 balls to a maximum 300 points for 12 balls, and set the maximum ball weight at 16 lbs., and pin distance at 12 inches.

Who was the first ABC champion?
A: Jimmy Smith (1885-1948).

In 1927 Mrs. Floretta "Doty" McCutcheon (1888-1967) defeated Smith in an exhibition match, founding what?
A: A school that taught 500,000 women how to bowl.

In 1993 who were allowed to join the ABC?
A: Women.