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Food for Thought 2024

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We’ve written about this before (https://quizquizquiz.com/2015/11/food-for-thought-2/) but, almost 10 years on, I think it’s worth revisiting. We are very lucky and grateful to be looked after at almost all the quizzes we run, and this isn’t intended as a complaint, but as an insight into a side of our work that doesn’t get talked about very much. Some artists (musicians, magicians etc.) have riders in their contract. We have been reluctant to go down this route, partly because it feels too rigid for us, and because a lot of the time, we just get on with it food or not. However, as our business has grown and we have quiz staff to look after, we’ve been more direct in asking about our dinner. If you are an entertainer, we’d love to read your comments about riders and how you handle this issue. Please comment below.

It’s also better for our audience if we have been fed and watered. As David noted in his blog post of 2015: “what most clients realise, but some don’t, is that … how can I put this … we are the most important people there. The whole evening’s success depends on us above all. We’re worth treating well. We’re not rock stars, we don’t have a rider (if I had a rider, it would be samosas … and chocolate hobnobs …) but we are, for that night, a valuable commodity.”

No one wants a hangry quiz host with a rumbling belly and plummeting blood sugar as the main focus and source of fun at their event. We’re holding a microphone and the full attention of the room, and need to be engaging and energetic. It makes sense to look after us so that we can concentrate on doing what we do best: running a brilliant quiz. The quiz staff will often have travelled quite a way to get to the venue, arrived early to set up and have an equally long journey home. They often don’t get much of a break as they need to do marking, fill in scoresheets etc. during the teams’ breaktime and they really, really appreciate it when the non-quiz bits of the evening (food, water etc.) are straightforward. If they are like me, it also stops them from eating an entire bag of Cadbury’s Giant Buttons on the way home.

I’ll take you through some of the common food scenarios we see as professional quiz masters:

  1. The 3-course meal
  2. The sandwich in a back-room
  3. The hotel menu
  4. The buffet
  5. The pub plate
  6. The platter
  7. The BYO
  8. The Nothing
  1. The 3-course meal – We are often booked to host quizzes either at the end of or threaded through the courses of, a full meal (starter, round 1, main course, round 2, pudding, more quiz…). Often, the client adds us to the headcount and we are served along with the participants (sometimes at the quiz table, sometimes at a place setting with the other guests).
  2. The sandwich in a back-room – If a meal is going on, the client sometimes prefers entertainers etc. to eat in a green room and will provide sandwiches or a mini buffet.
  3. The hotel menu – we are sometimes invited to order at the bar whilst we wait to go on stage (we often have to arrive very early for set-up sound checks etc and are due on stage at the end of a meal, so we eat at the bar whilst the teams have their meal in the function room).
  4. The buffet – when there’s a buffet, we hope to be invited to help ourselves. Often our client (understandably) would like us to go up last. Sadly this can mean that we don’t get to eat because by the time the whole room has been up to get their food, the break is over and it’s time for us to get back to work. We love people who bring us food or let us queue-jump!
  5. The pub plate – a main brought to each participant, this almost always results in our getting to eat! Hooray! Except when the venue staff have been asked to bring ours last. Boo! because we then have to get back to work just as it arrives. It’s lovely when we are fed first/early.
  6. The platter – this usually comes in one of two modes: too much food or none at all. If we are given the same platter as the other tables, we often have more food than we can eat but we are delighted because at least we have some. Hooray! If we are given empty plates and asked to go around and grab things from the teams’ platters, we usually go hungry because this is a bit awkward, not least because many teams will jokingly refuse to share food unless we give them answers or extra points in the quiz! Arranging for the quiz staff to have a mini platter or a sandwich is the happy medium here.
  7. The BYO – a lot of PTA quiz organisers avoid costly catering and time-consuming clean-ups by asking their teams to bring their own food. They will usually order/bring something for us, which is lovely and greatly appreciated. Sometimes, they prefer us to sort out our own packed lunches, which is absolutely fine, as long as we know in advance.
  8. The Nothing – very rare, but it does happen from time to time that a client lets us know that there won’t be food for us at the event. This is often for the very good reason that there won’t be food for anyone (the quiz is not at a mealtime); sometimes it’s because we are staff and they haven’t budgeted for it. As long as we know in advance, we can work around it.

