The team quiz guide · Part 3 of 4
Writing good quiz questions
The questions make or break the quiz. Good ones get a whole team talking. Here's what to aim for, and a sample round you can use as a starting point.
Skip multiple choice
Multiple-choice answers are too easy to guess, and guessing kills the discussion. Ask open questions instead, so the team has to talk it through and work the answer out together.
Make them tough
The best moment in a team quiz is when someone surprises everyone by knowing an answer. Hard questions make that happen. Hard questions also take longer, so put fewer of them in a round: about 5 instead of about 10.
Give each round a theme
A theme per round gives the quiz some shape, and lets different people shine in different rounds. Consider a company round on your organisation's acronyms, work processes and technologies. It's fun for people who've been around a while, and it works as onboarding for people who haven't.
Use hints
A hint can turn an impossible question into a gettable one. For an open question, build the hint into the wording: question 1 below gives the dates Leningrad was in use, which narrows down the answer.
For a letter-grid question, where the team fills in the answer one letter per box, the hint is one or more letters already shown in the grid. Questions 5 and 6 below show the difference: one gives away the first and last letters, the other gives nothing.
A sample round
Six questions from a real question bank, with a mix of difficulty and two cryptic letter-grid clues.
| # | Question | Type | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Russian city of St Petersburg was called Leningrad from 1924 to 1991. What was it called from 1914 to 1924? | Open | Hard |
| 2 | What color is Sonic the Hedgehog? | Open | Easy |
| 3 | What inorganic molecule is produced by lightning? | Open | Medium |
| 4 | Which classic novel begins with the line, “Call me Ishmael”? | Open | Medium |
| 5 | Reformed ladies show the highest standards (cryptic) I _ _ _ _ S | Letter grid | Medium |
| 6 | By the sound of it, I'll row (cryptic) _ _ _ _ _ | Letter grid | Medium |
Show answers
- Petrograd. The dates in the question are the hint.
- Blue.
- Ozone.
- Moby Dick.
- IDEALS. An anagram of “ladies”. The revealed I and S help the team check they're on the right track.
- AISLE. Sounds like “I'll”. No letters are revealed, so the team has to crack the clue with no help.
Next, how kwizroom takes the paperwork out of running all this on the day.