Snooker Trivia Quiz

Answer: 6

Steve Davis dominated the snooker world during the 1980s. As well as the world championships he won the masters three times. He retired from the sport in 2016.

Answer: 22

Snooker is played on a rectangular slate table with a green baize cover. There are six pockets, three down each long side of the table. The object of the game is to hit all the coloured balls into the pockets with the white ball.

Answer: Black

Each colour ball has a different value. A red ball of which there are fifteen is worth one point. Each of the other colours has a single ball. Yellow is worth two points, green is worth three points, brown is worth four points, blue is worth five points and pink is worth six points.

Answer: Ray Reardon

Ray Reardon was a cheerful and friendly man and generous to local snooker clubs giving his time to do demonstrations for them for a low fee. Despite all this because he had a dark widow's peak and a sharp toothed grin he was referred to as Dracula. He won the world championship six times and is considered to be one of the best players of 20th century.

Answer: The Crucible

The Crucible Theatre was built in 1971. It is close to the centre of Sheffield town, and is within walking distance of the railway station. For most of the year it is a working theatre putting on plays and musicals. However from April to May every year it is given over to the world snooker championships.

Answer: Hurricane

Alex Higgins was a popular Northern Irish player who raised the profile and popularity of the game with his flamboyant style. He won the world championship in 1972 and 1982, and was the winner of the world doubles championship with partner Jimmy White in 1984. Sadly he died in 2010 at the age of 61.

Answer: £6.50

The first prize in the first world championship was £6.10 (£6.50 in today's money) which was won in 1927 by Jo Davis. At that time the standard was not very high and the best break in the tournament was 60. By the 1930s snooker was becoming more popular and Jo Davis continued to be the top player until his retirement in 1946.

There was no world championships between 1958 and 1962 due to the waning popularity of the sport. It was with the advent of BBCs tournament 'Pot Black' in 1969 that snooker began to take off with the public.

Answer: Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis

At the 35th and last frame Steve Davis was leading 64-44 with only the last four colours on the table. Dennis Taylor made an amazing come back and the two of them fought to pot the last black and gain victory. The frame lasted 68 minutes and went on until the early hours of a Monday morning, when Dennis Taylor won through. 18.5 million people watched it on television which is a record audience for BBC2 and a post midnight record for any channel in the United Kingdom.

The total match time was fourteen hours and fifty minutes which was the longest thirty five frame match in history.

Answer: John Virgo

There were three contestants each partnered by a professional snooker player. The contestant from the public would answer questions and the snooker player would carry out snooker tasks. A regular feature of the show was John Virgo's trick shot where he would challenge the non-snooker member of the winning team.

The contestant was often successful as John Virgo had carefully set up the table and they only needed to hit the ball as instructed to achieve the shot.

Answer: Colonel Sir Neville Chamberlain

Billiards is a much older game than snooker and King Louis XI had a table in the 1470s. Billiards and derivations of it such as life pool and black pool were very popular with British officers stationed in India. Black pool was played with fifteen red balls and one black, but they began playing a variation with added coloured balls.

In 1875 Sir Neville Chamberlain (not to be confused with the one who returned from Munich with a piece of paper) was entertaining a young man who had been trained at the Royal Academy in Woolwich, who explained that a first year cadet at Woolwich was referred to as a 'snooker'. Later when one of the players failed to pot a ball, Chamberlain called out 'Why you're a regular snooker'.

This then was taken up as the name of the game.