On a related note, we do need water/soft drinks as talking for a couple of hours on a mic is thirsty work. I ran a quiz at a school not too long ago where they didn’t provide drink. I asked 3-4 times and they kept saying yes, it was coming. I was running the quiz solo and had no spare time to keep chasing it up. In the end, I decided (having spent two hours driving there and 5 hours at the venue I had finished my own bottle of water) to order some on Deliveroo along with a sandwich and some Giant Buttons! I then timed the next round carefully so that I was asking the final question just as the rider came into the school grounds, ran out, took delivery and then ran back in to accept and mark teams’ answer sheets. Have you ever gone to extreme lengths to get food or drink at an event? Let us know in the comments.

In summary, we’re delighted to be fed at quizzes, it’s not compulsory to feed us, but we really appreciate it if clients let us know if we need to bring our lunchbox. Mine is a Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles one from 1988.

Getting people back to the office through the medium of quiz!

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How can QuizQuizQuiz help you to attract people back to the office?

As companies navigate the return to in-office work, the challenge is not only bringing employees back to the workplace but also ensuring that they are engaged, motivated, and excited about being there. If you’re looking for a way to boost morale and foster collaboration, consider booking QuizQuizQuiz, a professional quiz company renowned for its expertise in creating unforgettable quiz events. Here’s why QuizQuizQuiz is the perfect choice to run an event that encourages people to return to the office.

1. 20 Years’ Experience:

QuizQuizQuiz has been immersed in all things quiz for two decades. With a track record of success and many thousands of quizzes under their collective belts, our experienced team understands how to create engaging and entertaining experiences tailored to your specific needs.

2. Quiz tailored to suit the event and the audience:

Tailoring the quiz to align with your company’s culture, the aims of the event and the people taking part is crucial. We make the quiz inclusive, entertaining and interactive. This means teams have a great time at the event.

3. Expert Hosts:

The success of a quiz event often hinges on the skill of the hosts. QuizQuizQuiz boasts a team of expert quizmasters who are not only knowledgeable but also adept at creating a lively and inclusive atmosphere. Our hosts ensure that the event is fair, fun and fact-filled! We are skilled at matching your company culture and the pace and mood that would best suit the teams.

4. Focus on Team Building and Collaboration:

Quiz events are not just about answering questions; they’re powerful tools for team building. We design quizzes to encourage collaboration, communication, and friendly competition, fostering stronger connections among team members.

5. Flexibility in Event Formats:

QuizQuizQuiz understands that one size does not fit all. We offer a range of event formats, from traditional pub-style quizzes to interactive multimedia experiences. This flexibility ensures that the event aligns seamlessly with your company’s goals and preferences.

7. Effortless Event Planning and Execution:

Planning an event can be a daunting task, but QuizQuizQuiz takes the stress out of the process. From initial consultation to flawless execution, our team handles all aspects of quiz planning, right down to the pens and paper.

8. Enhanced Office Morale and Employee Engagement:

By choosing QuizQuizQuiz, you’re not just organizing a quiz; you’re investing in a morale-boosting experience that employees will remember. An engaging quiz event can instill a sense of excitement, making employees more enthusiastic about being back in the office.

QuizQuizQuiz stands out as the go-to choice for companies seeking to revitalize their office environment through engaging and entertaining quiz events. By booking our services, you’re not only investing in a memorable experience but also creating a positive atmosphere that encourages people to return to the office. Transform your workplace into a hub of excitement with QuizQuizQuiz, where professional excellence meets unparalleled entertainment.

Contact us to find out more – we’re always happy to put you in touch with other clients who have held similar events to yours so that you can hear about the fun they had. We also have our free, weekly Friday and Wednesday email quizzes, which we know are read out as a mini quiz in offices all over the UK and beyond!

