How to write a pub quiz…

You don’t need to be a professional writer to learn how to write a pub quiz and create a well-crafted and balanced quiz. Over the years here at The Quiz Team we have learned what questions and formats can help you run a smooth, fun and challenging quiz night geared to your audience.

Sometimes people go wrong because they are trying to be too clever and the questions become convoluted, too difficult, or too niche.

Another major mistake is over delivering. What we mean by this is that the organizer adds far too many questions and rounds. Remember…people can have short attention spans, especially if you add food and drink into the mix.

How to write a pub quiz…and avoid these top mistakes

With these starter points in mind here is our list of the top mistakes people make when writing a pub quiz. We know this will steer you towards writing even better pub quizzes in the future.

1.     Questions are too long.

Questions that are too long can make your quiz longer and sometime more confusing to the participants. Having said that sometimes this is fine to do because you want to hone in on one answer but only include a few of these in a quiz. This is also a good technique to use to give more background to guide people to the answer.

2.     Too many possible answers.

Writing a well worded and structured question is essential to receiving the one answer you are looking for.

3.     Not geared to the audience.

As you would with a marketing plan you should look at who your audience will include on the night. As an example, it is no good writing a football or sport heavy quiz just because you love sport. A big plus of being at a pub quiz is that you can have a team with a wide range of knowledge. On the flip side…if you are writing a quiz for your workplace you can include niche questions about that business or industry. The same applies if you are writing the quiz for someone’s birthday or retirement and you have questions focused on that person or their life. Those niche situations will be geared to the audiences.

4.     Too many questions and rounds.

This is a common problem we hear about often. People will call us to request pub quizzes of 8-12 rounds of 10 questions each. Our regular format is a 40 question quiz with a half-time break which normally lasts for about two hours. This means a quiz with 8 rounds of ten questions plus breaks can easily go up to a whopping 4 hours! It is not to say you have to use our guide, but we do know that after 2 hours attention spans start to wane especially if, as previously mentioned, alcohol is on offer. We suggest quizzes with between 40-50 questions with rounds of 10-20 blocks to keep a rhythm.

5.     Questions are too difficult.

It is reasonable to include difficult questions as there are some very smart and informed people out there. The problem comes in if the entire quiz is filled with complex, little known facts that will exclude the majority of the people taking part. So, add some tough ones for the anoraks and those who like a challenge.

6.     Only catering to one kind of brain.

As many of you know we all learn and process in different ways. If a quiz only includes questions that are read out it can be challenging for those who are visual, or have other styles of learning. Our tips here are to include: visual rounds such as a picture sheet with art, movie posters and the like; music snippets; and even something for those who are kinesthetic learners (physical). This last group could benefit from a round such as chocolate tasting or a blindfolded bonus round with name that material.

If this all feels like too much…get in touch and we can design and deliver a pub quiz to inspire and entertain your guests so you can enjoy your night. We look forward to hearing from you!

We offer a full corporate quiz event service with a quiz, a professional actor host and equipment. Click here.

Alternatively buy one of our pre-written pub quizzes and host it yourself. Press here.

We look forward to hearing from you!