Hints for a Quizmaster and Quizzer

Audlem WI held a successful Fish and Chip Quiz Evening recently and although the intention was to provide an entertaining evening for our members, the icing on the cake was the donation of £100 which we gave to the magnificent and selfless Ralph Warburton, our quizmaster, who will be passing it on to one of the charities he supports.

An evening like this would never have been possible without some generous donations from our local village businesses to support our raffle and a good deal of hard work from our committee.

What makes a good quiz?

This led me on to thinking about what makes a good quiz, so after trawling the internet, I came up with the following few ideas.

Being somewhat of a veteran of quizzes, although my input tends to be along the lines of agreeing with brighter team members as they usually know best, I have come to realise over the years what makes a good quizmaster – and what doesn't!

We have some fine upstanding quizmasters in our village who have the ability to keep a crowd engaged, especially in attention deficit zones like my WI, where discussing other people's life choices can override hearing the questions!

Commanding a room for two hours requires a high degree of enthusiasm, wit and comedic timing so the hosting quizmaster needs to acquire good public speaking skills, a happy demeanour and an armful of fun and challenging questions before they are ready to conquer the world.......otherwise we'll start doodling.

They don't have to come up with great humour all on their own as they can use the gifts of comedic fodder that the attendees give in the form of team names. 'Bernard's Harem', 'Lloyds Register', ' Brains on Holiday', 'Lonely Ladies' and 'We're only here for the Chips' are fine examples to be mocked at some stage, and one losing team recently named 'The Welshmen' changed their name halfway through to 'The Englishmen' when they started to lose! Yes, you know who you are..........

Easy on the booze

As I'm very good at offering advice that I don't always take myself, I suggest going easy on the booze. A few pints may alleviate the stress of a pub quiz, but hangovers are a sure fire losing technique and the battlefield of TV quizzing is littered with the corpses of those who succumbed to Dutch courage and we don't want to be tripping over any itinerant ex quizzers in the potholes of Audlem.

Useful advice for quizzers:

• With multiple choice questions, if you don't know, studies suggest you should choose B or C. If you're given four options then C is most likely to be your friend. ( I've investigated this on the internet, so it must be true! )
• Keep moving forward, when you get a question you can't answer, dwelling on it will make you doubt perfectly good answers in the future. Apparently Mastermind contestants call this phenomenon 'The Pass Spiral'.
• I have insecurities of course, but I don't hang out with people who point them out to me so befriending the quizmaster is often a good idea as it can't do any harm can it? There's no governing body to regulate quiz masters. Whilst they're not going to cheat for you, being on good terms with the quiz master might earn you a little leniency with those almost-correct answers.
• Use bad handwriting. If you're not sure of a spelling in a written quiz write the words badly, this is one of my particular quiz skills, although John Evans and Ben Davies come close.
• However this could be construed as sharp practice and becomes a little more difficult when my husband continuous to hold my hand as he knows if he lets go I may go shopping!
• Only give a surname as in most quizzes that's enough to demonstrate knowledge so don't add any extra information that may be wrong, after all you don't want to be known as a clever clogs!
• Don't always trust your hunch.....especially in multiple choice questions and remember it's good to talk. Even if you're not sure, tell your teammates anything that comes into your head, well, within reason, as throwing out ideas can often result in a right answer.
• Never, ever leave a blank on an answer sheet, if you are asked for a year, any year is better than none and as 'Pointless' contestants are advised, if in doubt say 'Central African Republic'!

Finally, don't take it too seriously, after all it's only a game and there is one golden rule for a quiz, the answer on the quizmaster's sheet is the right answer – even if it is wrong!

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.