SUSAN CALMAN

There’s nothing better than a good quiz to pass the time, says our columnist – just as long as she knows all the answers

Our columnist on the joys of a team Zoom quiz

During lockdown I, like many people, found myself at home with a lot of time on my hands. To raise my spirits, I made a lot of storecupboard soup (spam and cabbage anyone?), baked banana bread (the texture of concrete) and, most excitingly, ended up taking part in more quizzes than I had rapidly appearing grey hairs. Every Friday night, my neighbours and I would shout questions and answers over the back wall to each other and almost every day, I’d receive a quiz from a friend via email or Whatsapp to keep me amused. I looked forward to the ‘ping’ on my phone when a new one popped in; it was a welcome, fun distraction just when I needed it most.

To be fair, I’ve always loved a trivia quiz. It all started when I was at university and joined a pretty disastrous pub quiz team. We would go to a local hostelry on a Thursday night ready to do battle, confident that we could easily destroy all who dared to defy us. Sadly, unbeknown to us, that particular pub was the habitual hangout of a diverse group of lecturers and professors. It’s fair to say that against that kind of opposition, our team, who I think we optimistically named The Ultimate Winners or suchlike, was dead in the water before we even started.

It’s important that you know how deeply such defeats hurt me. A very good friend has described me as ‘psychopathically competitive’, which I take as a compliment. My family can no longer play board games at Christmas because the last time we did, ‘someone’ turned over the table when it became clear that ‘someone’ would lose. That ‘someone’ was, I’ll admit it, me. I don’t need to win when I take part in a quiz, but it’s better for everyone involved (and the furniture) if I do.

My love of a good trivia test comes from the fact that it combines almost all of my most favourite things. People to chat to, questions to challenge the mind and (hopefully) snacks and drinks. The social aspect of answering questions is as important as the result, and that’s part of the reason why quizzes have become increasingly popular online. It’s a genius way to spend time remotely with friends and family, not least because they solve my most hated problem when catching up: the awkward silence. Brilliantly, due to the actual mechanics of a quiz, there’s always something to chat about. In between rounds, stories come tumbling out, reminiscences are relayed and there’s never that pressure to keep talking; it just comes naturally.

Of course, the fun doesn’t just start when the quiz does. The act of putting together the questions is one that can become just as important as anything else. Getting that insight into a person’s mind can be such a lot of fun. I laughed out loud last week when my pal, having run out of questions to ask, compiled a round all about them. I admire someone who outright asks a group of people: ‘What’s my favourite dessert?’ sparking a half-hour discussion about whether they would be the kind of person who liked trifle.

That’s part of the joy. Compiling a quiz makes you think about the people you’re spending time with. For example, if I were to do a family quiz, I would need to take into account that my mum isn’t on social media, so anything about a Kardashian or a Tiktok influencer would not go down well. But she has a Mastermind-level of knowledge when it comes to questions about Agatha Christie. In thinking about what people might know, I think about them, and it makes me more grateful for their company.

I’m going to carry on quizzing with friends and family. And perhaps, when someone asks if you want to join a quiz, you might give it a go, even if it’s not something you’ve done before. Because it’s not about what you know, it’s about time spent with others. And remember, it’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part (just as long as I win).

Quizzes solve the problem of the awkward silence.