What you wanted to know about quizzes...
and were afraid to ask!
Having hosted hundreds of trivia quiz nights and written tens of thousands of questions since 2015, I have built up quite a bank of
Quiz-related knowledge.
Here I share with you some of the questions you might have wondered about.
Quiz-related knowledge.
Here I share with you some of the questions you might have wondered about.
What makes a good quiz?
Having written and run pub quizzes for over 7 years now, I've seen that a 'good quiz' is one that teams can win!
It seems simple, but make the questions too easy and teams can get bored, make them too difficult and teams switch off or give up.
Writing a 'good quiz' means striking the balance between question difficulty levels.
Get that right and you've got a 'good quiz' that everyone will enjoy.
Ask me to write your quiz for you, contact me today.
{Hilary Taylor - quiz host}
Originally posted 16-11-21
It seems simple, but make the questions too easy and teams can get bored, make them too difficult and teams switch off or give up.
Writing a 'good quiz' means striking the balance between question difficulty levels.
Get that right and you've got a 'good quiz' that everyone will enjoy.
Ask me to write your quiz for you, contact me today.
{Hilary Taylor - quiz host}
Originally posted 16-11-21
what are the best pub quiz questions?
Questions in any quiz can take a wide variety of formats.
They can be straight forward knowledge questions, questions that relate to a particular theme, multiple choice questions or questions that have a hidden clue in them.
When I write questions for pub quizzes and events, I make sure I add in a range of formats.
In that way, everyone has the opportunity to correctly answer the questions, even if those subjects are not their ideal.
For more question formats, see website page https://www.tmquizzes.co.nz/example-quiz-qs.html
{Hilary - Quiz Host}
Originally posted 29-11-21
They can be straight forward knowledge questions, questions that relate to a particular theme, multiple choice questions or questions that have a hidden clue in them.
When I write questions for pub quizzes and events, I make sure I add in a range of formats.
In that way, everyone has the opportunity to correctly answer the questions, even if those subjects are not their ideal.
For more question formats, see website page https://www.tmquizzes.co.nz/example-quiz-qs.html
{Hilary - Quiz Host}
Originally posted 29-11-21
how many questions should a quiz night have?
I've been to many quiz nights over the years and hosted even more!
The best number of questions for a quiz night really depends on the type of event you are holding and how long you have.
If you have more than 2 hours, you could have up to 10 rounds, with each round containing 10 questions.
If you have less than an hour, you could fit in 3-4 question rounds.
I would recommend a minimum of 4 rounds in order to get a wide range of subjects and to create enough separation of scores between teams.
At TMQuizzes, the most popular number of question rounds for our Quiz Whiz traditional pub quiz is 5 rounds (of 10 questions).
It's enough to get a good selection of subjects and question formats without taking up too much time for the busy people.
Want to know more about our quiz formats? Go to our website https://www.tmquizzes.co.nz/.
{Hilary - Quiz Host}
Originally posted 7-1-22
The best number of questions for a quiz night really depends on the type of event you are holding and how long you have.
If you have more than 2 hours, you could have up to 10 rounds, with each round containing 10 questions.
If you have less than an hour, you could fit in 3-4 question rounds.
I would recommend a minimum of 4 rounds in order to get a wide range of subjects and to create enough separation of scores between teams.
At TMQuizzes, the most popular number of question rounds for our Quiz Whiz traditional pub quiz is 5 rounds (of 10 questions).
It's enough to get a good selection of subjects and question formats without taking up too much time for the busy people.
Want to know more about our quiz formats? Go to our website https://www.tmquizzes.co.nz/.
{Hilary - Quiz Host}
Originally posted 7-1-22
looking for a top tip on how to answer quiz questions?
Every-so-often a quiz question appears to be unanswerable: perhaps it's about a person you've never heard of, perhaps it's something that happened a few decades ago or perhaps it's just worded in a way that seems long-winded and complicated.
It's not unusual to think 'I can't do this, so I won't bother', then leave a blank answer and declare that the question was too hard.
Sometimes those long-winded questions are actually hiding a simple question, it's just clouded with irrelevant detail.
For example, a question might ask about an English playwright from the 16th century who wrote 154 sonnets.
You might not know ANY playwrights who wrote 154 sonnets.
But, if you take out the part about the sonnets and concentrate on the 16th century English playwright, you might decide to write down William Shakespeare.... and you'd be correct!!
So, the next time you get a seemingly unanswerable question, just check what the question is actually centred on and you might get yourself that extra point 😍
{Hilary - Quiz question writer}
Originally posted 18-2-22
It's not unusual to think 'I can't do this, so I won't bother', then leave a blank answer and declare that the question was too hard.
