Team Quiz

Between 2005 and 2014 we set the question sets for The Quiz League of London. The standard of play in The League is of the very highest quality, with many Mastermind and Brain of Britain winners and finalists, and quiz-playing celebrities taking part. In 2010, three of the six Mastermind finalists, including the eventual winner, were QLL players; and as at 2011, four of the last seven winners of Brain of Brains (the triennial contest between Brain of Britain champions) have played regularly in QLL competitions. Our own Martin Smith still plays regularly in the QLL. The 2021 Brain of London winner was none other than the evergreen Egghead Kevin Ashman

Table-based team quiz setting is a particular challenge, requiring that each question asked be paired with a similar question for the other team. Moreover, all questions are asked to individual players, so it’s important that each player gets a fair mix of questions. We have developed a system that allows us to present each team with a balanced set of questions, with each player receiving questions covering a range of subjects and difficulty.

We don’t simply write each of our league Question sets as a one-off, with no thought about what we asked last week or what we are going to ask next week. We plan for a fair and interesting spread of topics across an entire season. For example, among the sports questions football will come up more often than minor sports that fewer people are interested in, but those minor sports will come up too, at least a few times in the season.

We have played in quiz leagues where a pair of questions in week 1 about varieties of vegetables is a sure sign that the quiz-setter has got The Big Boy’s Book of Vegetable Spotting for his birthday, and the best thing you can do is go home and learn up vegetable varieties for the questions to come in weeks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… (Or, perhaps better, find something more interesting to do with your time than carry on playing in that quiz league?) Rest assured, in the unlikely event that we were to set a question on something as stupefyingly tedious as varieties of vegetable in week 1 (well, perhaps it’s possible to get one interesting and answerable question pair out of even vegetable varieties), you would be wasting your time if you went home and prepared for further vegetable questions in future weeks.

Our question setters are able to tune the level of difficulty of team quiz sets to your taste. For a league with divisions, the lower leagues can play easier sets if required. Pairs of questions can be mixed up throughout the quiz, as the Quiz League of London prefers, or can follow on with the second question directly after the first, as many other leagues arrange it. (If you’re not committed one way or the other, we recommend the shuffled format, which we think improves the ‘flavour’ of the quiz and adds a pleasant unpredictability.) We can also accommodate the different requirements of leagues that don’t play the usual eight-rounds-of-eight-questions format, that want themed rounds rather than ‘pot luck’ rounds, or need extra rounds, sudden death rounds or tiebreakers for cup games and play-offs.

Here is a sample Team Quiz in PDF format.

Contact us directly to discuss your league and cup quiz requirements.