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I recently moved to a new town, and to my knowledge there are no pub quizzes, and I'm loving bored. I've never run one before but friends of mine have and said it is relatively simple. However, I'm having trouble finding a resource for questions, since I'd like it to be more topical rather than themes like video game night or Harry Potter night. Can anyone here tell me about running one, your experiences? Or advice from those who attend. I've already floated the idea to the owner of my favorite bar here in town, he's thrilled with it and will supply the mic and PA.
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Jul 31, 2015 00:47
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 19:25 |
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The pub quiz I go to has themes, but they don't announce them, you've got to figure it out with the more answers you get. The questions don't have anything to do with the theme, but the answers do. For example, if the theme was Harry Potter, a question could be "She wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit" (Beatrix Potter). If the theme was hats, a question could be "Also known as the truth quark, this is the most massive of elementary particles" (Top Quark). (The pub had that question one week, and the next week the theme was Midsummer Night's Dream and they used "Bottom Quark" as one of the answers.) The pub we go to prints their own answer sheets. There are 25 questions worth two points each, spelling and penmanship matter. If an answer is partially right they might give one point instead of two. Teams cannot be larger than four people, phones aren't allowed, and the announcer usually walks around during the quiz to make sure nobody is cheating. At the end, the announcer collects the sheets and scores them, then returns them to the players. The questions and answers are read to everyone, then they announce the highest scores and winning teams. The prizes are little cheap things, and if you bring in a prize, you get an extra point. Are you volunteering to run a pub quiz or do you expect some kind of reimbursement? If you want to draw a crowd, it will need to be a regularly scheduled thing, and you'll have to advertise somehow. Does the pub have a Facebook page? As far as coming up with material, our pub will do themes based on current events or things going on around town, and if there's nothing happening they will choose a very basic theme, like sports teams or birds or Game of Thrones. They write their own quizzes. If you go this route, it's just a matter of picking a theme, coming up with all your answers, and then figuring out creative questions to fit your answers. It's more fun if it's a tough quiz and there aren't any perfect scores.
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Jul 31, 2015 02:46
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That's awesome info, thanks! The manager and I spoke and yes, they have a FB and Twitter and we're thinking of publishing an ad in the local paper and what not. It's a fairly popular bar in the historic downtown area here. Making up my own questions doesn't sound nearly as intimidating now. I guess I was thinking there's some sort of association that makes them each week that maybe charges a subscription fee. And I'm not looking to get paid. Free drinks would be nice since I like lovely cheap beer, but I'm mostly bored and seeking to have some fun while I'm here. If it becomes a regular thing or if it peters out, at least I tried.
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Jul 31, 2015 03:13
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crime fighting hog posted:That's awesome info, thanks! There are a couple services that you can sign up for that provide question and answer sets. If you don't want to go that route, you can also do what my friend did when he made up about 30 trivia questions a week for a bar. He simply went to wikipedia, looked at the "In the news" sections and just click around and ask questions about current events, and whatever else you randomly happen to click on as you fall down the wikipedia hole. He never had an issue coming up with content and rarely had a question that was flat out bad. The better questions are ones that can't be straight up googled. Smart phones have kind of ruined the trivia scene, because no matter what, you have some assholes who discretely use their phones to get the answer for that sweet sweet $25 bar tab. Be vigilant of that stuff and be sure to humiliate them as much as possible.
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Jul 31, 2015 06:34
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Worst things about a pub quiz are the announcer talking too much or not being clear so watch out for that. The best pub quizzes are one that are hard to google, although that makes it harder to come uo with questions. Also offer a prize if you can for best team name and strangest answer.
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Jul 31, 2015 07:26
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crime fighting hog posted:That's awesome info, thanks! If you make your own questions, be prepared to have back-up questions that are easier or be prepared to quickly turn difficult questions into multiple choice/true false type questions. Depending on the crowd, it can be frustrating missing 4 questions or more in a row. If a lot of people are missing questions, maybe dumb it down a bit. This should be a fun activity to socialize with friends, have some cheap beer and grub, and answers some questions with competition being for those who want to get that sweet food voucher prize. I know that this isn't how all pub trivias work... I used to go to a trivia night that was an older crowd and the questions were legitimately difficult. They even had a stump the genius type question for bonus points. Those people were pretty hardcore and my group of friends couldn't keep up - so we found an easier trivia night and are much happier. Also seconding 'make sure everybody can hear and understand you'. Nothing more frustrating than not being able to understand the question!
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Jul 31, 2015 12:33
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Do this stuff http://www.geekswhodrink.com/pages/contact/be-a-quizmaster They have good name recognition; when I think of pub trivia I think of geeks who drink. That may just be because they're everywhere in my city.
