Making quizzes work for a mixed audience

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This is a guest post by veteran QuizQuizQuiz QuizMaster Barry Bridges. 

I’ve been inspired to put pen to paper (or should that be finger to keyboard?) following a quiz that I ran last night which involved a very challenging, complicated audience.

They weren’t challenging because they were loud, rude or rowdy – far from it – but instead the difficulty came from the fact that within the small group of participants sat some of the very top names from within the British judiciary, including a number of high court judges. It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated.

As a general rule, if I ever want to make a quiz more difficult I tend to push the questions into a higher-brow direction. Last night was the first quiz I have run in nearly 9 years where to make the questions more challenging I skewed them towards a low-brow, popular culture direction.

All of which leads me to ask the semi-rhetorical question: how do you handle audiences which have a very disparate mix of abilities, cultural references and where the standard of general knowledge is very high? I’d like to share my thoughts.

First off, I’m a firm believer that quizzes need to be inclusive. One approach I am not keen on is making some questions appeal to one part of the audience and other questions appeal to others: for me that  that doesn’t work as I think we want people to participate in the whole quiz; not for it to feel like there are several mini-quizzes taking place at the same time. Additionally, if you’re cherry-picking questions to cater for specific sub-audiences, the quiz doesn’t scan well; easier questions alienate brainboxes as much as intellectual questions put off the man-on-the-street.

A key part of how I like to make mixed groups work is to include questions which are very much outside of everyone’s immediate frame of reference, which require a problem-solving element. For example, Call My Bluff-type questions work well, as do questions that might ask people to place locations on the map that you’ve heard of, but might not know the position of.

Around this, I would argue that you shouldn’t be afraid of popular culture: it’s a great leveller. Often, I’ve found that the more high-brow the audience is, the more they like to be indulged with a question on Eastenders, or teased with a clip of Kylie and Jason. I’m convinced by my own theory that even the greatest intellectual snobs secretly like to switch on X Factor when no-one is looking.

When all is said and done though, what happens if – despite all your attempts – you genuinely cannot reconcile a group of very different abilities? When one team is streaks ahead of the rest, or when one team is proving to be a rather tragic lantern rouge? I think there are two ways of addressing this.

The first one – although drastic – is to put a group out of their misery. Although cheating is most definitely not allowed (and we’re pretty good at spotting it if someone does try to bend the rules) I don’t feel there is any harm in giving a bit of additional support to a team that is languishing miles behind everyone else, provided it’s done with good intentions and in the knowledge that no number of clues will ever catapult them onto the metaphorical podium (although I would caveat this by saying that if a quiz has a wooden spoon prize, we would never deprive a genuinely badly-performing team with the chance to come away as the ‘loser’!).

The second one is to play up to the worst team’s lack of knowledge and showcase this in front of others. You would be surprised just how proud some people are of their lack of general knowledge; it’s a great talking point within the office and 9 times out of 10 the team in last place has a company-wide reputation for troublemaking and hi-jinks. Sometimes, the more you highlight their woeful performance, the more they feel involved (and – ironically – the more teams sometimes try to compete for the last place position).

So, in summary, catering for a mixed crowd can be difficult. You never want a walkover, but at QuizQuizQuiz I’m very careful to structure the quiz and question-order to provide a varied, balanced data of cerebral interrogation which caters to everyone in some form. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, but hopefully I please all of the people most of the time, which is the next best thing.

What’s a Corporate Quiz like?

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We write a lot in this blog about Corporate Quizzes and Company Quiz Nights, and I realise it may not always be entirely clear what that is, and in and of itself, it may even be rather a forbidding term. Visions of people in suits being questioned on tax in near silence, perhaps.

But, in truth, our corporate quiz nights come in many different shapes and sizes. We are very happy to fit in to our client’s vision for the evening (and often we help them shape their vision), however formal or informal, however grand or relaxed.

So, what does a corporate quiz look like? Well, frankly, quite often, it looks exactly like a pub quiz. It takes place in a pub, with teams huddled together round tables, relaxing after work. There are pints, there are crisps, there are goujons and little sausages, there are people popping out for a fag: you get the idea.

