Creating a Pub Quiz: The ultimate guide for a successful quiz

Step 1: Set the ground rules for your pub quiz

Before you get started choosing a theme and coming up with quiz questions, it is important to determine how your pub quiz will be played.

This sounds boring, but is really necessary. Because the rules of the game influence the next steps of creating your pub quiz. Thinking about this well in advance will save you a lot of time later – trust us.

Game rules to think about:

• How many participants are there and how are they divided among teams? This is important to determine how many teams there are and how scores are kept. At most pub quizzes in pubs, quiz teams consist of 2 to 6 people.
• How long will the quiz take? Decide in advance how long the quiz will be. This is important to determine how many rounds and questions to come up with, and how much time participants have to answer questions. A quiz of ±80 questions generally takes about 1.5 to 2 hours, including a short break halfway through.

Example simple game rules

• How are the scores determined? Are scores determined simply by the number of correct answers, or are there bonus points for quick answers? If a name must be given as an answer, is just the first name enough to get the points, or must the first and last name be given?
• How will the winner be determined? Are the points added up at the end of the quiz to determine the winner, or is there a final round between the frontrunners?

For the sake of completeness, it is also good to make it clear that cheating during the quiz (for example, by looking up answers on the Internet), are of course not allowed.

Explain the rules of the game before the quiz starts and make sure they are presented in a clear way. For example, on a projection screen or on a piece of paper on each table.

It is also advisable to reiterate the most important rules of the game during the quiz to ensure that participants understand and heed the rules.

Step 2: Determine the format

The next step is to determine the format of your pub quiz. Will the quiz be live or online? What best fits the audience you have in mind and your available resources and budget?

If you are going to create a live pub quiz, especially with a large group, you will probably need a microphone and sound system to clearly convey the questions to all participants.

Speaking of which, who is actually going to ask the questions? Will you be the quiz master yourself or will someone else be there to present the quiz?

If you are going to ask the questions, keep in mind that retrieving the forms and scoring the answers also takes time.

If you want to do the quiz online, the first thing you need to do is start looking into which quiz website or app you can best use for this purpose, and what possibilities there are when it comes to showing pictures, the type of questions you can ask, scoring answers, showing videos and showing sound clips, etc. Find this out well before you start thinking up questions.

If you are doing the quiz live, also remember that visual aids can liven up your quiz questions considerably, but you will need a TV screen or projector to show your Powerpoint pub quiz presentation, for example. And don’t forget to provide pub quiz answer sheets and writing materials. Pretty handy ;-).

Step 3: Choose a theme for your pub quiz (or not)

Choosing an overarching theme for your pub quiz can be smart. With a theme, you can set the mood of the quiz and give participants a clear idea of what the questions will be about. Also, a theme helps you as the quiz creator to come up with more focused quiz questions.

Popular themes for pub quizzes include film & TV, music, sports, history, Christmas, End of Year and pop culture.

Special topic quizzes are also popular. Consider, for example, the following themed quizzes that are regularly played in pubs around the country:

• 90s pub quiz
• Disney pub quiz
• Harry Potter pub quiz
• Lord of the Rings pub quiz

Sample Christmas themed pub quiz

So how do you decide what is a good theme for your quiz? It depends mostly on the size of your audience, their interests and level of knowledge.

If you organize a pub quiz for a group of ten people you know, such as family, friends or colleagues, you can ask more specialized questions than if you organize a quiz for a group of a hundred people you don’t know.

Try to take into account participants’ tastes and interests. For example, if you are organizing a quiz for a group of young people, a theme such as pop music or movies will generally do well. Whereas if you are organizing a pub quiz for a group that is crazy about sports, then an Olympics quiz might be fun.

Whatever theme you choose, make sure it is broad enough to allow for plenty of questions.

Don’t fancy a specific theme for your pub quiz at all? And would you rather have a little bit of everything? That’s also fine of course! Choosing a theme can be helpful, but it is certainly not an obligation. Trust us, even without a clear theme, you can create a successful pub quiz.

Step 4: Decide how many and which quiz rounds you will make

Once you’ve chosen a theme (or decided you don’t want a theme) and know approximately how long the quiz is going to be, you can start creating the outline of your quiz: the quiz rounds.

First, decide how many rounds you want to make. Most pub quizzes consist of seven to ten rounds, of ten questions each. If you have about 2.5 to 3 hours for your quiz, go for about eighty questions in total, and thus eight rounds of quizzes.

Next, think about which rounds are going to make your pub quiz appealing.

Examples of quiz rounds that almost always do well are:

• Music
• Sound clips
• Photos/images
• Who is it?

