Pato, a game played on horseback, is the national sport of which country?

The correct answer is B, James Naismith. Naismith, a physical education instructor in Springfield in the United States, devised basketball in 1891 as an indoor game for the winter months, using two peach baskets fixed above the floor; a team plays five players on court. Option A is wrong because William G. Morgan invented volleyball, in 1895, also in the United States, and the two names are deliberately offered together because the games and the years are neighbours. Option C is wrong because Walter Camp is remembered for shaping American football, not basketball. Option D is wrong because Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympic Games, founding the International Olympic Committee in 1894 and seeing the first modern Games held at Athens in 1896; he invented no sport. The safe pair to memorise is Naismith with basketball and 1891, Morgan with volleyball and 1895.

The correct answer is C, 1895. Morgan, working in Holyoke in the United States, designed volleyball as a gentler indoor game than the newly invented basketball, and a team plays six players on court. Option A is wrong because 1885 belongs to no landmark in this topic and is placed only to widen the spread of years. Option B is wrong because 1891 is the year James Naismith invented basketball, four years earlier and in the same part of the United States, which is precisely the confusion the question is built on. Option D is wrong because 1900 is the year the Davis Cup in tennis began, and also the year of the Paris Olympic Games, but it has nothing to do with volleyball. Remember the two inventions as a pair, basketball in 1891 and volleyball in 1895, and these questions become automatic.

The correct answer is B, Bhutan, where archery is the official national sport and village tournaments with song and dance are part of festival life. Option A is wrong because Nepal declared volleyball its national sport in 2017; the traditional game earlier associated with it was dandi biyo. Option C is wrong because Mongolia is linked with the three manly sports of the Naadam festival, wrestling, horse racing and archery together, rather than with archery alone as a declared national sport. Option D is wrong because Myanmar is associated with chinlone, a cane ball game, and no archery declaration. In the Indian neighbourhood the list to hold is Bhutan with archery, Nepal and Sri Lanka with volleyball, Bangladesh with kabaddi and Pakistan with hockey, while India has declared no national game at all.

The correct answer is B, Lacrosse and ice hockey. The National Sports of Canada Act of 1994 names lacrosse as the national summer sport and ice hockey as the national winter sport, which makes Canada one of the few countries whose national games rest on a statute rather than on custom. Option A is wrong because baseball is the popular national pastime of the United States, and although basketball was invented by a Canadian, James Naismith, it is not a declared national sport of Canada. Option C is wrong because it leaves out lacrosse; curling is popular in Canada but is not named in the Act. Option D is wrong for the same reason, and because it drops ice hockey, the winter sport the Act expressly names. The statute is worth remembering by name, because questions often ask for the year 1994.

The correct answer is B, India. The shuttle-and-racket game was played at Poona, now Pune, where British officers took it up; it was long known simply as Poona, and they carried it home where its rules were later settled. Option A is wrong as the country of origin, although England is where the modern rules were codified and where the All England Championships, the oldest tournament in the sport, began; this split between the folk game and the written rules is the heart of the question. Option C is wrong because China, though dominant in the modern sport, is linked in origin questions with cuju, the ancient ball game that prefigures football. Option D is wrong because Scotland is the home of golf. Along with chess, polo and snooker, badminton is one of the four origin answers that go to India.