And is the substance of this quiz much different from a pub quiz? Well, no, not necessarily. We use similar rounds to those we have used with great success in pub quizzes, we employ a mixture of topics and styles. There’ll be more music and visual questions than the standard pub quiz, there may even be a few fancy gadgets you wouldn’t ordinarily see, but generally, nothing immediately, wildly different. Just better.

Of course, sometimes our “corporate quizzes” are a little more corporate, whether they’re in an auditorium within a company’s headquarters, or a large conference room in a smart hotel. Sometimes the dress code is strictly business and there are elegant waiters walking round dispensing fine wines.

And sometimes, our clients may want to make their quizzes more company-specific by asking us to include questions about their company or their line of work. Experience has told us that this is very rarely a good idea, but we will find ways to make it work if needs be.

Why do we tend to persuade clients against including company questions?

– usually, people are trying to get away from work and relax at quiz nights.

– sometimes, questions about the company are good-naturedly booed, which is not great for company morale, I imagine. It can certainly dampen the atmosphere.

– Sometimes, people supply the questions themselves, which has one advantage, that they know the company better than us. But as they are not written by professional quiz writers, they are not going to be of the right quality, nor can we verify their veracity, nor can we judge whether they are at the right difficulty, or whether they are going to be facile for some parts of the company and impossible for others.

– If we write them ourselves, well, it is a rare occasion where we know the subject matter less intimately than the participants, however well we research the questions.

– How can I put this, and we mean this as no insult to anyone’s business, these questions are just usually a little … dull, compared to good pub quiz questions.

– Sometimes, the company questions are more personal and light-hearted, along the lines of “What football team does Geoff support?” “Who once snogged Jimmy from 911”? Though these can be fun, they are often full of errors, a little divisive and can be embarrassing for all concerned.

Once in a blue moon, someone from within a company comes up with some nice neat clever interesting questions related to their company, and we then try to headhunt them …but, honestly, I can only think of about twice in seven years where a quiz I’ve run has been enhanced by company-based questions.

So, to get back to the question, what’s a corporate quiz like? Well, usually, not that corporate. It will be clever, well-judged, well-balanced, classy if that’s what’s asked (without sacrificing how much fun it is), raucous and silly, or indeed anything else if that’s what is right for our client.

 

All Quiz Nights are Boring!

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Aren’t they?

So they often need a bit of livening up with a bit of extra fun, like karaoke, a dancing hedgehog, making foil animals, dressing up as pirates, a mariachi band, an egg and spoon race, swapping teams, anything to keep people “engaged”.Quiz Night Hedgehog

Or that can be what people think if they’ve been to one too many slightly dull quiz nights where the questions were on the quizmaster’s favourite topic, and read out one after the other monotonously before the 30 minute wait at the end for the answers and the scores.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen all the above extra activities at quizzes I’ve run (and a lot more) and sometimes they can be a hoot, if they’re well organised, well coordinated, the atmosphere is good. But do I, fundamentally, think a good quiz night needs them, that the evenings were “enhanced” by them? Well, to be honest, no (apart, I admit, from the dancing hedgehog, which was amazing!). And quite often, indeed significantly more often, the very opposite. Evenings where the pudding is overegged, where too many cooks might spoil the broth, are a recipe for disaster (yes, I just wrote that ridiculous sentence, and I’m sticking with it).

I know, quiz nights aren’t everyone’s cup of tea (can I not escape from the food and drink theme today …). Quite often, I see people wandering in to the quiz, moaning a little good-naturedly – “Oh no, I’m terrible at quizzes”; “Oh no I don’t know any pop culture”; “I hope it’s not too hard”; “Remember the last quiz when Steve made it all about golf!”. And it is quite often on the back of Steve’s slightly underwhelming quiz on a heavy golf theme that QuizQuizQuiz is called in, as it’s decided that it’s probably worth seeing what the professionals can do.

