‘Castling’ is related to which of the following sports?

Correct — A. Castling is a move in chess: the king moves two squares towards one of its rooks, and that rook jumps to the square the king crossed.

It is the one move in which two of your own pieces move in a single turn.

It is legal only if neither the king nor that rook has moved before, the squares between them are empty, and the king is not in check, does not pass through an attacked square and does not land in check.

None of the other games has a piece called a rook, so option (a) is the sport.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  Billiards — Billiards is played with a cue and balls on a cloth table. Its vocabulary is cannon, break and in-off, and it has no castling.
• (c)
  Tennis — Tennis runs on deuce, let, ace and volley. Castling has no meaning on a court.
• (d)
  Table Tennis — Table tennis uses chop, loop, smash and let. Like tennis, it borrows nothing from chess.

Sport-terminology questions run on vocabulary unique to a single game, and chess supplies a large stock of it: castling, checkmate, stalemate, en passant, gambit, zugzwang.

Castling is the move that tucks the king towards a corner and brings a rook towards the centre in one turn, which is why it opens so many games.

Kingside castling is written 0-0 and queenside castling 0-0-0. Because the term belongs to one game only, the question is decided by recognition, not by following the sport.

Key facts

• Castling moves the king two squares towards a rook, and that rook to the square the king crossed.
• Castling is illegal if the king or the chosen rook has already moved.
• A king may not castle out of check, through an attacked square, or into check.
• Kingside castling is notated 0-0 and queenside castling 0-0-0.

Common traps

• Assuming a king may castle out of check as long as it ends up safe — it may not
• Reading castling as a rook move and forgetting that the king moves two squares

No directly related past PYQ was found.