How we make a quiz

A trivia night is only as good as its questions. This is what we do to a quiz before a room plays it, and what we cannot promise. We would rather tell you the steps than say "trust us".

1. A topic, chosen by a person

Quizzes start from a topic: one we think a room would enjoy, or one a member suggested on the Suggest a quiz topic page. A suggestion is read and approved by a person before anything is written for it. A quiz written from a suggestion joins the shared library, and the member can make their own copy of it to change.

2. Facts are checked before they are written

Every claim a question rests on (a date, a name, a number, who beat whom) is looked up in a reference source before the question is written. If we cannot source a fact, we rewrite the question around one we can, or drop it. An AI assistant helps with the drafting and with finding sources; it never has the last word.

Facts are right as of the day a quiz was written. Records fall and counts change, so a question can date. When someone tells us, or we notice, we fix it.

3. The writing rules

• Four answers to a question. Four gives a good spread of guesses (a blind guess is one in four) and is easy to read on a phone. We do not write true-or-false questions, because a coin-flip guess makes a question easier than it should be.
• Wrong answers a person could believe. They are the same kind of thing as the right one: the same level of fame, the same style, a similar length. If the right answer is the odd one out, the question is bad.
• One defensible answer. We ask whether a player could argue for a second choice, and reword if so. We never ask for an opinion.
• A spread of difficulty, roughly a third each of easy, medium and hard, aimed at the regulars at a trivia night rather than at someone who has never watched the sport or heard the band.
• Nothing gives itself away. A question never names its own answer, and no question or fun fact names the answer to a later one.
• A did-you-know after every answer, shown when the answer is revealed.
• No song lyrics, and we leave out questions about scandals, crimes and tragedies unless the quiz is about that history.

4. Automatic checks

Software reads every quiz for the slips a tired writer makes: the same answer used twice, two identical choices, a question that contains its answer, an answer that is much longer than the others, a fun fact that spoils a later question, a question that has more than one right answer, and a quiz that does not have four answers to a question. Then practice players play the whole quiz through the real game, so a quiz that would break on the night breaks here instead. The checks run again every night over the whole library.

The same checks are in the quiz editor for anyone writing their own quiz. In the editor they are suggestions that say why; nothing is ever blocked, because you may have your own reasons.

5. Tidying

Before a quiz goes out its wording is tidied: single spaces, a full stop on some answers and not others made consistent, and numbers listed in order. These are mechanical changes that never alter what a question means. Anything that would change meaning is only pointed out, for a person to decide.

6. Pictures

We use a real photograph where one fits, and an illustration by our own mascot where it does not. A picture must never show the answer. Each picture is cut separately for the phone and for the big screen, so it looks right on both. A person looks at every photograph before it is used.

7. A person approves it

A new quiz is held back, out of every list and out of reach of anyone hosting a night, until a person has read it and approved it. Software cannot approve a quiz, and neither can the assistant that helped draft it. A quiz that fails the spoiler check cannot be approved until it is fixed.

This is how our own quizzes are made. A quiz that a member writes for their own use is theirs: it gets the same checks as suggestions in the editor, and we do not read it in advance.

8. After it is out

Hosts can flag a question from the screen during a game, and we read the flags and fix what is wrong, then look for the same slip elsewhere in that quiz. We can also see how often each question is answered correctly, which shows us questions that are much too easy or much too hard. We cannot promise there are no mistakes. If you find one, please tell us.