And we deliver. I believe. Our quizzes are not boring, they’re anything but. The fun and excitement comes not because of forfeits or dressing up as jockeys or silly prizes, but because we genuinely know how to make a quiz exceptionally fun and everything but boring. Our quiz nights have really good quiz questions, quizmasters who know what they are doing and are knowledgeable and engaging. Our quizzes are fair, not dragged down by “dead air”, and everything rattles along at a good pace. There is something for everyone, even the person who thinks they’re rubbish at quizzes, because we explain what’s going on all the way through, because we have questions which involve music, interesting visual cues, and unusual and surprising thought processes. And we have all sorts of tricks up our sleeves according to what we think will suit the quiz night in question.

When I run a quiz, I don’t look out and see people looking bored – they look attentive, sometimes fiercely engaged with their team mates, sometimes delighted, sometimes furious with themselves. They sing along (who needs karaoke, and don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of karaoke) sometimes they even dance, they find themselves involuntarily performing actions relating to questions, and they cheer along.

That’s what quiz nights can be like – both competition and celebration, and really, anything but boring; that is, when they are done properly. If not, then wheel out the dancing hedgehog.

Corporate Quiz vs Pub Quiz

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We’re finally drawing to the end of our busiest quiz season, when our team of quiz masters run quiz night after quiz night – themed quizzes, Christmas party quiz nights, wedding anniversary quizzes, intern quizzes, school quiz evenings – anything people ask for. What we haven’t done much of late is run straight up pub quizzes, and so I’m going to write a little bit about the difference between corporate quiz nights and pub quiz nights.

QuizQuizQuiz has, at different times, run regular quiz nights at five different pubs, most notably for several years at the Fox in Putney and the OSP in Fulham, then later the Normanby, also in Putney. Great fun, halcyon days – we tried to take the same perfectionist approach to our pub quizzes as we do to our company quiz nights, tried to make each one an “event”. Since I first encountered QuizQuizQuiz as a participant in the Fox quiz, I’m well qualified to comment on the excellence of the QQQ pub quiz experience!

But, of course, there are big differences between a pub quiz night and a corporate quiz night. I imagine, of those of you reading who have run or participated in quiz nights, the vast majority have been pub quizzes. So, it is worth going through the main differences between the two.

[There are some corporate quiz events which are absolutely nothing like your standard pub quiz – there’ll be keypads, or particular themed rounds, there’ll be fancy meals, mariarchi bands, huge screens, dressing up contests, there’ll be jellybeans, buzzers, flying monkeys, the lot … however, most of our quiz nights are very deliberately similar to a classic pub quiz – it’s those two I’ll compare, the “standard” pub quiz (no doubt quizmasters up and down the land bristle at their event being described as standard, and rightly so) and the “standard” corporate quiz].

Similarities

1. Players are in teams, usually of between 4 and 8. Teams think of their own names – one of them is called Quiz Team Aguilera

2. Questions are in the sphere of general knowledge – entertainment, music, sport, general stuff

3. Paper and pens are used

4. Rounds are marked and there is a winning team which wins a prize

5. They often (though not always) take place in a pub

6. There is, usually, a demon team who everyone boos and are too good!

7. People eat, drink and have a good time

Differences

1. A corporate quiz is a one-off event, rather than part of a weekly/monthly series. Consequently, there doesn’t have to be the same rapid turnover of questions –  a quiz master can select his/her questions carefully for the specific event.

2. Importantly (for QuizQuizQuiz at least), the above means that we can adapt the quiz as we go along, the questions are not set in stone in the way that they must inevitably be for a pub quiz. [A minor point developing from that is that there can be fewer current affairs questions at a corporate event]

3. Following on from that, at a corporate event, you usually know who is coming beforehand (in terms of numbers/demographic etc) and can prepare accordingly. This is kind of true for a pub quiz, but it is, of course, open to anyone.

4. People all work for the same company, or have some connection in those terms. Friendly rivalries can be developed and played upon.

5. [Perhaps the key difference] At a corporate quiz, not everyone is there of their own volition. Indeed, sometimes they don’t even know there is a quiz coming. They may hate quizzes and it may be a horrible surprise and they may only want to go home. You have to cater for that and give those people an enjoyable evening. Pub quizzes are for people who like quizzes, often people who are very good at quizzes. This is not so much the case at corporate events and you have to tailor the questions accordingly.

