Running your own pub quiz: the complete set-up

Organising a pub quiz is quite doable yourself. It's not a complicated format and you need little for it. What sinks most home-made quizzes isn't the quality of the questions but the pace: around round five the room sags, and no question can repair that. Below is the complete set-up, from rounds and questions to scoring and running order, plus an honest estimate of how much time it takes. After that you can decide whether to do it yourself or have it done.

The real problem is pace, not the questions

Ask people what makes a good pub quiz and they say: good questions. But an evening that collapses almost never collapses on content. It collapses because the same thing happens for too long. Read out ten questions, write down the answers, mark them, then read out another ten. That's fine for two rounds and wrecks attention by round five.

What you do about it is vary what the room has to do. As well as listening and writing, get people to look, recognise, put things in order or do something physical. As long as the format changes every round, attention stays up naturally, even if the questions are ordinary.

The second pace issue: marking. If the quizmaster stands tallying in silence for ten minutes after every round, the room falls apart and it's hard to get people back. Marking should be something the room does itself, quickly, with something to do in the meantime.

The structure of the evening

The standard size that works for most groups: six to eight rounds of ten questions, with a break after round three or four. Allow about two hours in total, including the break, marking and results.

More important than the number is the order. A workable structure:

• Round 1: low threshold. General knowledge where everyone knows at least half. The aim is for every team to feel they're taking part.
• Round 2: something with pictures or sound. Break the format straight away, so the room knows it won't be the same thing eight times.
• Round 3: specialist. One subject some teams are good at and others aren't. This shakes up the standings.
• Break: fifteen minutes, with the running scores visible.
• Round 4: the group itself. Questions about the people present, the company, the club or the group of friends. This is almost always the round that gets the most laughs.
• Round 5: something active. A task where teams have to act something out, build something or guess without talking.
• Round 6: the final. With a betting option, so the scores can turn around until the last answer.

That last one weighs the most. If it's clear after round four who's winning, the rest of the room drops out. A final in which teams can stake points keeps everyone in the game until the end, including the teams at the bottom.

Round types that break the pace

Six formats that work well alongside the standard question round:

• Picture round: cut-out logos, faces in four pieces, or pictures of a detail where you have to guess the whole.
• Music round: intros of a few seconds, or songs played backwards. Watch the sound quality, because a poor speaker completely ruins this round.
• Ordering round: put ten things in the right order, for example by year or size. Points per correct position, so even partial knowledge earns something.
• Estimation questions: questions where nobody knows the exact answer, and the team that gets closest scores the points. This is the format that needs the least preparation and still always works.
• Action round: one person per team comes to the front to act something out or draw it. Produces the most movement in the room.
• Round about your own group: facts about the people present, gathered by phoning a few of them beforehand. Takes the most preparation and gives the most back.

Writing the questions

Three rules that decide whether a question works or silences the room.

Aim for six or seven out of ten

That's the score at which an evening runs best. Any lower and teams feel they're hopeless, any higher and there's no tension left. For each round, include two questions that nearly everyone knows, six that are reasonably doable, and two that really need knowledge.

One answer, no argument

The biggest irritation in home-made quizzes is questions with several defensible answers. Read every question back and ask: could a team write something else that's also correct? If so, reword it. It saves you a lot of discussion on the night itself that you've no time for.

Write for the whole room

Think about who's sitting there. A quiz for a student society and a quiz for a department with ages from twenty-four to sixty-four aren't the same quiz. Questions that only one generation can answer put the rest out of the game. Spread the subjects deliberately across periods and interests.

Scoring and marking

Keep it simple: one point per correct answer, and one bonus question per round worth two points. Complicated scoring systems cost you time on the night and nobody understands them.

For marking: have teams pass their answer sheet to another team after each round. You read out the answers, they tick them off, and the sheet comes back to you with a total. That's much quicker than marking yourself, keeps the room busy, and avoids hassle afterwards because everyone has seen how it was judged.

Keep the running scores visible, on a flip chart or a screen. A quiz without visible scores lacks half its tension. Announce the scores after round three, and then only again at the final, so there's something left to discover.

