How to write good trivia questions

One question, one answer

A good question points to exactly one thing. Compare “Name a Greek island” with “Which Greek island is home to the ruins of the Palace of Knossos?”. The first has hundreds of right answers and starts an argument; the second has one answer, and a player either knows it or does not.

When there really are several ways to say the same answer, that is fine, as long as the question has one answer. People may write “Crete”, “the island of Crete” or “Kriti”, and your rules should say which ones count. Decide this when you write the question, not when someone complains.

Facts that stay true

Anything that changes will eventually make a question wrong. “Who is the current prime minister of the United Kingdom?” has a different answer depending on when it is asked, and so has “What is the tallest building in the world?”. A question that names a date, an opening year or a measurement, such as “Which Dubai skyscraper, opened in 2010, is 828 metres tall?”, has the same answer for as long as anyone plays your quiz.

The same goes for other records and superlatives, such as the fastest runner or the largest ship. If you want to ask about one, tie it to a date or an event, or choose a record that cannot realistically be beaten. Always put the year in when it matters.

Avoid definition arguments

“What is the largest desert in the world?” is a classic source of arguments, because the answer depends on whether polar ice deserts count. A better question fixes the definition in the wording itself, for example “Which is the largest hot desert in the world?”, and leaves nothing to debate.

Check your own questions for words like “largest”, “first”, “most” and “oldest”. They are often fine, but ask yourself what the other possible answers are and whether a reasonable person could argue for one of them.

Think about how people answer

If answers are spoken or written, the best answers are short: a name, a number, a place or a single word. A question whose answer is a whole sentence is hard to mark. Avoid questions where the answer is a long official title when a short name exists, and put the commonly used form in the answer.

In Trivvy, players type their answers, so we also list the variants that people actually write: only the surname, a number as a word, an abbreviation. If you are writing for paper, decide in advance whether spelling matters. Our advice is that it should not, as long as it is clear what was meant.

Get the difficulty right

A quiz where nobody knows anything is as dull as one where everyone knows everything. Aim for a mix in which a good share of the questions can be answered by about half the room. A useful way to calibrate is to ask yourself: would a normal adult who is not a quiz fan know this, could they reason their way to it, or would only an enthusiast know it? That gives you easy, medium and hard.

Within a round, put an easy question first and a hard one last, and vary the topics so that everyone gets something they know. If one person in your group always wins the sport round, let somebody else choose the next one.

Do not give the answer away

Check that the wording does not contain the answer. “Which city is the capital of France, famous for the Eiffel Tower?” hands over the answer in the second half. Remove clues that the answer is not meant to supply, but keep enough detail that the question is clear. Also read the question aloud; a question that is unclear when spoken will be unclear for the player.

Write a round about the people in the room

The most loved rounds in any home quiz are the personal ones: baby photos to match to the right guest, quotes from a family holiday, questions about the year the group first met. They need no research in the usual sense, but they do need care. Check with the people involved before you use a story, and keep it kind, since the aim is laughter and not embarrassment.

A personal round also solves the problem of a group in which one person knows everything. When the questions are about the people in the room, the expert has no advantage, and the round becomes about who was paying attention.

Check your facts twice

The worst moment in a quiz is when the answer turns out to be wrong. Verify every answer against at least two independent sources, and be most suspicious of the facts you are sure of, since those are the ones you did not check. Numbers, dates and spellings of names are where most mistakes hide. A short checklist at the end of your writing session catches most of them.

If you would rather not write your own, Trivvy's cards are written and checked using the rules described here, and you can create a room or a challenge with the categories you like. The way we check cards is described in our guide to how Trivvy questions are checked.