Decide the shape of the night before you write a single question. There are two that work: fast multiple choice, where everyone answers at once on their phones, and a category board, where teams take turns picking a square. They suit different rooms, and picking wrong is why a quiz night dies at round two.
Below is what each format is good for, 24 round themes split between them, a ready-made opening round and a board you can copy.
Fast multiple choice: everyone answers at once
The question goes on the big screen, players tap one of two to four options on their phones, and a timer runs. Score is a speed bonus on correct answers when the clock is on, flat when it is off.
Which planet is known as the Red Planet?
Run it when the room is big, mixed, half-standing, or full of people who would never shout an answer across a table. Everybody plays every question, so nobody is waiting for their turn, and the shy half of the room is in the game without saying a word.
Twenty seconds is the default and it is right for almost everything. Ten turns the round into a reading-speed contest, which is fine for one deliberate lightning round and miserable for six. Turn the timer off entirely if you have grandparents playing, because a speed bonus quietly scores a family quiz in favour of whoever is fastest with a phone.
The real work is the wrong options. Three plausible answers make a question; two jokes and one obvious answer make a formality. Write the wrong ones close enough that a guess is a gamble, and keep the funny option to one per round.
12 themes for a multiple-choice round
- This time last year: news from the same month, twelve months ago.
- Number one on your birthday: collect birthdays as people arrive.
- Odd one out: four things, three share something.
- Logos, name removed: familiar to the point of being invisible.
- Which came first: two events, pick the earlier one.
- Real or fake: genuine product names against ones you invented.
- Anagram of a film title: four options, one unscrambles.
- How much did it cost: four price tags for one everyday thing.
- Flags: four countries, one flag.
- Lyrics with one word wrong: spot the wrong word.
- Local knowledge: the street, the pub, the office, whatever this room shares.
- Lightning: ten seconds a question, ten questions, no discussion.
A 10-question opening round
General knowledge, deliberately gettable. Give each one three options and keep the wrong ones plausible.
- 1.
Which city hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics?
Answer: Rio de Janeiro
- 2.
What is the chemical symbol for potassium?
Answer: K
- 3.
Who painted The Starry Night?
Answer: Vincent van Gogh
- 4.
What is the capital of Australia?
Answer: Canberra
- 5.
Which is the largest ocean?
Answer: The Pacific
- 6.
In which year did the Berlin Wall come down?
Answer: 1989
- 7.
Which element has atomic number 1?
Answer: Hydrogen
- 8.
Who wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four?
Answer: George Orwell
- 9.
Which is the longest river in South America?
Answer: The Amazon
- 10.
What does the www in a web address stand for?
Answer: World Wide Web
A category board: teams pick, one at a time
Five categories across, five clues down, point values rising with difficulty. A team picks a square, the clue goes up, and teams buzz in. Point values are free text, so a board can run on 100 to 500, on pounds, or on sips.
Run it for four to six seated teams. The format's whole appeal is that only one square is live at a time: the picking is a decision, the value is a wager, and the other teams get to sit there hoping the leaders take the 500 and blow it. Thirty people standing up is the wrong room for it, because five of them are playing and the rest are at the bar.
Write the cheap row to be genuinely easy. A board that opens with a 100 nobody can answer sets the tone for the next forty minutes, and the top-left square is picked first every single time.
Name the categories so they give something away
"Ology" and "On the Map" tell a team what they are buying. "Category 4" tells them nothing, so the picking stops being a decision and the format loses the thing that makes it better than a list of questions.
12 board category ideas
- Before and after: two answers sharing a word.
- Anywhere but here: places by one obscure fact each.
- Dead or alive: the answer is one of the two.
- The 90s: or whichever decade this room was fifteen in.
- Potent potables: drinks, spirits, cocktails.
- Sport, but not football: rescues the round from one dominant fan.
- Words within words: a definition, and the answer hides another word.
- In the kitchen: utensils, dishes, what a term means.
- Who said it: film, book, politics.
- Company origins: who made what first.
- Body parts: anatomy, gettable at every level.
- This room: clues about the people playing, which no team can revise for.
Run both in one night
Open with two multiple-choice rounds while people are still arriving and finding a seat, because everyone can join late without missing a turn. Move to the board once the room is settled and the teams are fixed, and keep the board for the back half of the night when people want to talk more and answer less.
Both formats are free to build and host on PardyTime: the questions go up on the TV, players join with a code on their phones, and scoring happens without you doing sums in front of an audience. If you would rather not write 40 questions, start from something in the public library and swap in a round of your own.