Tuesday, September 22, 2009

How To Run A Good Quiz Night

By Mike Tants

The ingredients for a successful quiz: challenging questions, good atmosphere, a few beers and good company. If you are organising a quiz night these are some of the criteria you should be going for!

Questions

The questions in a quiz should not be really difficult for them to be good. Generally, quizzers would like to be challenged with questions they've not heard before, but you don't want them all to be so hard that the occasional quiz participant to feel excluded.

I generally aim for 20% reasonably easy (I would expect most people to answer these), 20% difficult (I would expect most people not to answer these) and the rest of medium difficulty. You don't want to exclude the occasional quizzer with ridiculously difficult questions but you want to separate the winners.

How big should the prize be?

Generally I find that people don't enter a quiz night to win the prize - they do it to be social, to be challenged and to have fun. They also do it to wrestle with the knowledge of the other participants! However, giving out the prize can be part of some mild entertainment by getting the winning team to bet their claimed prize for something even better!

Get them to pick from an envelope, spin a wheel, play a game of some sort - whatever you can think of that will get everyone laughing!

Quizmaster

The quizmaster needs to be confident speaking to large numbers of people, fair but firm, patient with the quizzers and good humoured. They should never allow themselves to be bullied into giving an extra point for an answer that is almost right. Their decision should always be final.

Alcohol

Some alcohol can certainly add to the party atmosphere and relax everyone. Remember, they are here not to sit in an exam but to take part in a fun night out with friends and challenge themselves. The most important feature of the night is FUN FUN FUN!!

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