Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Whither quiz nite

Cheers to Eric le Frog for keeping Songkhla's Quiz Nite going. But in case you haven't noticed, attendance isn't exactly booming. Between the increasingly late starting hour and a couple recent dead-in-the-water quizzes, a growing number of us seem to be finding better uses for our Friday evenings in town.

As the reigning Quiz Nite champs, not to mention its main source of quizmeisters (now to include, it seems, S. Witherspoon), SH3 finds itself in a key position to help maintain this venereal I mean venerable institution.

To that end, let's humbly offer three suggestions to keep Quiz Nite alive:

1) Whatever subjects you choose for your questions -- and obviously the best quizzes cover a wide variety of ground -- give people the satisfaction of being able to answer most of them. The perfect quiz question is one that a team has to think about for a few moments, but then know exactly what the right answer is. A good 60-question quiz should be designed so that a typical team gets at least 45-50 right. Much less than that and it starts becoming an exercise in frustration.

2) Unlike school, this is for fun. Forget dates, exact names and numbers, and other uselessly detailed trivia. Focus on the trivia that's interesting -- things you'll actually want to know if you don't already. In what year did Jim Morrison die? That's boring. But what drug did he die of? That's interesting.

3) Start the gaddam thing before the evening is half over!!

3 comments:

  1. Hmmm... methinks the problem is not with the content of the quizzes but with the rumbling feud between the contents of Mon's Bar (#1 or #2 whichever is currently in vogue) and Carsten's Mrs. I don't think it's going to make any difference how we tinker with the questions unless and until that one is sorted out. Incidentally when DID Jim Morrison die?

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  2. Well we can't do much about the politics but at least we can try to set decent quizzes and start them at a reasonable hour. One more crappy, late one and I know of at least two people who won't be coming again.

    Morrison? Died sometime between when I started smoking dope and first ate mushrooms . . . OK?

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  3. When is the next quiz nite? Is there a regular schedule? (It used to be every 2nd Friday but these days it seems random.)

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