What does ChatGPT say makes a good quiz event?

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On a quiet day a while back I was curious about ChatGPT, the AI model at https://chat.openai.com/ and set up a profile. I asked it to create a blog post about running quizzes and setting up a good quiz event. Here is what it produced:

“Hosting corporate quiz events can be a fun and engaging way to bring employees together and boost team morale. These events can also be a great opportunity for businesses to build relationships with clients and partners, and to promote their brand.

If you’re considering hosting a corporate quiz event, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Choose a suitable venue: The venue you choose for your quiz event will depend on the size of your group and the type of atmosphere you want to create. Consider factors such as location, capacity, and amenities when selecting a venue.

Plan the format and content of the quiz: Decide on the format of your quiz, such as a traditional quiz with multiple rounds or a more casual trivia night. You’ll also need to determine the content of the quiz, such as the categories and difficulty level. You may want to include a mix of general knowledge and industry-specific questions to appeal to a wide audience.

Organize the logistics: Once you have a venue and quiz format in place, you’ll need to take care of the logistics of the event. This may include booking catering, organizing prizes, and creating promotional materials.

Promote the event: To ensure a good turnout, it’s important to promote your quiz event to your target audience. This may include sending out invitations, promoting the event on social media, and creating flyers or other promotional materials.

Have fun: The most important thing is to have fun! A corporate quiz event is a chance to relax, bond, and have a good time with colleagues and clients. Encourage friendly competition and make sure to reward the winners with prizes or other incentives.

By following these tips, you can host a successful and enjoyable corporate quiz event that will bring people together and strengthen relationships.”

We think that’s covered most of the key points. Obviously we’d add: remember to book QuizQuizQuiz! What do you think? Has Chat GPT nailed the basics? What does GPT stand for and why hasn’t it come up at my local pub quiz yet?

First Hand Experience of Question Difficulty

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This is a follow-up to the last post – I want to expand on how the different aspects of our work fit together. (These two strands are hosted quiz nights and quiz question writing for TV shows, games, iPhone apps etc.)

Those have always been the two main areas of our business – over the years the hosted quizzes have taken the lead, certainly they’ve been more consistent. The question writing side obviously depends a little more on what comes along. I mean, we’re always writing questions, but we’re not always working on a major commission – more like bits and bobs here and there.

In the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of really good question writing work, so much so that there has been less time for our main question writers to run quizzes.

Yet, the experience of hosting quizzes is vital, I think, to our writing questions successfully.

I’ve run over 400 quizzes for people all over this country and occasionally overseas, for people of all ages, in different industries, for different purposes. I’ve asked questions on every topic that makes a good quiz question and a few that don’t.

And I get to see, first hand, how those questions go down. I get to see what people know and don’t know, what they’re proud to know and what they don’t care about knowing, what’s workoutable and what’s not.

And because our quizzes are for different clients, we get to re-use questions, so we know whether a response, positive or negative, is a one-off or not.

And that’s just me – between us, as a company, we’ve run over 3000 quizzes, and we ask our clients and our quiz masters to feed back on every event. So, we know very well if a question is a big hit or not.

This gives us a vital edge when it comes to question writing for TV, we think. To us, calibration, alongside entertainment, is more than guesswork. We have evidence to back up the fact that we know how to set quizzes, to write questions that people want to participate in and puzzle over.

It’s not just the hosted quizzes, either. There’s also the Friday Quiz, which started in 2008 and now goes out to thousands of people a week. Every week, I look at how people have done, how many people have bothered trying to answer each question, how many have got it right. This is vital information to understanding what people do and don’t know.

Anyone can reasonably think they’re an expert in quizzes, anyone who writes questions, participates in a lot, watches a lot, but we think our combined experience puts us in a privileged position. You’re left with egg on your face if you think you always know exactly how a question is going to be answered, but the numbers work themselves out.

