Knowledge

[threemonkeys]

I have finished the Phoenix end of year quiz. It ended up taking a lot longer than the last couple that I set. Even allowing for everything in life being harder at the moment, I think that I have lost quiz inspiration again. It happens every so often. I do a few and enjoy the process and then it becomes a chore and I stop for a while. I don't think I'll be doing any more for a year or two. Unless, that is, somebody is happy with a recycled one, but I'd need a whole new audience for that to work.

Actually, I'm pretty happy with the quiz I have done this time - I think it has enough themes and small pieces of humour to work pretty well. However it is a bit challenging. By which I mean that it is just plain hard. There is always a balance between making a quiz a genuine test of knowledge and making it a feel good exercise that lets the audience boost their ego by being able to answer lots of easy questions.

Still it is part of the end of year party - perhaps I better dumb go it down a bit.

Comments

[lobelet.livejournal.com]

I got quiz-setting fatigue several years ago and I've never really got over it. It was getting harder and harder to do a good job, and it took longer and longer every time I did it. I think the last time I seriously applied myself to putting a quiz together it took more than six months. I was utterly unable to manage more than one question (or sometimes two) a day.

The reason, as you rightly say, is the enormous difficulty of striking a balance. I always tried very hard to set things up in such a way that even non-participants could enjoy what was going on. I tried to build in a little humour and I always tried to put clues in the more difficult questions so that people who didn't know the answers could still work them out. Though admittedly, some of the clues were often more than a little bit obscure.

My very, very favourite SF quiz question though was one that was set a fan called Debbie Ogier. We shared the quiz one year; I did the literary questions and Debbie did the media questions. And she came up with an absolute doozy:

How tall was the woman in the movie "Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman"?

Not one person got the right answer (50 feet, of course) because everybody was absolutely convinced that Debbie was doing something devious and twisted with the question. She wasn't, of course, and it was extremely entertaining to see everyone fall into the trap.

So perhaps she was being devious and twisted after all. Hmmm...

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

I've been to a quiz night that was pure feel good exercise, and ... it left the smart folk disgruntled and the dumb shits feeling good.

And the attendance at the next year's quiz night reduced by half.

OTOH, I've been to ones where even the smart folk didn't get more than 3-4 out of ten per round; those have the feeling of being unfair and nasty, with the organisers looking smug and mean.

So, you know, damned if you do... ;)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Like you, I had that fatigue but I got over it for a short while. For last year's Phoenix quiz I set the bulk of the questions in one session. There was quite a bit of tweaking, polishing and validating answers after that but I got the back of it broken in that one go. This one has taken a couple of months and I'm afraid it really does still need work.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

You can't keep everybody happy, but I look to pitch the hardness of a quiz so that teams will average about 7/10 on every round. That seems to give the best satisfaction level. At this year's NZ natcon all the teams got scores within the 60-80/100 range (all but one actually). I was really happy with that effort. This year it feels more like a 5/10 quiz unless I do something to it.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Will the quiz be available for non-Phoenixians to test themselves against eventually?

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I have held this notion in my head of doing a quiz at an Aussie con by recycling one of the ones I did for Phoenix or the one from the NZ Natcon this year (did you take part?). However given my quiz fatigue I'm thinking perhaps not now.

I could potentially send it to you. Alternatively I may just post bits of it on lj from time to time to make up for the diminishing volume of my posts.

Perhaps I should post the questions I discard for being too hard.