Always read the questions

I’ve been to two pub quizzes in the last week, and at both I’ve experienced a regular irritation: the quiz master not having written the questions (fine – perfectly normal) but not having taken the trouble to read through them to be sure he understood them all first.

As a result, you get a quiz master saying things like “I have no idea what this is about” …or “that’s all it says here I’m afraid”, and this diminishes his authority and has the potential to lessen the enjoyment of the quiz for the participants.

So quiz master tip of the week is: if you haven’t written the questions yourself, then always always read through them beforehand just in case there is anything that you don’t understand. (I have this problem with some modern pop music questions). Any you don’t understand, you can look them up, or even replace them with something you do understand. Doesn’t take more then 10-15 minutes, but can save a lot of pain on the night.

What are your top tips for quiz masters?

6 replies
    • admin
      admin says:

      At a regular pub quiz we used to run, the crowd gradually caught on to my ignorance of pop music. I played along once by deliberately (yes, it was deliberate) mis-pronouncing the “group” 911 as 9/11. Oh what fun you can have as a quiz master.

      Reply
  1. @LatTat
    @LatTat says:

    Amateur quiz masters who quickly decide that a question’s too hard and so give away a cheap clue to the entire room — it’s not on! This happened recently with the question “What shape is DNA?” — a pretty good sheep/goat sorter-outer.

    So top tip to QMs: if you’re met with a room of blank faces and tempted to give a clue, ask first if any team doesn’t want a clue. There may be a small outcrop of knowledgeability in the morass of ignorance — which could quickly become a very indignant and hostile outcrop if its legitimate advantage in having particular expertise is arbitrarily and cheaply neutralised. #stillangry

    Reply
  2. admin
    admin says:

    Very good point @LatTat. If a quiz master can determine what the level of knowledge is by asking if any teams want a clue, then the qm could be in a position to give a bigger/smaller clue.

    Reply
  3. @LatTat
    @LatTat says:

    Oh yeah, and QMs who go a bit improv and decide to give an extra point for things which happen to be their pet topic. E.g., a QM might ask a question about which film won a Best Picture Oscar in a particular year, but then (because he happens to be a film buff) tack on an extra point “if you can tell me who directed it”. Purlease. The questions have (hopefully) been engineered for optimal spread of topics and point-distribution. Top tip: stick to the script! #makingmyselfevenangrierjustthinkingaboutthisstuff

    Reply
  4. MHA
    MHA says:

    I remember a pub quiz in which a rather young compere tried with great difficulty to ask a question about a musical which he could only pronounce as ‘Giggy’ (he meant, of course, Gigi). The fact that he was the only person in the room who’d never heard of it (as you could tell from the universal embarrassed giggles) rather detracted from the authority of his position as the person who was supposed to know things the contestants might not, rather than the other way around.

    I find QMs who rush through the questions too quickly a little irritating, but my biggest bugbear relates to how they reveal the final results. In one quiz I attended, the compere simply asked all the questions, then took in the answersheets, and after a pause for marking, announced the winner – having not even given the answers, never mind some clues as to who might or not be in the frame. It was hard to envisage a more anti-climactic conclusion to a quiz.

    Reply

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