Points Win Prizes Trivia Quiz

Answer: 6

In tennis, a point was scored when either one side failed to make a legal return to the other, or when the server made two consecutive faults. When four of these points were scored, with a margin of two or more points over the opponent, a game was won.

In an advantage set, six game wins with a two (or more) game lead would win the overall match. As one can imagine, these rules have lead to lengthy and protracted matches -- in 2010 at Wimbledon, John Isner bested Nicolas Mahut in a match lasting eleven hours and five minutes over three days. To constrain match length, James Van Alen in the 1950s developed the nine point tiebreaker, where in 6-6 situations the first player to score five points would win the match. The crowd reportedly loved it, but as the players loathed it a later adapted twelve point version where the first to seven points with an advantage of two would win was developed, which became more popular over time albeit not universally adopted as seen with the Wimbledon example.

Answer: 2

In golf, a round was typically scored as compared with the expected number of shots a top-tier player should make for eighteen different holes. This expected number, par, was usually between three to five shots, and added up to around 72 expected shots for a course. The simplest scoring method, stroke play, grants players zero points for par, +1 for bogey, -1 for birdie, etc. One popular alternative, match play, scores rounds where each hole is individually contested. Another, Stableford, grants zero points for a double bogey or worse, up to six points for a -4 hole with handicap adjustments sometimes added.

The scores represented by avian creatures range from one to four -- birdie, eagle, albatross (or double eagle) and the very rarely seen condor (or triple eagle). The first two of these derive from the American slang for good being 'bird', which the Country Club in Atlantic City have claimed as being the result of a 1903 bet where the second shot of a par four was inches of the hole and getting the hole next round would double his money. The derivations for albatross and condor are unclear in part due to their extreme rarity, but the first recorded use of 'albatross' was in a 1929 newspaper article, and the first recorded condor was in a match at Hope Country Club in Arkansas in 1962.

As the scoring options for 1, 3 and 4 points are the only options for their statements, 2 (eagle) is left here.

Answer: 0

There are a number of slang terms that involve scoring zero in a range of sports. Whilst unsubstantiated, one popular claim is that love in tennis comes from l'oeuf (French for egg) due to the shape of a zero. Another tennis term, bagel, is directly attributed to the shape of a zero when a player loses a set 0-6, and double or triple bagels are possible though extremely rare.

The duck - a score of zero in cricket - is attributed to 'duck's egg', a slang term for nothing in mid-19th century Britain. One particularly stinging alternative, the golden duck, was granted to players declared out on their first ball.

Answer: 7

In badminton, according to the 2006 BWF rules a match was won in a best of three format. Players won a game when they reached 21 points with an advantage of two, or up to 30 as a hard limit. From behind the service line, a player would underarm serve their shuttlecock to the opposite side of the court, starting from the right-hand side at zero and alternating sides for every point scored. After each game, or when the first player reached eleven points in the final round, the players swapped ends.

Essentially, this question concerns the odd numbers. 5 and 9 are out as they aren't multiples of 7, and 1 and 3 are directly connected with other clues, leaving 7.

Answer: 5

Knowing your penalties is as important as knowing how to score positively, and cricket employed a number of rare-case penalty rules in 2000 where five runs could be awarded to the other team. These primarily were to act as a severe disincentive to players attempting to win through trickery or gamemanship - after all, that just wouldn't be cricket, would it?

Under the 2017 MCC laws of cricket, a simplified take on some other examples of penalised play include: ball coming into contact with an unworn helmet when it is on the field of play; wasting time or damaging the pitch after an official warning; ball tampering; the fielding team deliberately attempt to distract or obstruct the batsman. The fielding side was awarded penalty runs if the batsman tried to 'steal' a run by deliberately running it short, or also for time-wasting or damaging the pitch after an official warning.

