Taking part in a pub quiz can be a lot of fun for both the participants and the quizmaster. However, running a pub quiz is much more complicated than it seems. It takes a lot of preparation and many problems can occur. To make sure your quiz is a hit and everyone has a good time, follow these tips:

Just the right length

Make sure that your quiz lasts enough for participants to have a fun night, but also make sure that it doesn't last so long that they begin to yawn. If you can't decide how many rounds or questions to incorporate in your quiz, try comparing with previous quizzes and figure out what the optimal duration is. The duration of the quiz also depends on the number of teams playing, which means that you should also know in advance approximately how many teams will be playing.

Just the right difficulty level

Keep in mind that people who visit trivia nights are most often pretty well-experienced and knowledgeable in the general knowledge domain. So, try to avoid popular, frequent questions and try to come up with your own, original ones. If the questions on your quiz turn out to be too easy, the evening might turn into a flop. However, making the questions super hard is even worse. If you fill your quiz up with obscure riddles, the players might end up handing in empty entries and they certainly won't be in a good mood. So, the solution is: keep it in the golden mean. Throw in a couple of easy questions most teams will know the answers to and give multiple points for harder questions.

Keep it diverse

You may be a sports fan, but not everyone wants to answer a bunch of questions about the Japanese national basketball team. Include all areas in your quiz: from general knowledge and pop culture to art, science and sports. You can even try categorizing your questions before the quiz to figure out if all areas are equally covered or if a certain area stands out as the most frequent one. This way, the quiz will be objective and give everyone the same chances to win. Everyone loves a diverse trivia quiz, and the players will notice early on if you focus too much on just one field.

Interact with the players

If you are running a quiz, you are also expected to be a kind of an entertainment to the crowd. Don't worry, you are not required to put on a Broadway show, but you also shouldn't be as stiff as a poker and run the quiz in a monotonous tone. It's especially important to keep the fun going while the results are being calculated, because this is the time most players expect of the quizmaster to comment on the quiz or address the players. Most importantly, it's important to be relaxed and enjoy the quiz. Make jokes, talk to the players, comment on questions or read out funny answers.

Use multimedia

Don't just read out questions to the players: if you have a chance, use a computer, image projector, music player or some other media device. This will keep the quiz diversified and fun. You can have a movie round where you show clips from movies and players have to guess which movie is the clip from. Music rounds are also very popular in pub quizzes. You can also play songs and ask the players for the name of the author or the name of the song or have them finish the lyrics. You can also come up with something original involving multimedia, which the players will certainly welcome.

Let me know in the comments what other things you cannot forget if you wanna run a great trivia night!