The Golden Cheer

So what, at a quiz night, gets the biggest cheer? Though I will, at the end of this post, give a definitive, cast-iron answer to this, I will provide a little musing and analysis on the subject beforehand.

The loudness of a cheer at the answer to a quiz question is dictated by two important factors 1. How many people are cheering 2. The amount of noise each person is making. Rocket science this, isn’t it?

People cheer if they get something right, so, first of all, you want a question that loads of teams get right. That deals with issue 1. But how much noise will they make? They will make more noise if they are delighted with themselves for getting something right than if they knew they were going to get something right. So that deals with issue 2. It is no good just asking lots of questions that every team is guaranteed to get right and they know instantly they’ve got right – the resulting cheer will be desultory at best.

You want a question, therefore, that most teams will get right, but they won’t be sure until you’ve given the answer that they have right. You want them to have considered more than one option and then chosen the right option. But rather than pure multiple choice questions, where you give them the options, you want teams to have come up with the options themselves. People cheer loudest if they think they might be the only team in the room to have got a question right, but of course the loudest cheer of all comes when every team thinks they are the only team to have got a question right.

Cheers are lovely for a quiz master, as they are for anyone with a microphone, I suppose. [Never having been a rock star, my experience is limited]. I remember at the first corporate quiz I ran in 2006 there were teams cheering answers, and me thinking “Gosh, this actually works. I can do this”. Not only are cheers good for the quiz master’s ego, they are a good gauge of how the quiz is going and the nature of the crowd. In giving the answers to Round 1, I’ll usually have included one guaranteed “big cheer” question (to which the answer is often Antarctica!) and until I’ve heard that, I can’t be entirely sure what kind of night it’s going to be.

There isn’t a formula  – some times the cheer is a bit of a surprise. I have a question at the moment to which the answer is ‘Snakes on a Plane’ and I have no idea why saying that answer sends teams into raptures and makes middle-aged men in suits bang their tables and spill their drinks in delight, but it does. Part of the fun of asking new questions at corporate quizzes is getting that first surprise cheer when testing a question and thinking “That one’s a keeper!”.

Anyway, I said I’d give a definitive, cast-iron answer and i’ll be true to my word. Here’s how it goes. One of my colleagues last week was assisting a “celebrity host” at a big charity quiz (we love doing charity quiz nights, but they can be challenging because of a typically very broad demographic) . This celebrity host is a famous, well-liked, extremely funny (in my opinion), clearly intelligent stand up comedian who is often seen on telly performing to large audiences. Before giving the answer to one question on the music round, my colleague said to him “Just say “And all those songs were UK Number 1s in Ninety Ninety (pause) One” and you will get the biggest reaction you’ve ever seen” “Really?” said the comedian. “Really” said the quiz master. So, he read the answer as instructed, got the expected reaction, and turned to my colleague with a smile on his face.

And that’s how it is. I’ve run hundreds of quizzes, but i know without doubt that the greatest eruption of joy and noise, the golden cheer of the evening, will greet me saying a year with a little pause in the middle.