Ping Pong Trivia
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This ping pong trivia quiz has 57 free questions with answers and covers the game most people have played in a basement or a bar and the sport that fills arenas in China. The rules questions ask how many points win a game, how often the serve changes hands, how high the ball must be tossed and why one side of every racket has to be black. The history runs from a Victorian after-dinner game played with books for a net, through the trademark fight over the name 'ping-pong', to the 1971 bus ride in Nagoya that started ping-pong diplomacy and opened the door to Nixon's visit to China. There are questions on the greats: Viktor Barna and Angelica Rozeanu, Jan-Ove Waldner (the Mozart of table tennis), Deng Yaping, Zhang Jike, Ma Long and Fan Zhendong; and a few for the casual player, on Forrest Gump, Balls of Fury and Atari's Pong. Every answer has been checked against the ITTF rules as summarised on Wikipedia and the relevant player, tournament and history pages, and each explanation adds one detail worth passing on at the table.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Table tennis switched to a bigger ball in 2000 to get what?
Slower play
Slower play: the 40 mm ball, 2 mm wider than the old one, travels more slowly through the air, a change meant to lengthen rallies and make them easier to follow on television.
Q 02How is a table tennis game decided once the score reaches 10–10?
Two clear points
Two clear points: from 10–10 play simply runs on, with no cap on the score, until one player leads by two. Before 2001 a game ran to 21 points.
Q 03Since games were cut to 11 points in 2001, how often does the serve change hands in table tennis?
After every two
After every two points, down from five in the old 21-point game; at 10–10 the serve starts changing hands after every single point.
Q 04What do the rules require of the colour of a table tennis table's playing surface?
Uniformly dark
Uniformly dark and matt is all the rules ask of the 9 ft by 5 ft surface's colour, apart from white lines 2 cm wide along its edges; no particular colour is named.
Q 05What is the call when a table tennis serve clips the net but still lands in the receiver's court?
A let
A let: the rally isn't scored and the serve is simply taken again, with no limit on how many times in a row that can happen; the net it clips stands just 15.25 cm high.
Q 06What is the ruling when a table tennis shot clips the top edge of the opponent's side?
It counts as good
It counts as good: the top edge is part of the playing surface, so an 'edge ball' stands however wildly it kicks, while a ball that strikes the vertical side is out.
Q 07Under ITTF rules, one side of the paddle's rubber must always be which colour?
Black
Black must cover one side and a bright colour the other, so an opponent can see which rubber struck the ball: the two can spin it very differently. Pink, violet, green and blue joined red in October 2021.
Q 08When a table tennis serve is struck, the ball must be above table height and where?
Behind the end line
Behind the end line, from the toss until the hit, so a serve struck over the table is a fault. The line is treated as running on sideways without end, which lets a server stand as wide as they like.
Q 09Which US game company bought the 'ping-pong' name and enforced the trademark in the 1920s?
Parker Brothers
Parker Brothers held the US rights to the name 'Ping-Pong' and enforced them in the 1920s, forcing American associations to call the sport 'table tennis' instead.
Q 10When Victorians first played table tennis after dinner, what stood in a row along the table as a net?
Books
Books stood in for the net, and accounts differ on the rest: more books or cigar-box lids as bats, a golf ball or a champagne cork as the ball. It was lawn tennis shrunk to fit the dining table.
Q 11Which actor plays 1950s ping-pong hustler Marty Mauser in the 2025 film Marty Supreme?
Timothée Chalamet
Timothée Chalamet's Marty Mauser is loosely based on Marty Reisman, a real New York champion who hustled matches for money and called his memoir The Money Player.
Q 12Since July 2014, ITTF events have used plastic balls in place of balls made from which older material?
Celluloid
Celluloid balls made the game: Englishman James Gibb is credited with finding them as novelties on a trip to America, and they suited table tennis so well that it took off.
Q 13E. C. Goode created the modern paddle in the early 1900s by fixing what to its blade?
Pimpled rubber
Q 21Which country beat China to win the first Olympic mixed doubles table tennis gold, in 2021?
Japan
Japan's Jun Mizutani and Mima Ito beat Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen 4-3 on home tables in Tokyo. It was the country's first Olympic table tennis gold, and China's only defeat in the five events.