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Jul 31, 2015 16:15
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People will argue with you. People will flat out tell you you're wrong. People will google the "correct" answer and wave their phone in your face to prove it. People become obnoxious when they've been drinking and they think they're smarter than someone else. For this reason, get paid, at least in beer! Remember that the aim isn't for them to get the right answer, it's to get your answer. Your answer is final. Test your questions on a friend, preferably a not-too-smart one. Most of the teams scores should be in the 60-80% range. Hand out a picture round at the start for them to complete over the course of the quiz, it's a good way of getting an entire round in with minimal effort. Don't just do famous people, get creative. I used to do airline liverys. A prize for best team name is essential - some people will turn up just to have a funny team name read out.
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Aug 2, 2015 12:02
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duckmaster posted:A prize for best team name is essential - some people will turn up just to have a funny team name read out. That's how my team won 100 peanut butter cups.
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Aug 2, 2015 19:03
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In any crowd, there will be experts in Sports, Current events, Entertainment/Music/Hollywood gossip, Geography/History. If you consider a 50yo sports fan, an 18yo nerd and a high school teacher, they should all have a chance to contribute to their team. The one I sometimes go to is produced by a group, like it is linked above. It has 10 themed rounds of 10 questions including things like identifying song introductions or a TV opening. Teams can nominate a joker round where they get double points. You can have an inter-round guessing game where the clues start hard and get easier, so the team that identifies "I was born in the electorate of Cologne in 1770" at the start gets 10 points, while the team that gets "deaf composer who shares a name with a dog in a 1992 comedy film' after round 9 gets 1 point. The answer is revealed at the end of the quiz.
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Aug 5, 2015 22:55
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Make sure your answers are actually correct! Trick questions are fine as long as they work, but too many pub quiz arguments happen because the "correct" answer isn't actually correct - usually because someone just copy + pasted a list of questions from one of the many quiz websites, and since those all copy each other once an incorrect answer appears on one it spreads to them all and you end up with 45 year old men screaming at each other over whether Lt Columbo's first name is Frank or Philip.
Sweevo fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 09:48
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Sweevo posted:Make sure your answers are actually correct! Trick questions are fine as long as they work, but too many pub quiz arguments happen because the "correct" answer isn't actually correct - usually because someone just copy + pasted a list of questions from one of the many quiz websites, and since those all copy each other once an incorrect answer appears on one it spreads to them all and you end up with 45 year old man screaming at each other over whether Lt Columbo's first name is Frank or Philip. Yes. Please make sure they are correct. Had my trivia guy ask what the primary force holding the nucleus (yes, protons and neutrons) together was. (A) Gravity (B) Weak force (C) Strong force (D) electromagnetic force. Obviously answered Strong force... He announced (D) electromagnetic force. Also he commented that it was *nearly* a social. During the next question I went up to argue for strong force with google at my side. A lady from another group even came up and said he was wrong, strong force holds protons and neutrons together, but nobody in her group believed strong force was real so they answered electromagnetic anyway and got the points. He seriously didn't believe me until I showed him a couple sources... Anyway, sucked that everybody got points for that answer when it should have just been my group, since he obviously wouldn't take points away from other groups for his mistake.
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Aug 6, 2015 12:46
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It's not easy, there used to be a weekly pub quiz in our local pub and whilst the burden of running it, aggregating the round and so on was laid on one person every week, people were allowed to bring in their own round of questions, coming up with 10 questions every week while fun was way harder than it should have been. The one thing I will say is don't make any rounds stupidly hard, it might sound clever but it just kills peoples interests. I recall at one of our quizzes a guy asked 10 questions on airports. He probably thought he was being dead clever or innovative or some poo poo but in reality he bored the entire room to tears. Saying that, you'd be amazed what some intelligent folk can get, this pub was generally frequented by 50 year olds and they aced a picture round I did once based around naming video game characters, I honestly never thought I'd see a group of pensioners know the identity of Lara Croft and Yoshi.
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Aug 7, 2015 15:33
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Don't run it too long, poo poo gets old after like 2 hours. Do two question rounds, a visual/name-the-tune or whatever round, one more question round, and a final jeopardy last question that's worth ten points or whatever. Have someone else scoring if you can. Don't do multiple choice unless a certain question is particularly hard. Play music between the questions, read the question and then give like 30 seconds before moving on. Read them all again in succession afterwards, don't ask for people to repeat questions because a bunch of idiots wants to hear the same question six times because they didn't think to jot a note down on the line in the first place to remind them. I spent a while in a boring New England town that had like 5 pub trivia games a week, and you wouldn't believe how bad some of them were (like the one where they guy would just get up, read nine questions without pausing, and then sit down, and would do this over and over amidst cries of "slow down!!" every single time). If you're going to be making up the questions yourself, do it backwards and start with answers and create questions around them. If you do your research you shouldn't gently caress up and make a 'wrong' question this way, or at least much less of the time.