We see hundreds, if not thousands, of people answering our questions. Most question writers only ever see one or two people answering questions they write, so they get very skewed calibration feedback.

We tell our quiz masters, when they run quizzes, that the right level involves the worst team not slipping much below 50% and the best team not getting above 90% – an ideal spread is between about 60% and 85%. And that’s what happens. Almost every time.

It’s not a naturally easy thing – the first round I ever set, which I was terribly proud of, the scores ranged between 6 and 11 out of 20. It was a disaster. The questions, in and of themselves, were mainly interesting enough, but they were all at the harder end of the scale, some of them weren’t possible to work out. Despite my love for quizzes and my concern for getting it right, I didn’t yet have the first-hand experience of getting the overall level right.

So, this is what we do. We host quizzes and we write questions. They feed into each other. Every question I’ve ever written and every question I’ve ever asked and seen answered feeds into how I write now.

Questions about Ed Balls

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When a blog falls silent, it’s usually either a good or bad sign. Thankfully, in this case, it’s the former. We’ve been BusyBusyBusy rather than QuietQuietQuiet (sorry, that’s terrible …).

I’ve been writing, rather than hosting, a lot – almost exclusively. in fact. This blog has had three main purposes since it began – 1. (being honest) to help bring traffic to our website 2. to provide specific information on our quiz nights for our clients and 3. to just be informative and a bit of fun while being a bit of an authority on all things quiz.

A lot of my posts over the last few years have been about the joys and pitfalls of running quiz nights, and, as I say, they’ve served as places to point a client about the way our quizzes work. Until last week, though, I hadn’t run a quiz for about 9 months, so I just didn’t feel inspired to be writing all that much about quiz nights (as well as the fact I’ve written over 100 previous posts and I’d run the risk of repeating myself).

The writing work has been good – interesting, creative, exactly the kind of work we want to be doing. For me, it’s also often quite solitary, and a world away from the quiz nights. The atmosphere at quiz nights varies, but they do very often turn into loud and raucous mass participation events, which appear to be barely on the edge of control (though in reality we are always in control!). The best ones do, anyway.

For the last year, though, I’ve more often been in my special sound-proof QuizQuizQuiz shed trying to construct quiz questions/rounds/shows as if they’re haikus hewn from the very core of language and knowledge. Who knows, maybe sometimes they are …

Anyway, what’s my point? (I’m out of practice at writing blogs with a point.) Just that it’s a big quiz world and getting bigger. Gosh, some of those quizzers are turning into rock stars, as this rather good  documentary http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084fs6s claimed. Even our own director, Jack, has been on the radio talking about the whole quiz thing (among other things) on ‘The Museum of Curiosity‘. It’s a broad church.

For me, as a quiz writer, the essence is now boiled down to knowing what people know. I’m good at that now. Whichever people, in whatever setting, whether online, on a TV show, in a room, in a pub, that’s a skill I’ve got. It’s far from faultless, though. There’s as much joy in someone unexpectedly knowing something you thought would stump them, as there is despair in people using neither knowledge nor knowhow, and failing miserably when you least expect it.

Quizzes should always reward knowledge and knowhow – it’s a bit of a shame when people apply good reasoning to a question and still get it wrong. That applies to any quiz situation.

For some reason, this year, I’ve written a lot of questions, often in completely different contexts, about Ed Balls. Currently no man alive lends themselves better to slightly comical quiz questions. Thank you Ed Balls. And as my own little tribute to Ed Balls Day … Ed Balls.

I ran a quiz last week – a big old quiz for 200 people in a bar in London – an old routine I’d fallen out of but thankfully fell back into pretty quickly. My joy for the last year has been applying a fair bit of science and a little bit of art to question writing, initially on my own, then in close, limited collaboration. However, last week I remembered the joy of playing ‘Sound of da Police’ at high volume to a room full of tipsy but fiercely competitive business-folk, and, of course, I remembered the age-old rush of saying “And the year when they were all Number 1 is Nineteen …. ninety ……………. nine”

The best quiz you’ve ever been to

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When I first became a quiz master for QuizQuizQuiz, almost ten years ago, I remember Jack, David and Lesley-Anne,  the company’s founders, all telling me independently that even though I’d just started, this, the first quiz that I was going to run might well be the best quiz night that most of the people attending had ever been to.

