Structuring 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

  1. Structuring the Trivia
  2. Rounds of Trivia
  3. Marking the Answers
  4. Announcing Results

Structuring the Trivia during your Event

There’s a lot to consider when running a Quiz Night. Are 3 rounds not enough? Are 5 rounds too many? Over the ten years I’ve been creating and hosting Quiz Nights I’ve managed to refine the process to provide enough trivia, time to socialise and games for a well-balanced and highly enjoyable evening. There are a number of criteria for how you make your Quiz Night work but following this Running Sheet Template will provide the foundations of a successful and enjoyable evening leaving your Quiz Night attendees wanting more.

Running Sheet

The tried and tested structure used in the Running Sheet Template is a 3 hour night which includes 4 rounds of trivia, games between rounds, 2 sets of table questions and breaks (giving attendees time to socialise, spend money on the bar, bid in the silent auction). The Live Auction element of the night is the trickiest part to estimate time. It can often get out of hand. Generally the .5 hours on top of the 3 hours caters for the Live Auction getting competitive and any other time issues.

Quiz Night Running Sheet TEMPLATE

Rounds of Trivia

  • Create each Trivia Round to be worth 16 points (or so) and it will last for 10-15 minutes.
  • Having questions worth multiple points speeds up the round too.
  • Having more rounds worth smaller amounts of points can keep the night moving two. Maybe having two 10 point rounds back-to-back can cover off more topics.
  • Include some Table Question rounds to accompany the written questions. For some people, this is their strength and they’ll enjoy focusing on that during a round that they may have no interest in, like Sport, for example.

Marking the Answers

  • To avoid crowd complaints always try and keep each round worth a similar amount of points in order to have an equal playing field amongst people with different strengths. For example 16 points for Sport, 16 points for Music, 16 points for Movies and TV etc.
  • If there are 10-12 or less tables you should be able to correct the answers by yourself.  If there’s more than 12 tables it’s worth organising an assistant to help mark. NOTE: It’s also great motivation for when your host jokes land flat – at least your assistant is laughing (even if it is at you). As you and your assistant complete the marking for each team, add it to the Score Sheet to display when results are announced.
  • Even if you have less than 10 tables there may be someone in your club/organisation who is willing to help mark. They may even prefer to mark over participating. Using them to help mark can be very helpful and could free up the QuizMaster to run a game in the breaks.
  • Providing 10-15 minutes for breaks between every round may seem a lot. But it gives people time to socialise and spend money at the silent auction and other fundraising games. Plus the QuizMaster can correct answer sheets and a member of the club/organisation can run a fundraising game. See Quiz Night HQ’s guide to Fundraising Games for great ideas and information.

Announcing Results

At the end of each break go through the answers to the previous round and then provide a current total for each team. Use this Scoring Template to keep track of current standings and team scores.

At the end of the last round quickly mark and add up the scores. While this is happening, it’s the perfect time for someone to draw the raffle and announce any winners of the silent auction – this process can be very long winded. Try to keep it quick. When announcing the final scores and winners you don’t have to announce all the way from the end. Just announcing the final 5-6 can be enough. Once the final scores have been announced just display the results so everyone can see their scores.

Let us know what you think of these ideas for structuring your website. Please comment below…