6. It is, however relaxed it may or may not be, still a work environment. There are positive and negatives to that.

7. Equally, at least, at a corporate event, there is no one there who is not there for the quiz, who is nattering away in the corner and entirely uninterested in what you’re saying.

8. Again, a very key point. At a corporate quiz night, the crowd could well be much more varied in terms of nationality, understanding of quizzes, range of knowledge. Having said that, in a different way, at certain events (and because everyone works for the same company) it might be much less varied. Basically, the key point here is that there will be more non-British people, and that has a big effect on the questions asked.

9. The drink is often free …

10. A corporate event has a higher all-round budget, so there’ll be more technology available. There is more of an onus, therefore, on professionalism and smoothness and on keeping people focused. Like it or not, it is a little more of a “show”.

11. The prize is usually not money, usually not a “stake” that people have put in [champagne and perhaps a trophy a standard example]. I don’t know exactly what, but I think that makes a bit of a difference to the fervour with which people compete to be the champions.

At different events, there are loads more differences, but what I’ve done is highlight the differences between a pub quiz and a corporate event which is most “similar” to a pub quiz. The main things, from a quiz master’s perspective, I’d say, are being able to select your questions carefully, having flexibility, and the fact that it is not an audience who necessarily enjoy quizzes.

Have any of you had experiences of both? Can a corporate quiz event capture the best qualities of a pub quiz?

The Professional Pub Quiz Night

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When people ask me what our company quiz nights are like, they’ll often ask “Are they like pub quizzes, or different?” and generally I’d say, yes, basically, it’s a pub quiz night, but better than other pub quiz nights you’ve been to.

Don’t get me wrong – we are innovative, we do use clever technology in clever ways (keypads, buzzers etc.) and we have loads of fresh quiz ideas to give the companies who want a quiz night from us something they’ve never seen before. We can run a quiz night on anything under the sun (there’ll be a blog post on Themed Quizzes coming up quite soon) but equally we, and our clients, are generally most happy (because it works best) running a “classic” pub quiz night in something like the traditional format with pens and papers and rounds and scores and all the usual stuff (but no jokers…!)

So, you might ask, if that’s what you do, just a plain old pub quiz night, why should we pay you to do it rather than do it ourselves?

A few simple reasons – it takes away the hassle, it means everyone can take part, it gets rid of any accusations of bias. Even if you have someone really capable in your company, who loves pub quizzes, and would make a good quizmaster, these are still issues.

But, more importantly and straightforwardly, our quiz night will just be better. It will be smoother, more fun, more inclusive, less likely to contain mistakes, it will run to time, it will be surprising, comical, entertaining, competitive, relaxing: everything that you hope a work night out will be. We take being professional quiz masters seriously and offer the sorts of guarantee that you just don’t get if it is run by someone within your company. Cost is also a factor – the cost in terms of lost productivity if a colleague prepares the quiz night is probably not that different from the cost in actual terms that we charge for the quiz event as a whole.

It starts with the quiz questions which have been carefully crafted, checked, edited, narrowed down, tried and tested. We’re not just trying out questions off the top of our head on subjects which interest us, we’ve got a huge database of questions which have been thought through, ranked, rated and discussed, and we’ll ask you the most suitable for your pub quiz night. We’ll ask questions that appeal to your group, and any sub-groups within that.

We’ll provide the right professional quiz master and the right additional staff to make sure that the evening keeps ticking over, to make sure it’s time well spent for everybody rather than just a few hours after work you’d much rather be at home for!

At the end of a company quiz night, people invariably come up to and say: “I go to a lot of pub quizzes, but that was the best quiz night I’ve ever been to.” That’s great – but preaching to the converted is relatively easy. We know that a pub quiz night is not everybody’s choice of a night out.  The number of people who come up to us after our quiz and say something like “I don’t usually go to pub quizzes, I don’t enjoy them, but this was totally different, I loved it” is really the best justification for what we do.