The quizmaster

This is the part that's most underestimated. The quizmaster doesn't just read out questions. They keep the pace, sense when the room is drifting, shorten a round if it's overrunning and stretch it if there's still energy. You can't write that down in advance.

Practical points that do matter:

• Read every question out twice, with a pause in between. Once is always too few.
• Give about twenty seconds thinking time per question, and stick to it strictly.
• Stand where everyone can see you, not in a corner.
• If the room is talking, wait until it's quiet instead of talking louder.
• Don't take part yourself. Whoever knows the questions can't be quizmaster and participant at the same time.

That last point is the deciding factor for many organisers: if you make and present the quiz, you don't play.

Technology and the boring stuff

What you need, and what goes wrong if you forget it:

• Sound that can be heard at the back: a small Bluetooth speaker won't cope in a room with forty people. Test this on site, not at home.
• A screen or projector if you're doing a picture round. Check that the back table can really read it.
• Answer sheets per round, not one sheet for the whole evening. That makes passing them on and marking much easier.
• Pens: take twice as many as you think you need.
• Table layout: teams need to be able to confer without the next team listening in. Put the tables far enough apart.
• A spare question or two: in case a question turns out to be unintentionally unclear.

What it costs you in time

Here's the honest calculation, because this is where most people drop out after they've already started.

• Thinking up and checking questions, six rounds: six to eight hours
• Putting together and testing the picture and music rounds: two to three hours
• Round about your own group, including phoning people: two to three hours
• Making answer sheets, presentation and running order: two hours
• Setting up and testing on the night itself: one hour

Altogether ten to fifteen hours for a quiz that's really written for the group. That's quite doable if you enjoy making it, and it's also exactly why many home-made quizzes fall back halfway through on a generic list of questions from the internet. That's no disgrace, but it's the moment when the quiz loses its most important quality: that it's about this group.

If you want to do it yourself, this article is meant as a complete guide. If you want to take part instead of standing at the front, or you don't have fifteen hours to spare, outsourcing is a realistic option. With us, a custom pub quiz starts at around €195 for the whole group, including the questions, the presentation and the scoring. A more extensive programme with its own theme, equipment and decor costs between €550 and €1,250. See how we build a pub quiz.

Four mistakes you make in the first round

1. Explaining for too long at the start: five minutes of rules costs you the attention before the first question has even been asked. Stick to three points: how long you have per question, how marking works, and when the break is. You explain the rest when it comes up.
2. Making the first round too hard: an opening round in which most teams get four out of ten sets the tone for the whole evening. Start easy, even if it feels silly. The teams that are good will notice that for themselves in round three.
3. Letting teams divide themselves up: you end up with two strong teams and three teams that don't stand a chance. Assign them yourself, or let chance decide. That makes the evening more exciting and prevents the result being settled after round two.
4. Not leaving time for team names: sounds unimportant, but this is the moment when a group gets in the mood. Give them five minutes and read them out loud. It costs almost nothing and noticeably changes the atmosphere.

Running order for the evening

• One hour before: set-up, test the sound, arrange the tables, lay out the answer sheets.
• Fifteen minutes before: have teams sit down and think of team names. This always takes longer than planned.
• Start: the rules in two minutes at most. Nobody listens for longer.
• Rounds 1 to 3: with marking after each round, about twenty minutes per round.
• Break: fifteen minutes, announce the running scores.
• Rounds 4 to 6: same rhythm, with the active round in the middle.
• Final and results: twenty minutes, including the prize-giving.

What you get from this

A pub quiz that holds up comes down to three things: change the format every round, have the room mark each other's answers, and make sure the scores can turn around until the last question. Aim for six or seven correct answers per ten questions, keep teams to four to six people, and accept that whoever makes the quiz doesn't play.

If you do it yourself, allow ten to fifteen hours of preparation and start the round about your own group in good time, because that's the round that gives the most back and takes the longest lead time. If you'd like us to run it, look here, or request a quote with no obligation.