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Aug 8, 2015 16:22
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Forgot to add a few things from the quizzes I have attended. Have a half time break so people can get drinks, have a smoke or grab some snacks and if you want to be really classy provide snacks for the punters. When our quizzes first started the lady who ran them charged £1 for a team of 4 to enter and about 6, maybe 7 teams would show up, the banquet she provided for that meagre sum was glorious. We'd have sausage rolls, cocktail sausages, nuts, breadsticks, packs of crisps. Sometimes people would volunteer to bring in sandwiches or cake too and those days were glorious. At the very last quiz of the season (our quiz, named the "Fun quiz", ran in the summer while the official quiz league in the town was ran only in the winter) the winning table for each quiz round had all their members get to lucky dip into an alternating bag of drinks or snacks. Food and booze, it's what the punters want.
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Aug 8, 2015 18:49
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That second poster said to limit teams to x people. That is the worst advice. People like going to bars. People like hanging out with their friends. They're not going to like being told to break up the group and its not like it costs you extra anyway. Every trivia night I've gone to was a single say $20 credit to the table/team not individually.
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Aug 8, 2015 22:30
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People pay for trivia? wtf team limit should be like 6-8, OP. Most groups aren't bigger than that and if they are they're almost certainly going to win and that sucks when you're a team of 4 who are getting crushed by 11 idiots who just have sheer numbers on their side.
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Aug 8, 2015 23:57
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I do one pub quiz a year as a fundraiser for an organisation. Since you're probably not going to being selling tickets, I won't bother with advice on that point, but here's a few other things to consider: 1. Writing a quiz with a good range of questions and a good range of difficulty takes a fair amount of time. My quizzes are 8 rounds of 10 questions and take a few hours to put together. If your quiz is going to be weekly, be prepared for this. Otherwise, in my country at least there's about 2 companies that send out pub quiz questions to people each week, not sure how much it costs. 2. I recommend having at least 2 or 3 people running it - one doing the announcing and another one or two marking. Set up an excel spreadsheet in advance so that it adds up the scores as you go to save some time. 3. Read out the scores at least once at halfway to keep people competitive. 4. Keep it going at a decent pace. Start fairly promptly, and don't go for longer than a couple of hours. I went to one quiz once that started at 6 and didn't finish until 10:30, it was awful. 5. Spot prizes (funniest answer, best team name etc) are good if you can swing them. 6. Music rounds or rounds with handout sheets can be good for variety. If you're doing anything with slides or music or video, make sure you've tested the systems in advance.
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Aug 9, 2015 00:16
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Theres a shitload of question books out there, if you go for the slightly older ones they are more likely to have been properly fact-checked compared to your average Google search results. They also help a lot with questions about sport since it's hard to put together your own questions when you are completely clueless about names/dates/results. See if the bar owner will provide prizes also or if you'll have to bring your own, if it's a paid quiz then it's generally accepted that whoever is paid the entry fee must provide the prizes. When I ran a pub quiz we were hired by the landlord so we provided a bunch of edible prizes and let people come up and choose what they wanted while the overall winner received the pot of entry fees from the landlord (chocolate is nice but a cash prize draws the crowds).
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Aug 9, 2015 13:02
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People are using phones, even if you say they're not allowed, people will use phones. Make every question with the knowledge that someone will try to look up the answer on Google. If you want an interesting quiz, make questions you have to think about, not something you have to calculate or look up. Also I agree with Zesty Mordant, quizzes can get old fast, just because you want to talk with your mates, but you have this quiz in the way. Usually when we go, we end up giving up on the quiz because it took too long and everyone gets a lot more shouty.