Q 22Jan-Ove Waldner, 'the Mozart of table tennis', won 1992 Olympic singles gold for which country?
Sweden
Sweden had the one player China could not stop in Barcelona: Chinese players won the other three golds, while Waldner beat France's Jean-Philippe Gatien for his.
Q 23Because of his extraordinary longevity, Waldner is known in China by what nickname?
The Evergreen Tree
Pimpled rubber replaced the vellum and cork faces that came before it. A sponge layer under the rubber followed in the 1950s and made the game far faster and spinnier.
Q 14The first official World Championships, in 1926, were held in which city?
London
London staged it in December 1926. It had been planned as a European championship and became the first World Championships.
Q 15By ITTF rule, at least 85% of a paddle blade's thickness must be which material?
Natural wood
Natural wood must make up at least 85% of the blade, which is why the carbon fibre in some bats is only a thin reinforcing layer: the rule caps each such layer at 7.5% of the thickness or 0.35 mm.
Q 16What does the ITTF rulebook call the bat or paddle?
Racket
Racket is the rulebook's word, even though the thing has no strings: players say 'bat' in Britain and 'paddle' in North America, and the ITTF uses neither.
Q 17Which grip, long favoured by East Asian players, curls three fingers against the back of the blade?
Penhold
Penhold players long had a weak backhand. In the 1990s Chinese players fixed it by hitting with the back of the bat, a stroke called the reverse penhold backhand.
Q 18Yoo Nam-kyu, the first Olympic men's singles champion in table tennis, represented which country?
South Korea
South Korea had both finalists: Yoo Nam-kyu beat his compatriot Kim Ki-taik for the gold. China, the sport's superpower, won only the doubles among the men's events that year.
Q 19Table tennis became an Olympic sport at which Games?
Seoul 1988
Seoul 1988 was a cold start: table tennis had never been a demonstration sport, the trial run the IOC usually asked of newcomers, and went straight in as a full medal event.
Q 20At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, what replaced the men's and women's doubles?
Team competitions
Team competitions replaced the doubles at Beijing 2008; China swept all six singles medals there, prompting a limit of two singles entries per nation from 2012.
Chinese fans call Waldner 'the Evergreen Tree' (Chang Qing Shu) for a top-level career stretching from the early 1980s into his forties; in the 1990s he was reportedly better known in China than Bill Clinton.
Q 24Through the 2024 Games, which Chinese player is the only table tennis athlete with six Olympic gold medals?
Ma Long
Ma Long never lost an Olympic event he entered: team gold in 2012 and 2024, and the singles and team double at both Games between. In 2012 China's two singles places had gone to others.
Q 25A table tennis 'Grand Slam' means singles titles at the Olympics, the World Championships and which third event?
The World Cup
The World Cup is the third leg. Jan-Ove Waldner completed the first Grand Slam in 1992, and every player to match him through 2024 has been Chinese.
Q 26Which player completed the career Grand Slam in a record 445 days, ending in 2012?
Zhang Jike
Zhang Jike went from his first world title in May 2011 to Olympic gold in August 2012. His opponent in that final, Wang Hao, lost a third straight Olympic singles final.
Q 27Paris 2024 men's singles champion Fan Zhendong is affectionately known by what nickname?
Little Fatty
Little Fatty, Xiao Pang in Chinese, is what fans call the stocky Fan Zhendong. His Paris gold completed the Grand Slam, the full set of the sport's three biggest singles titles.
Q 28Why was future four-time Olympic champion Deng Yaping initially kept off China's national team?
She was too short
She was too short, selectors said: Deng stands 1.50 m. Once on the team she won a world doubles title within a year, then both the singles and doubles golds at the 1992 and 1996 Games.
Q 29Angelica Rozeanu, who won six consecutive women's world singles titles, played for which country?
Romania
Romania's champion from 1936, Rozeanu lost the war years, came back to win the world singles title every year from 1950 to 1955, and moved to Israel in 1960.
Q 30Viktor Barna, a record five-time men's world singles champion in the 1930s, was born in which country?
Hungary
Hungary's Barna won five world singles titles between 1930 and 1935. His reign ended in 1936, when fellow Hungarian Ferenc Soos knocked him out in the last 32.