How to Write Good Pub Quiz Questions (That Don't Start Arguments)

A good pub quiz question does three things. It has exactly one right answer. It makes the teams who get it feel clever. And the teams who don't get it groan, rather than shrug.

A bad one does the opposite. It has two defensible answers, nobody has heard of the subject, and the quiz master spends the break arguing with a retired geography teacher.

We have written and proof-read thousands of questions for our packs. These are the rules we follow.

Write for the room, not for yourself

The most common mistake is writing questions you find interesting. That is how you end up with a round on 1970s prog rock that three people in the pub can answer.

Ask yourself: would a normal table of four, who aren't quiz obsessives, have a reasonable chance at this? If the answer is no, it had better be one of your hard questions, and you should only have two or three of those in a round.

Mix the difficulty inside every round

Don't make a hard round and an easy round. Mix it up within each one. Out of ten questions:

• Three or four easy ones. Most teams should get these. They keep casual tables in the game.
• Three or four middling ones. These are the questions that separate the pack.
• Two or three hard ones. For the strong teams, so they have something to chase.

Aim for the best team to score eight or nine and the casual tables to get four or five. A round where everyone scores two is demoralising. A round where everyone scores nine is pointless.

One question, one answer

Before you write a question down, try to argue with it. If you can think of a second answer that is technically correct, the question needs rewriting.

Some examples of questions that start rows:

• "What is the largest desert in the world?" Plenty will say the Sahara. The answer is Antarctica, since a desert is defined by rainfall, not heat. Either make that the point of the question, or ask for "the largest hot desert".
• "What is the capital of Australia?" Fine. But "What is the biggest city in Australia?" might need "by population" added to rule out arguments about area.
• "Who invented the telephone?" Bell is the answer you expect. Somebody at the back will have read about Antonio Meucci.

The fix is almost always more specific wording. It costs you three words and saves you ten minutes.

Say what you want in the answer

If you need a full name, say "full name". If you want a year, say "in what year". If a surname is enough, you don't need to say anything, but decide before the night, not when the answer sheets come in.

For number questions, say whether you want an exact answer or the closest team wins. Our pub quiz rules post covers how to set this up front.

Give the question a hook

The best pub quiz questions have a little clue buried in them. Not enough to give it away, but enough that a team can reason towards the answer instead of just knowing it or not.

Compare:

• "Which is the hottest chilli in the world?"
• "At 2,693,000 Scoville units, which is the hottest chilli in the world: the Ghost Pepper, the Carolina Reaper or Pepper X?"

The second one gets a discussion going at every table. The first one gets a shrug. Multiple choice options, a date, a helpful detail — they all turn a fact into a conversation.

Check every fact, twice

Nothing undermines a quiz master faster than reading out a wrong answer to a room with forty phones in pockets.

• Use more than one source. Wikipedia is a starting point, not the final word.
• Check anything with a record in it. Tallest, fastest, oldest, biggest. These change, and old quiz books are full of out-of-date records.
• Watch for "currently". Current champions, current prime ministers, current record holders. If you write it in September and use it in March, check again.
• Have the answer's reasoning ready. If someone challenges you, it helps to know why the answer is right.

Every question in our packs is proof-read before it goes out, for spelling and for facts. Even so, a second check never hurts.

Read it out loud

A question that reads well on paper can be a nightmare spoken in a noisy pub.

Long questions with two clauses lose people halfway through. Names that are hard to pronounce trip up the quiz master. Anything that relies on how a word is spelled doesn't work out loud.

Read each question out loud once before the night. If you stumble, rewrite it.

Avoid the questions nobody enjoys

• Pure lists. "Name the 47th element of the periodic table." Either you know it or you don't. No discussion, no fun.
• Questions about the quiz master's life. Unless it's a very specific local quiz, nobody knows the name of your first dog.
• Questions that are just trick questions. One a night is a laugh. More than that and teams feel mugged.
• Anything that could genuinely upset someone. Keep it the kind of night people want to come back to.

The shortcut

Writing a good quiz takes hours. Five rounds, fifty-odd questions, all balanced for difficulty, all checked twice, plus a picture round and a music round.

If you enjoy it, brilliant, and hopefully this helps. If you would rather spend that time on something else, that is what our packs are for. Every question comes with a difficulty rating, so the easy, middling and hard ones are already balanced across each round. Have a look at the free sample quiz, or grab our free food and drink round to see what a balanced round looks like.

Frequently asked questions

How many questions should be in a pub quiz?

Most pub quizzes have five or six rounds of ten questions, around 50 to 60 questions in total. That runs to about two hours with breaks.

How hard should pub quiz questions be?

Mix the difficulty. Aim for the strongest teams to score eight or nine out of ten, and casual teams to score four or five.

What makes a good pub quiz question?

One clear answer, a little clue that gets teams talking, and a subject most people in the room will have some chance at.

Where can I get pub quiz questions?

You can write your own, or use a ready-made pack. Ours come proof-read, balanced for difficulty and ready to print.

Mitch and Harry