Yorkshire question masters explain art of running the perfect online pub quiz

Many of the nation’s most treasured pastimes have been put on hold as a result of coronavirus, but one institution that has proved surprisingly resilient is the pub quiz.

While pubs have shut their doors for the lockdown, virtual quizzes are taking off like never before on Facebook, video chats and apps and reaching new audiences as well as committed players. It is happening as new ITV comedy-drama Quiz, about the Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? cheating scandal, has been a critical and ratings hit.

As well as pubs and quiz companies running their own online contests, many people - some with no previous experience - have started their own regular quizzes, often as a way of raising money for charity. One of the most prominent examples has been former landlord Jay Flynn from Lancashire who has raised almost £100,000 for the NHS after getting tens of thousands people playing along with his live quiz.

So what makes a good online quiz? According to the team at York company SpeedQuizzing, it is all about finding a balance.

Former journalist Pete Martini, head of content for SpeedQuizzing, says: “It is quite hard to articulate what actually makes a good question.

“It is more a creative art than a scientific one. The most important things are accuracy and no ambiguity.

“If anything is wrong in terms of the question or the answer you are going to hear about it.

“Getting the difficulty level right is a challenge - too easy is boring but too obscure and people aren’t going to care much.

“You have got to know who is playing to set the difficulty level. If you have families playing, you should have a question aimed at 12 and 13-year-olds.”

Although they already created virtual quizzes, the team at SpeedQuizzing have had to adjust to our new reality as their normal business model was upended by the lockdown.

Founded by Shed Seven drummer Alan Leach and his brother John, the company served pub quizzes by doing away with the old pen and paper model and instead allowing players to answer questions on a mobile phone app.

The app was being used in hundreds of pubs a week in the UK as well as in the US, Europe and parts of the Middle East. Their customers were split between landlords and people hired by pubs to run regular quizzes on their behalf.

They have scrambled to create a new remote hosting platform for people to play interactive quizzes on their phones while speaking to each other over video chat app Zoom. The platform is currently free to use for anyone hosting a quiz with fewer than 40 players.

Leach says: “We kind of lost everything overnight so we had to think on our feet.

“We only really started making an online version as a kind of morale booster for our customers to keep their hand in.”

He says while the numbers of quizzes they normally arrange are down on usual, there is rapidly growing interest in the new format. Leach says he was not initially expecting the wider interest in online quizzes.

“I was surprised initially because I know how hard it is to get people to come to a pub quiz. But if you think about it, to go to a real pub quiz, people need to get babysitters in and get dressed up - now all of a sudden you have people who have nothing better to do and there is no effort needed to go out.”

Leach says it is important to tailor quizzes so they are not too tricky - but remain competitive.

“It is getting the balance right - you don’t want people just getting 10 per cent of questions right.

“The great thing about SpeedQuizzer you get speed bonuses for being fastest so you can have easy questions but it is still really competitive.”

Martini adds: “Some questions are really interesting facts and people might be surprised by the answer. It is all about getting a good group of questions rather than one perfect question.

“In most of the questions that we do it is about making everyone feel involved and that they are having a good time. You want the clever teams to still have an advantage but don’t want to make anyone else feel stupid.

“The questions haven’t really changed in the new format but we are trying to keep on the happy side of things. You don’t really want any questions about Covid because the quizzes are meant to be a bit of an escape.

“There is nothing like the sense of satisfaction you get when you get a question right and you sometimes get more satisfaction if it is an educated guess or a stab in the dark rather than definitely knowing the answer.”

Click here for more information about hosting or participating in a SpeedQuizzing event.

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