Not so bold a claim as it might first appear – notwithstanding that it might just be the first quiz night some people at our corporate events had ever been to, it might well have been that many attendees had previously encountered only run-of-the-mill pub quizzes, with 50 lifeless questions rattled through for a tenner, and we could be entirely confident, 10 years ago, that the material, the care, the thought, the variety of our quizzes was at a higher level than most people had ever encountered before.

Can we still be so sure of this? No, probably not. The world of quizzes has moved on (we’d like to think, following our lead). There are many more companies and individuals who claim to run high end quiz nights, there is wider availability and understanding of the kind of technology that can spruce up a quiz. There’s a good chance that plenty of the participants at one our of quiz nights have been to some pretty good quizzes before. Furthermore, so many of our quizzes our for repeat clients, who book us again and again, that an awful lot of people at an awful lot of the quizzes we run have been to a number of marvellous QuizQuizQuiz quizzes before. The quizzes where you’d get a buzz of excitement just from unveiling a fancy image on a screen are few and far between.

Can we really keep on exceeding ourselves? Well, we can try. It’s still important to go into every quiz thinking that it might be/can be the best quiz that some participants have ever been to, that it might stoke a dormant passion for quizzes in someone. When you’ve run several hundred quizzes, you may not find that every quiz you run is the most exciting and brilliant that you yourself have ever been to, you may encounter different obstacles, different crowds, different timings which make it easier or harder to run the ideal quiz, but there’s still a very good chance that if we keep on writing questions with care, innovating with round formats, devising new ways to engage people at every level, creating new audio and visual material, reconsidering the best ways to organise and compere quiz nights, it will be the best quiz lots of people in attendance have ever been to.

Too Easy/Too Hard

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I recently recalled the first round of quiz questions that I ever set for QuizQuizQuiz.

It was March 2006, I’d been given a job with the company, I was full of myself and raring to go. I’d already run a couple of quiz nights, which I hadn’t written the questions for. I’d been given some rounds to write for our two weekly pub quizzes (now dormant) in Putney and Hammersmith.

I wrote various questions for various rounds and was assigned the 20 question Jackpot rounds for both quizzes. Excited to see how they went down, I was at the Fox in Putney on Monday night, not as quiz master, but as marker.

I had form with this quiz. In fact, I’d participated in it very successfully for several months – that’s how I got the job. It was a very high standard quiz and the jackpot round was, deliberately, the hardest round. Teams had to score a minimum of 17/20 to have a chance of the money. I knew the target audience, I knew how to pitch it, I thought.

Now, bear in mind, as someone who loved quiz nights, this was my blank slate. They often say about first and second albums that the first is full of the songs the artist has been perfecting their whole life, while the second is something they only have a few stolen months to write. Well, this was my first album, these were my questions, the best I had.

9/20 was the highest score. The quiz had been, as every week, buzzing at the usual expertise of the QuizQuizQuiz quiz master, it was at fever pitch for the culmination, the jackpot round. And my round killed it stone dead. Puzzled looks and shrugs, shouts of “it’s too hard”, “I don’t get it”. I was a little bit crushed.

I’m just looking at the round now on our database. Any gems? A couple, but yes it’s far far too hard, and there are quite a few ambiguous questions – the subject matter is a showy-offy display of my own interests – Scottish indie pop, linguistics, philosophers, 60s athletics and rock music, Medieval history, Art pranksters, ancient Greek, 90s comedy, old radio adverts, Pubs and Beer, African politics, cricket-playing Irish playwrights. I didn’t realise the extent to which my history was not shared history.

I should have, I had no excuse. I’d been to the quiz night for months. But I got it totally wrong.

