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60 free Pinball trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Pinball was once illegal in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, its flippers were invented by accident, and one machine sold more than 20,000 units. This quiz covers the whole silver-ball story: bagatelle and the spring plunger, Baffle Ball and Ballyhoo, Contact's first solenoids, Humpty Dumpty's flippers, La Guardia's sledgehammer, Roger Sharpe's courtroom shot, and the microprocessor games that dragged the hobby into the digital age. You will also be quizzed on the parts and the lingo: tilt bobs, nudging, slingshots, knockers, wizard modes and the match feature, then the classics of the 1990s: The Addams Family, Twilight Zone's Powerball, FunHouse's Rudy, Medieval Madness and Pinball 2000, plus Williams' exit, Gary Stern, Jersey Jack and the newest boutique makers, with a detour through Pinball Wizard. Easy questions suit anyone who has fed a machine a quarter; the expert tier asks for dates, designers and obscure firsts. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on pinball, its manufacturers and its landmark machines, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on arcade games and on 1980s video games.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word pinball comes from the nails historically studded into the board. What were they called?
Pins
The ball scored by coming to rest in hollows or pockets between them.
Q 02Which billiards-derived French table game, named after a château, is the direct ancestor of pinball?
Bagatelle
Louis XIV-era billiard tables were narrowed and fitted with fixed skittles, and holes in the bed became the targets.
Q 03Which 18th-century table-game variant replaced the cue with a spring plunger and was ancestral to pachinko?
Billard japonais
Despite its name meaning 'Japanese billiards', it was invented in Western Europe.
Q 04Which British inventor's 1871 spring-launcher patent is called the birth of modern pinball?
Montague Redgrave
He made tables in Cincinnati, and they were produced until 1927.
Q 05Which 1931 game, selling for $17.50, became the first major hit of the coin-operated era?
Baffle Ball
Gottlieb built 400 a day at its peak; a penny bought five, seven or ten balls.
Q 06Which 1932 game, named after a magazine, gave the company Bally its name?
Ballyhoo
Raymond Moloney built it when he could not get enough of Gottlieb's hit to sell; it moved 50,000 units in seven months.
Q 07Which city has been the centre of pinball manufacturing since the early 1930s?
Chicago
About 150 companies were making machines there by the end of 1932; only 14 survived to 1934.
Q 08Which 1933 game by Pacific Amusements introduced electric solenoids to pinball?
Contact
Its designer Harry Williams went on to found his own company in 1944.
Q 09Which 1947 Gottlieb game was the first with electromechanical player-controlled flippers?
Humpty Dumpty
Its weak flippers needed three pairs up the playfield to get the ball to the top.
Q 10Who invented the flipper, reportedly 'quite accidentally'?
Harry Mabs
His game was inducted into the Amusement Industry Hall of Fame in 2025.
Q 11Which 1950 Gottlieb game was the first with the familiar pair of inward-facing flippers at the bottom?
Just 21
They sat far apart to allow a turret ball shooter between them; Spot Bowler later brought them close together.
Q 12Which New York mayor banned pinball in the early 1940s, smashing machines with a sledgehammer?
Fiorello La Guardia
He believed the machines robbed schoolchildren of their nickels and dimes, and dumped the wreckage in the rivers.
Q 13In which year did New York City's pinball ban finally end?
1976
Chicago's rarely enforced ban lasted three decades and ended the following year.
Q 21Which rubber-padded features to the upper left and right of the flippers propel the ball away on impact?
Slingshots
Every recent machine has them; older games tried more experimental arrangements.
Q 22What is the end-game scoring stage reached after finishing all a machine's other modes called?
Wizard mode
It is either a huge points task or a frenzied multiball with four to six balls in play.
Q 23What is the default probability of a pinball 'match' free game on modern Williams and Bally machines?
7%
It looks like 1 in 10, but the operator can set it.
Q 14Who ended New York's ban by demonstrating in a courtroom that pinball was a game of skill?
Roger Sharpe
He later admitted his called shot owed a lot to luck.
Q 15Besides New York, which West Coast city banned pinball in 1939?
Los Angeles
The industry's home city also had a ban on the books until 1977.
Q 16What did games called Add-A-Ball award instead of free games, to sidestep gambling laws?
Extra balls
Between 5 and 25 extra balls was typical.
Q 17What is the name of the solenoid-driven rod that makes a loud bang when a free game is won?
Knocker
Winning that way is called 'knocking'.
Q 18What is the traditional tilt sensor inside a pinball machine?
A plumb bob in a metal ring
When the machine is shaken too hard the bob touches the ring and completes a circuit.
Q 19What does a player usually forfeit when a tilt is triggered?
The end-of-ball bonus
If it happens on the last ball with no extra ball, the game simply ends.
Q 20Bumping the machine to influence the ball, without tilting, is called what?
Nudging
Along with flipper timing and shot selection it is one of the game's core skills.
Q 24What is the first working pinball machine to use a microprocessor?
Flicker
Dave Nutting Associates converted the Bally game using an Intel 4040 kit and demonstrated it in September 1974.
Q 25Which Bally game held the pinball sales record from 1977 to 1993?
Eight Ball
It shared its microprocessor board with eight other machines released through 1978.
Q 26Which Bally game is considered the first mainstream solid-state pinball?
Freedom
Williams' Hot Tip followed nine months later; both used a Motorola 6800.
Q 27Which Williams game introduced speech to pinball?
Gorgar
The same era brought ramps on Space Shuttle and multiball on Firepower.
Q 28Which 1980 Williams game by Steve Ritchie was the first solid-state machine with a multilevel playfield?
Black Knight
Ritchie also voiced the Knight, and the game introduced magna-save.
Q 29Which 1992 machine holds the modern sales record with 20,270 units?
The Addams Family
Williams marked the milestone in 1994 with 1,000 gold-trimmed 'Gold' editions.
Q 30Which actor recorded custom speech for the best-selling machine of 1992?
Raul Julia
Huston's lines were lifted from the film; she also insisted her nose be redrawn on the backglass.