KEEP IT FAIR – OR FACE A PANDEMIC OF FAMILY FALLOUTS AND ARGUMENTS
The world of quizzing – as many close family and friends are discovering during their weekly Zoom quizzes – is not without its moments.
It can be beset with disputes, quarrels, slights and cheating. So the best defence against warring factions, apparently, is to appoint a quizmaster with standard United Nations peace negotiating skills.
Veteran quiz competitor Dan O’Malley advises: ‘Whoever is Quizmaster should be the person who is best at solving arguments.
‘Arguments do happen... they would be over questions like what is the longest river in the world.
‘Most people would say the Nile, but there are some geographers who would say the Amazon, so when you are giving the answer you have to decide which answer does the quizmaster want to hear.
‘You can go up and have a word and, usually, it is resolved and even though Google can be your enemy, it can be your friend and you can look it up easily.
‘The bane of quizzes are mobile phones and search engines. Some people use it as an opportunity to cheat, so the quizmaster should penalise people caught cheating and should encourage people to report those they see using Google.
‘On video conference like Zoom you cannot always see the hands of those doing the quiz, so what some quizzes do is they give multiple-choice questions and the questions have to be answered in ten seconds so there isn’t time to cheat or else if they do cheat by Googling, they get a low score because of the time taken by cheaters to give the answer.
‘The quizmaster should have a good mix of questions and they should know their audience. So if the quiz is for your family, you should make sure you have questions about things you know they like, so things like your children’s favourite TV shows or questions about art if your partner, like my wife, likes art,’ he says.
‘If the questions are for a younger demographic, you are not going to have questions about Perry Como or Bing Crosby. Instead, you have questions about music in the last 10 or 20 years.
‘Different generations know different things better, so make it accessible to all and not to what you know.
‘Ideally, when making the questions get out of your comfort zone. It is a test of knowledge so have something for everybody. Have a mix of easy, medium and hard questions. Every team should at least get half the questions right and no one should go away feeling thick.
Dan says: ‘Every round can be a round of a mix of questions. Eight rounds is a good number. Have entertainment, sport, history and geography, general knowledge. You can have a joker round with double points for one round only. You can also have a ‘who am I’ question with an extra clue given in each round.
‘But don’t make all the questions easy. You have to reward knowledge. If you give all easy or all hard questions it’s frustrating.
‘There are plenty of preprepared written questions online but they are not always correct and can be out of date so you need to check them. There are quiz books which you can get, but you need to check them too.’