A collection of word-association game questions that will excite elementary school students! Fun quizzes that also serve as brain teasers.

baseball

Baseball is a sport played with a ball on a field by teams of nine players. In Japan, it is famous for the Spring and Summer National High School Baseball Championships held at Koshien Stadium. Masaoka Shiki, renowned as a haiku poet, was also one who became captivated by baseball. It is said that he was the one who coined Japanese equivalents for baseball-related loanwords, such as “dasher” for batter and “sousha” for runner.

piano

A piano is an instrument with rows of white and black keys that you play with your fingers to produce sound. You often see them in music rooms, right? I think many schools also have one in the gym for various events. In fact, the “piano” we usually say is an abbreviation; its full name is “clavicembalo col piano e forte.” Because it’s too long, we normally call it a piano. The meaning is something like “a harpsichord with soft and loud (dynamics).”

soap bubble

Soap bubbles are the round bubbles you can make by blowing air through a straw or the like into soapy water. It’s said they were introduced from Portugal around the late 16th century. I wonder if Oda Nobunaga ever played by blowing through a straw, too. You’ve probably tried it at least once yourself. In fact, in the world of haiku, soap bubbles are considered a seasonal word for spring. It’s curious that something you can play with anytime should have a season, isn’t it?

ghost

From keywords like night, grave, and “having no feet,” along with the hint of a ghost story, the word that comes to mind is “ghost.” Ghosts are said to often appear at night, are closely associated with graves, and frequently show up in ghost stories. Also, since they are often depicted without feet, we can conclude that the answer is a ghost.

snow

The answer to this riddle is “snow.” In addition to the basic elements of its white appearance and cold touch, noticing that up close it has a crystalline shape, and that a landscape covered in snow is called a “silver world,” all together lead to the conclusion that the answer is snow.