Everyone loves a good quiz but how do you turn a good quiz into a great quiz or more importantly how do you stop a good quiz from becoming a snooze?

People often think it’s easy to make a great quiz but there’s more to it than finding a few random facts from the internet to turn into questions. For your quiz to be really great you need a few key things:

A Great Quiz Master

If your quiz is going to be a big success you need a great quiz master. They should be enthusiastic, confident and personable with a good sense of humour, fun and not afraid to participate in banter with the audience whilst maintaining control.

It’s also vital that they are clearly-spoken as one of the biggest complaints from participants is not being able to hear or understand the quiz master. Your quiz master should also be familiar with the content of the quiz as there’s nothing worse than a quiz master reading out a question they don’t understand themselves!

An Engaged Audience

The first thing to avoid is making your quiz too long as people will lose interest. As a general rule of thumb, 1 – 1.5 hours is best but definitely don’t go over 2 hours. It’s also a really good idea to have a break in the middle so people can get a drink and nip to the loo!

Sometimes you’ll get one or two teams that are far better than the others so you could offer a couple of alternative prizes, for example, best team name, or a booby prize for coming last, this will help to keep players engaged and encourage players who haven’t done so well to turn up again if you run another quiz. You could also include a few bonus questions where teams can get extra points, for example, in the music round answers, one point for the song and a bonus point for the artist.

Exciting & Original Content

The most important aspect of your quiz is the content or more specifically making sure the content is right for your audience. You want questions which are thought provoking and that get your participants talking.

• Rather than questions where you either know or don’t know the answer try to include questions where people can work out the answer
• Include different types of questions like full text, Alphapad, multiple choice, connections and anagrams
• Set your questions to the right level of difficulty for your audience, if it’s too easy people won’t take it seriously but if they can’t answer any of the questions people will soon get bored
• Cover topics that are relevant to your audience, students might want more questions from popular culture whereas a more mature crowd might want questions on more traditional subjects
• Make the quiz fun, a quiz where you have a picture round, an audible music round, a dingbats round or anagrams will be more interesting than just straightforward questions
• Make the first round a popular topic to draw people into the quiz and give them a chance to get on the points ladder
• Include questions where teams can gain extra points or loose points e.g. Fastest Fingers and Minus Marks
• Possibly use other ways to involve your audience e.g. fancy dress for themed quizzes or current events, eg. Harry Potter, St Valentine’s Day, Bonfire Night

Keep It Original But Be Consistent

Host your quiz on the same day of the week and with the same entry fee, rules, format and prizes. If you are going to make changes to keep people interested then only make small changes each time such as adding a new type of round or theme.

Happy Quizzing!