I still get it wrong occasionally. I ran a corporate quiz with entirely new questions last month and slightly misjudged the first round so that scores ranged from 5 to 9 out of 12 rather than a preferred 7 to 11. I quickly adjusted the difficulty for the rest of the quiz.

Judging the difficulty of quizzes is something anyone can get wrong. People’s gauge is based on what they themselves know and don’t know. To some quiz masters, difficulty may not be that important if they think the questions are interesting enough, but it ought to be.

After 10 years of doing this, we’re now very good at gauging difficulty. We’ve seen 10s of 1000s of questions, we get statistics on how well they’re answered. We’ve turned it into a little bit of science.

It’s still not perfect, as the example of my recent opening quiz round shows. I thought the crowd would know a little more than they did. They were untested questions. But such instances of small misjudgement are pretty rare.

Despite the misadventure of the first round I ever set, I now have a confidence bordering on bullishness in the suitability of my quiz rounds. I have not written a round since where the highest score was less than 50% (well, not without intention and very good reason!)

 

Saying No

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During the planning stage of every quiz night we host, we send our client a full questionnaire asking for a range of information on every aspect of the event – we’ve honed it over the years, and we’ve got pretty much everything covered. We want to know as much as possible about who is taking part in our quiz night and why – we want to give every different company/school/charity/party/department/individual exactly the right quiz for them. That’s what we think makes us good at our job.

Another thing that makes us good at our job is that, on any given night, we can adapt. There are way more teams? Fine. You need two extra rounds? Fine. Dinner’s early? No problem. You’ve just told us that there’s a whole team made up of Slovenian tailors? OK, we can make that work.

We can change, we can adapt, our attitude is never “this is the only way we do it and we’ve got to stick to that” or “sorry, that’s more than my job’s worth …”

but …

There is a fine art to saying no … sometimes …

That’s why we have the questionnaire. We, as quiz experts, people who have run thousands of successful quiz nights, want to know what you want from your event, whether its team building, networking, fundraising or just a good drinking session punctuated with a few questions, and we’ll help you to make that as good as we can. Through back and forth before the quiz, we’ll iron out any logistical issues, any ideas that may be impractical, we’ll be set up and ready to go.

And, on the night, we can certainly be flexible, but our quiz masters know that there is a point where it is better to, as politely as possible, say no. If everything is set, there are five minutes to go until the quiz, and someone of uncertain seniority approaches us to tell us that there must be jokers, there must be bonus points for funny answers, anyone suspected of using their phones should be summarily ejected from the venue, they want to take the mic(or indeed take the mick) and run a round on squid, we are prepared to say “I’m sorry, we won’t be doing that. It’s not going to help the quiz run well”. It happens very rarely, that’s why we’ve got the questionnaire, and we really are amenable and flexible to a lot of last-minute requests on the night, but I hope our clients trust us that we have an understanding of what will compromise the quality of a quiz.

So, yes, strange as it may sound, sometimes the very best thing we can do on a quiz night is say no.

Running Quiz Nights

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I’ve run quite a few quiz nights recently, and they’ve all gone smoothly. It’s not for me to judge if everyone there had the best time of their lives (I expect they did!) but there were lots of smiles and cheers and nice comments at the end. Very pleasing, and what I’ve also noticed is that there hasn’t been a single “issue” to deal with, no connectivity problems to sort out, no awkward room spaces, no accusations of cheating or changes in timetable, nothing like that.

Tempting fate I know, but pretty much every quiz night I’ve run this year has gone exactly according to plan. If they didn’t go swimmingly (which I think they did) it would have been no one’s fault but my own.

Is that preferable? Yes, pretty much. Having said that, it can be very satisfying to triumph against the odds, to deal with tricky situations and run the best quizzes we can. Quiz nights like those I’ve run recently are basically as easy as they look , but quite often it’s rather thrilling to keep everything looking controlled and easy while working extremely hard, just beneath the surface.