These rules have fortunately only rarely been applied. For example, when in 2018 Sri Lanka had a five run penalty against England for a short run, former England captain and broadcaster Mike Atherton said "I don't actually think Sri Lanka were deliberately trying to steal a run, it was just dozy cricket from Roshen Silva." whilst prefacing the comment saying he had not seen such a penalty in over twenty years of his involvement in the sport.

Pollucci19 definitely earned his six runs helping me with this question.

Answer: 9

In snooker, two players would take turns potting coloured balls into one of six pockets on a slate surface usually covered with green baize cloth. Initially, excluding the cue ball there would be 21 coloured balls on the table, with 15 of them being red and arranged in a triangular formation. Potting a red ball would allow the player a free shot, with the black ball granting the largest of the colours at seven points. This could be done fifteen times for a maximum potential score of 120. The player would then need to pot the yellow, brown, green, blue, pink and black balls to secure the remaining 27 points needed for a standard maximum break of 147.

Jamie Burnett was the first player in professional play to score 148 from the free ball rule allowing an extra shot to a snookered player in 2004's UK Championship. Scoring above 147 has been extremely rare. However, the incidence rate of maximum breaks has increased as time has progressed, from eight in the 1980s to 35 in the 2000s.

As this question only counts a single ball, it therefore only concerns the numbers 0, 8 and 9. Since the other options have definite answers, 9 is left for this question.

Answer: 8

In 2010, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) made significant changes to the Formula One scoring system, the biggest being a large inflation to the overall points granted in a race. Whilst the system has seen many changes since the original 1950 season, many of them had been aimed at the number of best results counted towards the Drivers' or Constructors' Championships.

The 6th place finisher in 2003 using the previous rules would only have earned three points, and only one point between 1960 and 2002. The 2010 system also extended the number of cars that could get any points at all, with the winner getting 25 points (compared to just 8 in 1960) and 10th place one point.

The primary reason given for changing the points system was to accommodate the increased number of cars on the grid - then 26 - and one 2009 article discussing the change noted that in the vast, vast majority of historical cases, none of the most significant results would have changed.

25 points go to rossian for the suggestion for this answer option.

Answer: 3

Each of these events would only score one point each, adding up to three.

A free throw in basketball was offered when the enemy team committed a foul -- the player took an undefended shot at the line at the end of the restricted area for one point. The other scoring method was through field goals, which racked up either two or three points depending on their distance from the goal.

Field goals from drop kicks were one of four main ways of scoring in rugby league. In general play, the ball was drop kicked through the upright goal posts and over the crossbars. The penalty kick was worth two points and was a similar shot taken from the penalty's location. Tries were the most common form of scoring and involved firm placement of the ball over the goal line. A conversion took place immediately after a try was scored and was a place-kicked goal worth two points taken from a position of the team's choosing.

In football, goals scored one point without any kind of maximum limitation, with the team with the most goals winning the match. The overall team scoring system will vary depending on the format of the tournament or league. For example in the 1998 FIFA tournament format, 32 countries played in seeded groups of four in a round-robin format, then progressing to the knockout stage where teams play in one-off matches.

Answer: 4

A grand slam took place when there was a batsman on each base when the fourth batsman successfully secured a home run. It derived from the bridge term where every possible trick is taken, and allowed the scoring of four runs, the most possible in a single play. The run involved advancing to the first, second, third and home bases without being struck out, and in standard rules the team with the most runs across nine innings (excluding tiebreaker situations) won.

One variant on the grand slam is known as the 'walk-off' grand slam, where the player on the home team would win a game on the ninth or subsequent inning with the grand slam.

Answer: 1

Perhaps counterintuitively, in 2016 and other years, Olympic sailing events awarded one point to the winner, two points to second place and so on. In the 2016 Rio Olympics, ten regular races took place with competitors able to discard their worst score. The ten lowest scoring boats would then be able to take part in the exciting Medal Race, with the points scored doubled and added to the total to determine the final scores.

As a bonus fun fact, the keelboat discipline which had been used since the 1932 Olympics initially featuring the two-person Star was not included for the first time since then in 2016.