Sometimes those long-winded questions are actually hiding a simple question, it's just clouded with irrelevant detail.
For example, a question might ask about an English playwright from the 16th century who wrote 154 sonnets.
You might not know ANY playwrights who wrote 154 sonnets.
But, if you take out the part about the sonnets and concentrate on the 16th century English playwright, you might decide to write down William Shakespeare.... and you'd be correct!!
So, the next time you get a seemingly unanswerable question, just check what the question is actually centred on and you might get yourself that extra point 😍
{Hilary - Quiz question writer}
Originally posted 18-2-22
looking for quiz night ideas?
Quizzes are a great way to gather people together for a fun activity and there are lots of ways to hold a quiz night.
1 - start with the basic practicalities: when are you going to hold your quiz, who is it for and where you will hold it? also will it be online or in person, and will it be a traditional pub quiz style or will you be using multi-media?
2 - think about how long the event will be for as it will determine how you structure and number of rounds for your event. Also, will the event have a theme, what theme?
3 - consider what you'll do about prizes. You could have big prizes for the overall winners and smaller prizes for 2nd and 3rd. Or you might like to have spot prizes that are awarded as you go through the event. There are lots of possibilities.
4 - who will host the event? will you host it yourself or will you invite a host to come in. A professional quiz host will likely be more efficient when it comes to the practicalities and will likely be used to generating the fun atmosphere for the event itself.
5 - similarly, who will write the questions? if you write them yourself be aware that there is quite an art to getting the right mix of knowledge levels and variety. Putting the questions together may take longer than you imagine and obtaining questions from a quiz expert may be easier.
If you're holding a quiz, get custom-written questions from me at TMQuizzes - I have thousands available. 😁
{Hilary - Quiz question writer}
Originally posted 23-4-22
1 - start with the basic practicalities: when are you going to hold your quiz, who is it for and where you will hold it? also will it be online or in person, and will it be a traditional pub quiz style or will you be using multi-media?
2 - think about how long the event will be for as it will determine how you structure and number of rounds for your event. Also, will the event have a theme, what theme?
3 - consider what you'll do about prizes. You could have big prizes for the overall winners and smaller prizes for 2nd and 3rd. Or you might like to have spot prizes that are awarded as you go through the event. There are lots of possibilities.
4 - who will host the event? will you host it yourself or will you invite a host to come in. A professional quiz host will likely be more efficient when it comes to the practicalities and will likely be used to generating the fun atmosphere for the event itself.
5 - similarly, who will write the questions? if you write them yourself be aware that there is quite an art to getting the right mix of knowledge levels and variety. Putting the questions together may take longer than you imagine and obtaining questions from a quiz expert may be easier.
If you're holding a quiz, get custom-written questions from me at TMQuizzes - I have thousands available. 😁
{Hilary - Quiz question writer}
Originally posted 23-4-22
how do you write your questions?
Having been running quizzes for many years, I have thousands (probably tens of thousands) of questions.
A large proportion have been tested in front of real life people - it's a great way to find out what works and what doesn't.
With each quiz being custom-written for the audience, I can adjust the question formats and styles to fit.
When someone asks me for a quiz where the teams will be ardent quiz fans (particularly 'The Chase' watchers), the questions can be more aligned to the subjects and level of difficulty that they are used to.
When someone asks me for a quiz that is fun, not too tricky and not for ardent quiz fans, the questions are more aligned to popular culture and all-round knowledge.
In order to give teams the opportunity to answer questions that they might not immediately know the answers, I can add in multiple choice questions and True or False questions. This gives everyone the chance to select the right answer.
If you're holding a quiz, get custom-written questions from me at TMQuizzes - I have thousands available. 😁
{Hilary - Quiz question writer}
Originally posted 7/10/24
A large proportion have been tested in front of real life people - it's a great way to find out what works and what doesn't.
With each quiz being custom-written for the audience, I can adjust the question formats and styles to fit.
When someone asks me for a quiz where the teams will be ardent quiz fans (particularly 'The Chase' watchers), the questions can be more aligned to the subjects and level of difficulty that they are used to.
When someone asks me for a quiz that is fun, not too tricky and not for ardent quiz fans, the questions are more aligned to popular culture and all-round knowledge.
In order to give teams the opportunity to answer questions that they might not immediately know the answers, I can add in multiple choice questions and True or False questions. This gives everyone the chance to select the right answer.
If you're holding a quiz, get custom-written questions from me at TMQuizzes - I have thousands available. 😁
{Hilary - Quiz question writer}
Originally posted 7/10/24
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