That, above all, is what being a QuizQuizQuiz Quiz Master is all about – if something goes wrong, being able to cover it so no one notices that anything has gone wrong. I remember, nine years ago, at one of the very first events where I was a professional quiz master, doing a full sound and visual check at a hotel conference room, then leaving the room for a work presentation, only to come back and find that there was no audio feed from my laptop and no one could figure out why. I managed to just run the best quiz I could with a complete change of questions, emphasis on visuals and interactivity and none of the participants were any the wiser. One thing I was told very early on, which we’re proud to say is still true, is that, whatever problems I have to deal with, it’s still going to be the best quiz most of our clients have ever been to. We really think that. In fact we know it.

So, sometimes, I have a run of quizzes which go completely without a hitch. The timings are spot on, the teams are smart, polite, cheerful, well-organised, the room is the right size, the sound is crystal clear, the food is good, the angels are singing etc …some time soon, the food will come out late, there’ll be 5 more teams than we were told, there’ll be a team made up entirely of people who don’t speak English, the mic i’ve been provided with will cut out, it happens … and it’s still a great quiz night, in fact sometimes even better than it would have been. And those are the ones which are often the most memorable of all for a quiz master.

World of Quiz

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Quizzes seem to be everywhere at the moment. There’s a new show I’ve seen advertised on Sky (I haven’t watched it, I confess) called Quiz Nights, which seems to take a structured look at pub quiz nights around the country, there are the ever-intensifying knockout stages of UC and OC on a Monday evening for a small but significant demographic to get excited about, there’s the chap from The Apprentice introducing a larger demographic to the very notion that a quiz company is an actual thing that exists (We briefly considered changing our slogan to ‘QuizQuizQuiz: it’s a thing’ as a consequence – catchy, eh?), and, of course, there’s my day-to-day working existence, which gives me the false impression that everything, everywhere is about quizzes … so maybe quizzes aren’t everywhere at the moment …

But … there is a big and expanding world of quiz, isn’t there? In the nine years I’ve been doing this, I’ve seen more and more quiz companies springing up, more and more people who are interested and have some background understanding of what I do, more and more subscribers to the famous QuizQuizQuiz Friday Quiz, and, if I’m not mistaken, more and more TV shows where the quiz itself is the essence, rather than the prize or the catchphrases.

Here at QuizQuizQuiz, we try to stay across the whole world of quiz as best as we can. Obviously, we’ve got our particular areas when it comes to the cold hard business of it all. We run corporate quizzes, event quizzes, quizzes for limited groups. We write questions … for our own quizzes and for people who pay us to do it. Those are our areas of business and so sometimes we’re entirely focused on them, rather than all the other areas of quizzing e.g. standard pub quiz nights, competitive high-level quizzing, ideas for new quiz show formats, TV quizzing (mainly) etc. That’s not to say that members of our team don’t partake of all the above or that we’re against going into those worlds, it’s just that, for the most part, we concentrate on our core business.

It’s nice, though, when we do things which cross over into the wider world of quizzing. Nothing I’ve ever done has elicited as much admiration and interest as the mere mention that we contribute questions to Only Connect (indeed, that my name’s in the credits). It’s nice sometimes to be asked to assist with other people’s ideas for TV quizzes or major quiz events, whether in a small or large way. Over time, we’ve built up a pretty good range of experience and expertise. I think we know pretty well what makes a good quiz, and that knowledge is transferable across a range of contexts.

It is a big world, quizzing. Sometimes I’ll be surprised to hear about companies or events that I never knew existed. Often, I’ll come across new shows, new ideas, new players in the game.

Quizzing occupies a slightly awkward place, though, where it’s not really looked upon seriously by the wider world as a sport, or as an art form, or expected to be a major commercial enterprise. It’s not that far away from being all three. Let it be what it is, many would say – a diversion, a once a month pleasure with a few pints, a once-a-week half hour shouting at the TV. “Trivia?” That’s the word, spoken with gentle contempt by some hard-working professional that wounds me most when I say what I do for a living. Well, not to me, no, quizzing’s not trivial.