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Quiz: Match these lines of a Haiku

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In this quiz, I provide the first two lines of a haiku, and you have to choose the correct third line. Whether you’re a haikuist or you’ve never read a haiku before, you can have fun finding the best poetic fit from the choices offered! Do share your experience below 🙂

All of these poems are by the 17th century Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho, translated by Jane Reichhold in Basho – the Complete Haiku (2008).

If you like this quiz, be sure to check out my 56 Amazing Quizzes on a Wide Variety of Topics! – “Guaranteed to make you smarter!”

  • Question of

    In the box are the first two lines of the haiku. Below that are three possibilities for the third (and final) line. Choose the correct one!

    • wander around
    • a crescent moon night
    • of deer at night
  • Question of

    white chrysanthemums / looked at closely

    • in the moon’s shape
    • autumn’s departure
    • no dust at all
  • Question of

    autumn deepens / so what does he do

    • about moon viewing
    • the man next door
    • for a flower festival
  • Question of

    pine wind / does it go around the eaves

    • with departing autumn
    • a wild boar
    • as if master of the house
  • Question of

    how pleasurable / sleeping late in autumn

    • a handsome man
    • as if master of the house
    • the man next door
  • Question of

    crying “beeeee” / how sad the bellowing

    • a wild boar
    • of deer at night
    • autumn’s departure
  • Question of

    buying a measuring box / I change my mind

    • about moon viewing
    • as if master of the house
    • with departing autumn
  • Question of

    already autumn / even sprinkles of rain

    • wander around
    • no dust at all
    • in the moon’s shape
  • Question of

    in the scent of mums / climbing up the dark pass

    • as if master of the house
    • no dust at all
    • for a flower festival
  • Question of

    scent of chrysanthemums / in Nara a long time ago

    • a handsome man
    • the man next door
    • for a flower festival
  • Question of

    a cricket / does it get into the bed of

    • a handsome man
    • a wild boar
    • of deer at night

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Written by Norman Darlo

60 Comments

    • It is interesting you should say that, because there was a time I was totally uninterested in poetry. And then I happened to find haiku! It really is very different from the poetry we learn in school. I have many Croatian friends who are big in haiku 🙂

  10. This quiz confuses me because these are not haiku as I understand the term. A haiku must have the syllable pattern 5,7,5, which does not apply to any of these examples.

    • While in Japanese, most traditional haiku are indeed written in the pattern you describe, this has not been the case for several decades in English, either for original work or for translations. (Although 5-7-5 is still taught in school in the west, chiefly, I imagine, to train pupils on counting syllables.)

      • All I can say is “that’s news to me!” Have the rules for tanka also changed? So what constitutes a haiku if it is not limited by syllable count?

        • Haiku (both in Japanese and English) has always been far more about content than form. Forcing something into 5-7-5 syllables is a reliable way to not make a haiku! These poems usually focus on the interface of nature and humanity and should contain an indication of season. Brevity is highly valued, whereas a poem forced into 17 syllables will usually sound forced and probably contain obvious padding. Take a glance at some samples from the current issues of the official organs of
          1) the Haiku Society of America: http://www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond/2017-issue40-2/haiku.html and
          2) the British Haiku Society: http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Blithe-spirit-27.1-Sampler-Shrikaanth-Krishnamurthy.pdf

          Syllable counting has similarly fallen out of fashion in English tanka too.

          • Personally I enjoy the challenge of strict rules and much prefer to regard syllable counts as sacrosanct – that applies to all formats including heroic couplets, sonnets, etc, etc. I am happy to stick to haikus and tankas as I understand them – it’s not just me, I might add!

          • I know it’s not just you, John 🙂 But no serious haiku publication would be likely to consider such work, mainly because it tends to miss the essence of what haiku actually is.

        • In Japanese, it’s counted as ‘breaths’ (short long short) not specifically as syllables. Traditionally, English haiku can be 5-7-5, 3-5-3, or any combination (2-4-2, even). 5-7-5 is the typical style–and it’s sort of like training wheels on a tricycle until one is ready for a bike.

          The other rules of haiku are more important, like:
          *two connected lines of concrete imagery and one distinct satori (flash of insight) line that appears in the last or first line.
          *use of a seasonal reference (Kigo)
          *no rhymes or personification
          *must be in present tense
          *word economy
          *minimal or no punctuation or caps (only on proper nouns)
          etc.

  17. You got 5 out of 11 right!

    Not so bad.

    This was so much fun. The answers were very unexpected at times. Master of the House and Crying deer were the only ones that I found easy to guess.

    • I’m glad you enjoyed this. Part of the art of haiku (in some poets’ hands, more than others’) is to confound expectations, by adding a somewhat unexpected third line.

      Do you like ghazals? A quiz on them (not sure quite how) might be nice 🙂

      • Somebody once said : “Translation is like the opposite side of embroidery. You perceive the design but miss out on beauty.”

        I think this is so apt when it comes to Urdu poetry. I love poetry by Iqbal, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Bahadur Shah Zafar and personally I feel that Urdu poetry has much more depth, soul and beauty than English/American poetry (having read both Urdu and English poetry). People who read Persian poetry say the same about its beauty.

        I will try to make a quiz on matching couplets. I think it will be fun. Thanks for the suggestion.

        • I’m looking forward to it already. I’ve done quite a bit of poetic translation, and I would say that to bring out the beauty is the challenge of it. It is relatively easy to simply translate the words as though you were translating prose. But when done with skill, the embroidery is not inevitably lost, although it will never be an identical design to the original, of course. And some understanding of the original text adds greatly to an appreciation of the translation.