Score a pub quiz on flat points, one per question, then add exactly one mechanic to fix the problem your quiz actually has: a joker round if it is over by halfway, a wager round if the leader is uncatchable, league points if the same team wins every week. Stacking all three at once is how a quiz night turns into a maths lesson.
Below are the five systems with the arithmetic worked through, the marking rules to announce before round one, a score sheet layout, and 16 numeric tiebreakers to keep in your back pocket.
Start with flat points, and count the questions
Six rounds of ten, one point each, 60 points on the night. That is the format almost every pub in the country runs, and the reason is that teams can do the maths in their heads while you read the answers out.
Flat scoring breaks in two specific places. Ties, which happen constantly at ten questions a round because the spread between third and sixth is usually two points. And the walkover, where the table with the retired history teacher is nine ahead by round three and four other tables order another round and stop writing. Everything below fixes one of those two things.
Five systems, and the problem each one solves
| System | Fixes | Costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Flat points | Nothing, it is the baseline | Ties, and a dead final round |
| Joker round | A quiz that is decided by round four | One box on the answer sheet |
| Wager round | A leader nobody can catch | Two minutes collecting stakes |
| Descending clues | A picture or "who am I" round with an obvious answer | Slower marking |
| League points | The same team winning every week | A table to maintain between quizzes |
Joker round. Each team picks one round to score double, and has to declare it before the first question of that round is read. Print a box on the answer sheet, take the declaration at the same moment you announce the round title, and hold them to it. Declaring after the questions have been asked is not a joker, it is a free nine points.
Wager round. Before the final round, every team writes a stake from 0 to 10. They add the stake to their total if they beat a bar you set, usually 8 out of 10 in that round, and lose it if they do not. A team four points down stakes 10 and plays for the win, the leaders stake 2 and defend. It is the only mechanic that makes the last round tense for the table in first place.
Descending clues. Read five clues about one person or place, five points if a team writes it after the first clue, down to one point after the fifth. Give them a numbered strip of five boxes, tell them they cannot change an answer once written, and mark the first box they filled in. Without the numbered boxes it runs on honesty and it will not survive contact with a pub.
League points. For a weekly quiz, record the season table by finishing position, 10 for first, 8 for second, then 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Raw points across twelve weeks just measures who brings eight people. Position points mean a team of three that finishes third most weeks stays in contention, and they keep turning up.
A score sheet you can total in your head
Running totals in one row, joker declared in its own column, and every team's sheet visible to you rather than to them.
| Team | R1 | R2 | R3 | R4 | R5 | R6 | Joker | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quiz Team Aguilera | 8 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 8 | R4 (+6) | 53 |
| The Quizzly Bears | 7 | 6 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 9 | R3 (+9) | 55 |
| Universally Challenged | 6 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 7 | R2 (+7) | 46 |
On flat points Aguilera win by one. The joker flips it, because the Bears declared on a round they went on to ace and Aguilera declared on their worst. That is the whole appeal: a second game running underneath the first, decided by teams reading their own strengths.
Do not read the full standings after every round
Announcing that a table is ninth out of eleven is how you lose them to the bar for the rest of the night. Read the top three at halfway and nothing else until the final round, and keep the rest of the table to yourself.
Set the marking rules before round one
Say all four out loud before the first question, because ruling on any of them mid-quiz looks like you are picking a winner.
- Spelling does not count unless the spelling is the question. Announce it, then stop taking questions about it.
- No half points. They double your marking time and turn every close answer into a negotiation. Two-part answers are the one exception, and then it is one point per part.
- Never subtract points. Teams that can lose points write nothing, and a blank sheet makes no noise.
- The first answer written is the answer. No crossings-out, no second guesses squeezed into the margin.
Tables swap sheets for marking on every round except the last. Read the answers out one at a time while they mark, take no questions until the round is finished, then collect the sheets. That is about three minutes a round. Marking twelve sheets yourself takes ten, and the room goes flat in every one of them. The last round you mark, because it is the one people cheat on.
16 tiebreakers, closest wins
Keep one back every week. The answer has to be a number nobody in the room knows exactly but everybody can guess at, which is what makes it settle an argument instead of starting one.
Numeric tiebreakers
Read the question, take a written number from each tied team, closest wins. No conferring, no second guesses.
- 1.
How many bones are there in the adult human body?
Answer: 206
- 2.
How tall is the Eiffel Tower in metres, to the tip?
Answer: 330 metres
- 3.
How many member states does the United Nations have?
Answer: 193
- 4.
How long is a marathon in metres?
Answer: 42,195
- 5.
How many tiles are in a standard English Scrabble set?
Answer: 100
- 6.
How many episodes of Friends were made?
Answer: 236
- 7.
How high is Mount Everest in metres?
Answer: 8,849
- 8.
How many time zones does Russia span?
Answer: 11
- 9.
How many keys are on a standard piano?
Answer: 88
- 10.
How many dots are there in total on a pair of six-sided dice?
Answer: 42
- 11.
How many countries are there in Africa?
Answer: 54
- 12.
Roughly how many people live in Iceland?
Answer: About 390,000
- 13.
How deep is the Challenger Deep in metres?
Answer: About 10,900
- 14.
How many Academy Awards did Titanic win?
Answer: 11
- 15.
How long is the Great Wall of China in kilometres, by the official 2012 survey?
Answer: 21,196
- 16.
What is the speed of light in kilometres per second, to the nearest whole number?
Answer: 299,792
If two teams are still level after that, they are joint winners. Splitting the prize is a better ending than a third tiebreaker at half eleven.
What changes when the scoring runs itself
Every system above is more interesting than flat points and every one of them adds arithmetic while thirty people watch you do it. The joker column is the usual casualty: you forget one team's declaration, someone at the front notices, and you spend the last round defending your own maths.
Running the quiz on a screen moves that part off your plate. Answers score as they come in, the joker doubles itself, the leaderboard is on the TV, and you go back to being the person reading the questions out. PardyTime is free to host with, teams join with a code on their own phones, and you can start from something in the public library rather than writing 60 questions from scratch.