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Aug 9, 2015 16:13
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I work for a nationwide company and I've probably got a NDA somewhere in my contract so I can't say much, but this is what I can say about this comment here:Megaspel posted:People are using phones, even if you say they're not allowed, people will use phones. Yeah. Make sure it's EXPLICITLY in the rules. When I start my game, going through my spiel, I bring it up. Usually I make a joke about it. "Rule 2: No reference material. All I am worried about are cell phones, I'm pretty sure no one here brought a [type of text book] here tonight, but cell phones are out. Even if you're simply texting you cannot have your phone out while your team is answering a question. If you look like you're Googling I have to assume that you are. I don't want to disqualify anyone so let's all have fun and not cheat, okay?" Then, during the game, I keep an eye out for two things. First, anyone who is consistently answering questions no one else can. Second, anyone who isn't looking at their friends. If they're playing by themselves, I look to see if they're looking under their table. If I see anyone with their phone out I check to see if their team has turned in an answer and if they haven't I say something to them privately about it if they're close to me, or put out an 'anonymous' reminder over the PA. During long songs I go around to every table and say hi. Also if I sneak up on a team that I see has their phone out, I see what they're looking at. 99% of the time? They're texting. I give these people a pass. During my time running trivia I have only had one person actively cheat. They were caught with their phone out actually Googling the answer. I told them they were disqualified and they blew up on me and the bouncers escorted them right the gently caress out. My experience in this? If you catch a cheater the other teams who aren't cheating will have more respect for you. Some locations you do shows for also are huge on trivia, less so than it bringing in additional business, because it draws a more intellectual crowd. Their own staff will rat cheaters out to you. EDIT: Also, where do you live? Just curious. Skunkrocker fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Aug 11, 2015 |
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Aug 11, 2015 05:39
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Megaspel posted:People are using phones, even if you say they're not allowed, people will use phones. Make every question with the knowledge that someone will try to look up the answer on Google. In all the pub quizzes I've gone to, I've never seen anyone cheat. Phones are a huge no-no, but people can't be expected to spend 2hrs. without access to their phones. Most quizzes in NYC (and it's a decent format) 5 rounds of 10 questions, and answers are collected/graded in between each round. Answers & point totals are given in between each round, with some sort of extra or bonus super hard questions at the end.
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Aug 11, 2015 16:51
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One thing I've always liked when I play trivia is "creative" categories. Things you'll sometimes see on Jeopardy like Before and After, Crossword Clues, etc...and creative media categories instead of straight up "What song is this?" Things like "Guess the brand from a partial logo," or "Guess the song being played backwards," etc...Makes people who might not have tons of history/science/sports knowledge feel useful on a team. Also make sure to play to your audience. If you're doing this in a sports bar, make sure there's at least one sports category every week, geared towards whatever sport is in season if you can (so more football questions in the fall, baseball ones in summer.)
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Aug 11, 2015 17:15
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DrBouvenstein posted:One thing I've always liked when I play trivia is "creative" categories. Things you'll sometimes see on Jeopardy like Before and After, Crossword Clues, etc...and creative media categories instead of straight up "What song is this?" Things like "Guess the brand from a partial logo," or "Guess the song being played backwards," etc...Makes people who might not have tons of history/science/sports knowledge feel useful on a team. Along the same lines, a bar near me has rounds that are "find the link", where they name three things and you have to catch the commonality between the three. So an easy one might be: "Vegetable, motor, and baby", which would be "oils" while a more difficult grouping might be "Jesus, elevator, and George Jefferson" or "great, paper, Jane". The nice thing about these are that they are more difficult to google and often require lateral thinking rather than simply good knowledge of trivia and you can always throw in a nearly impossible one as well as some risque ones depending on your audience.
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Aug 12, 2015 17:11
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Don't include a music round. It can seem like a good idea to introduce some variety but is almost always terrible or at least it is done poorly by the local pub trivia organizer, who plays excerpts from ten songs on speakers of dubious quality and asks who the artist performing the song was. My group has some relatively serious musicians who are familiar with a range of genres and we have never answered more than half of the questions in the music round correctly because the organizer's musical tastes do not overlap with ours.
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Aug 13, 2015 02:54
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If it's a sports bar or a bar with a ton of TV's around, see if you can hook up a laptop. My favorite local pub quiz has a powerpoint that plays along with all the questions showing, which is nice because you don't have to repeat things a million times or spell out words. This also allows for some visual puzzles or "name that movie/tv show/whatever" rounds with screencaps. Put 1 or 2 breaks throughout where you tally up current scores and give everyone a chance to go to the bar or use the bathroom. People like knowing how they're doing so far, and it'll help you to spread out the grading time, rather than doing it all in one go at the end. Another fun thing you can do is have an online trivia question or puzzle (has to be pretty difficult or obscure to prevent easy googling) at the end of each session. Then anyone who comes in to the next trivia session with the answer gets bonus points. Also as someone said, give points/a prize for the best team name.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:12
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I've been to multiple Geeks Who Drink and they usually do a great job. One tip would be to have an assistant to help tally scores, answer team questions, and keep things running smoothly. It is huge for controlling the pace of the game as the person reading the questions isn't trying to decipher a stack of answer sheets.
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Aug 14, 2015 16:37
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