Example pub quiz question

If you haven’t chosen a theme, you can also consider these quiz rounds

• General knowledge
• History
• Film & TV
• Sports
• Food & drink
• Logo guessing

Examples of original quiz rounds include:

• Voice round: play sound clips in which participants have to recognize the voice.
• Bridge round: each question follows a bridge to the next question
• Assignment round: devise an assignment for participants to do during the rounds by

Which rounds you make, will also depends on your options. Please note that some of the rounds listed above require a sound system, TV screen or projector.

Learn more about popular and original quiz rounds in our pub quiz rounds article.

Step 5: Devise the questions for your quiz

Now the fun (but also tricky) work begins: You’re going to come up with questions for your own pub quiz!

By now you know how many questions you want to ask your participants, and you already have a direction in which to start looking for each round.

But where do you get the questions from? You can, of course, make them up all by yourself. This often works well if you create a very specific quiz for friends, family or colleagues you know well. But, of course, you can also look around a bit at others who have already made questions. After all, why reinvent the wheel ;-)?

Example music quiz question

For example, in our questions section you will find hundreds of free questions divided into different topics; from general knowledge to music, and from sports questions to funny questions. Feel free to use those for your own quiz. In our free sample pub quiz, you may also find some inspiration.

Other resources you can use to create questions are pub quiz apps and quiz websites. With a little searching, you’ll come across a huge number of quiz questions and answers, so take advantage of them!

When creating the questions, further consider the following:

• Variation: variaton during a pub quiz is nice. Therefore, create a mix of the type of questions, such as multiple-choice questions, true or false questions, estimation questions and open-ended questions.
• Difficulty: Provide variation in the difficulty of the questions so that the quiz is challenging for all participants. So make difficult questions as well as easy questions.
• 1 right answer per question: make sure there is only one possible right answer to the questions you create. If in doubt, skip the question and make up another one.

Step 6: Make your pub quiz presentation visually appealing

After you have prepared the questions, it is important to make sure your pub quiz is presented in an attractive way. Just reading out questions without using visual aids quickly becomes a bit monotonous.

If you are going to do the pub quiz live, try to arrange a TV screen or projector to show the quiz on. Find a matching image or video for each question and create your pub quiz into a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation, for example. This is how you make the quiz visually appealing. Check out our free pub quiz powerpoint template for inspiration.

If you have a picture round in a live pub quiz, you can also choose to print the pictures on an A4 sheet and hand them out during the quiz. Many pubs that host a pub quiz do so in the picture round, this is often the first round and a fun way to start the quiz.

If you use quiz software such as an app or website to present your quiz, incorporate visual aids that support the questions, where possible.

Using Google Images when creating your pub quiz

In Google Images, you can search for royalty-free images by clicking on Tools and then on usage rights. Choose Creative Commons licenses. Note that sometimes you are still officially required to cite the source with the images.

On YouTube you can search for videos that fit your questions and on Giphy for gifs.

With images and videos, you will make sure your pub quiz is visually appealing and the questions are presented in a fun and clear way. So do it!

Step 7: Practice and improve for a successful pub quiz

Before presenting your homemade pub quiz to the world, it is wise to first create the quiz yourself and ask for feedback from others. That way, for example, you’ll remove mistakes from your quiz and quickly figure out which questions can be confusing, or have multiple correct answers.

Ask a critical friend to take the quiz and include his or her feedback when fine-tuning your quiz. By practicing your pub quiz in front of a small audience, such as family or friends, you can also work on your presentation and timing.

In short, by improving your quiz based on the feedback and practicing it, you will ensure that your pub quiz will be even better when it is finished and you will be sure that everything will go smoothly during the real presentation.

Congratulations, you have completed all 7 steps and created your own pub quiz! Ready for the next step, actually organizing the quiz? Then also read our pub quiz organizing article.

PS: Are you short on time? You can also buy a ready-made pub quiz from us.

Pub quiz making do’s and don’ts

Do’s

• Vary the types of questions you make. For example, you can create estimation questions, yes/no questions, multiple choice questions or true or false questions;
• Use visual aids, such as images or videos, to help illustrate the questions and answers;
• Use clear and concise language: make sure the questions and answers are worded clearly and to the point.

Don’ts:

• Don’t make the quiz too long: stick to the predetermined playing time. Some participants may be on time, for example, parents who have arranged babysitters.
• Don’t make the quiz too difficult: make sure an average team should be able to answer about half of the questions correctly. If the quiz is too difficult, players’ motivation quickly decreases.
• Don’t forget to test the tools you use, such as sound equipment, microphone, TV screens, apps, Internet connection, etc.