Presenting Your Quiz Night

COVID-19 UPDATE

In the absence of traditional trivia nights our lives do not have to be completely trivia-less. Check out QuizNightHQ’s guide to Isolation Trivia + Games. It contains plenty of ideas to get your friends, family and workplaces engaged in an online quiz night or online video fun.

Contents

This is your guide to presenting an engaging quiz with visual and audio trivia.

  1. Video and Audio
  2. Proofread Your Questions
  3. Software
    • Keynote
    • PowerPoint
    • Google Slides
  4. Keep Your Audience Informed
  5. Marking the Quiz
  6. Sharing the Answers
  7. Requiring Assistance

Whoever you have to present the Trivia and host the event needs to be personable and engaging, A bit of appropriate (for the crowd) humour an help too. While the whole night doesn’t hinge on who you have as QuizMaster / Host, it can make a difference to people’s overall feelings towards the event.

Video and Audio

Presenting the Quiz visually and audibly makes a massive difference in terms of the engagement of the crowd and speed at which you can progress with the trivia questions. It’s always worth the QuizMaster mentioning at the start of the night something along the lines of: “Throughout the night all the questions will be displayed on the screen. Please make sure you can hear me and see the screen. There will be a mix of visual, video and audio questions. I’m only going to ask questions once but if you didn’t hear it you can see it on the screen.”

The written questions generally clarify any queries people have with the answer that is sought. Some clarification may be required. If so, always ensure you have everyone’s attention to give specific clarification to a question. In saying that… make sure you word the questions in a way that means there is only one correct answer. Head over to QuizNightHQ’s Marketplace for examples of these questions, available for purchase. See Trivia Rounds for packages of questions.

Proofread your Questions

Proofreading
Proofreading

Check each slide to make sure that there are no spelling/grammatical errors. Any errors can delegitimise your standing as the ‘QuizMaster’ and will give the crowd a reason not to trust you with your answers. You want to be completely accurate all the time. See Quiz Night HQ’s guide to Rules for more helpful information.

If, you do happen to find an error in your questions during the Quiz (it can happen), just play on it. Have a bit of fun and don’t beat yourself up over it. However, if the error is discovered after it’s always worth being honest and mentioning it in a later round. If the error caused teams to fill in incorrect answers it’s perhaps worth just awarding everyone the point for that question. Henceforth, why proof-reading and double – or triple-checking all the answers is so vital.

Software

Apple Keynote

Using Keynote as an Apple user and is intuitive and easy to create templates for the quiz. Check out the Trivia Round Template to download a Keynote (.key) template file of a Trivia Round  for all your Quiz Night needs. Video and audio can be easily inserted into these files with the ability to edit the length and volume within the presentation program.

These files can be duplicated to create the multiple round you will be using throughout the event.

Microsoft PowerPoint

PowerPoint is perfectly good too and does everything Keynote does but on a PC. Check out the Trivia Round Template to download a PowerPoint (.pptx) template file of a Trivia Round  for all your Quiz Night needs.

Google Slides

Google Slides is a pretty good cloud based alternative. It does have some limitations in terms of animations but is simple to use and extremely easy to insert video from YouTube. I recommend ‘downloading’ the version of the quiz you have created prior to the night as a backup so you don’t have to rely on a stable/high quality internet connection.

Keep Your Audience Informed

Keep your crowd informed of the running of the night. At the start of the night inform the crowd of how many rounds are occurring and what fundraising and games are on offer. People will be more willing to sit a little longer through a live auction if they know there’s only 3 items or an exciting game occurring afterwards. Ideas to keep you teams informed:

  • Provide sheet of paper on each table with the events occurring on the night
  • Quickly run through the Quiz Night’s structure when explaining the rules

Keeping the scores visible on a screen throughout the event, in breaks, will keep the crowd informed and audience engaged. Competition will be encouraged as they see where they sit compared to other teams.

Any announcements at the start of the event need to be given out before you’ve handed out any Table Questions – once teams have those in their hands, their focus is elsewhere, they won’t hear a thing you say.

Any announcements for the end of the night need to be given out before the final results of the trivia. A good time is after the last rounds’ answers are presented but before the final scores. This is also a good time to do the final ‘thank yous’ for sponsors and volunteers – you will have people’s attention.

Marking the Quiz

See below for how many people you will need to mark the trivia responses.

At the end of each round have a representative from each table bring their own answer sheet up. This saves you having to walk around and collect them. Be aware that you may have to remind the teams a number of times that its time to submit their answers – socialising and drinking will distract from this.

Important Note
When teams return their answer sheet, hand them the next round so you don’t have to go around and hand them out yourself. Having said that, it’s always worth handing out the first round yourself 5 minutes or so before you start the night. This gives you a chance to say hi to each table and give them a friendly face to start fresh for the night.

Wait to hand out the table questions after you have explained the rules. If you’ve given them the question sheets teams will not be listening – they’ll already be hard at work identifying answers.

Use the breaks to mark the questions. Straight after the break it’s helpful to hook people’s attention back in with a game, generally one found at Quiz Night Games. Then go through the answers, as you have their attention. For more helpful tips and tricks see QuizNightHQ’s guide to Structuring Your Quiz Night.

Sharing the Answers

As you will find with any of the Trivia Round products you purchase through Quiz Night HQ’s Marketplace, a separate visual presentation is provided for the answers. It’s more engaging for the audience if you go through the answers visually as well as announcing them.

You will find the announcements of the answers can be casual points in the evening. There’ll often be members of different teams standing together going over the answers with you. They’ll watch and cheer at the questions they answered correctly. The questions they incorrectly answers may even get boos – go with it! It only adds to the fun and frivolity of the event. You want the crowd to interact and be engaged.

When announcing the answers the questions don’t necessarily have to be read back over. The visual prompt on the screen can be enough to jog your attendees memory of the question.

Requiring Assistance

For events of 10 tables or more it’s recommended you seek assistance of someone to help mark the answers between rounds. They can also assist to hand out the answer sheets and be on the lookout during rounds to make sure people are enjoying themselves.

It’s important that whoever you have helping is not also participating in the night. If you had someone from a team come and help between rounds questions will be raised by others – guaranteed. Especially if they do well in a round – its just not worth it. You may have organisers of the event ask the QuizMaster whether they’d like help marking. Always turn it down, politely of course. The QuizMaster needs to show a separation of organisers and them. Also if you’re paying a QuizMaster to be there then they need to be the one doing the work!

Even following these steps, you may well receive feedback where team genuinely question whether you’ve shared answers with the organisers. Keeping everything above board is well worth the time and effort.

Please comment below with how you’ve found this guide useful and any additional thoughts you’ve got for Presenting a Quiz Night.