Pick the Right Night and Set the Clock

A quiz night lives or dies on its slot in the week. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the sweet spots: people are out, but not so far out that they arrive late and half-cut. Fridays and Saturdays belong to parties and live music, and Sundays can work beautifully if you pitch the start time at 7pm so everyone is home by ten.

Whatever you choose, keep it fixed. Regulars build their week around a quiz that always lands on the same night at the same time. Start at 8pm sharp, and tell teams to arrive from 7.30pm so they can order food and settle in before the first question. Aim to finish between 10.15pm and 10.30pm. Anything past eleven and you will lose the room to yawns and last orders.

Six to eight teams is a comfortable start. Cap teams at six people, and if you are lucky enough to get more, split the room into two halves and run a second quizmaster.

Build Rounds That Breathe

Six rounds of eight questions is a proven shape — around fifty questions in total, with a fifteen-minute break halfway. Fewer, tougher questions leave teams silent and sulky; too many easy ones and the scores bunch up at the top.

Vary the texture of each round so no team switches off:

• General knowledge to open, warm and welcoming
• Pictures — landmarks, album covers, famous faces, local streets
• Music or sound clips, played through the pub's system rather than a phone speaker
• Sport and telly, which always draws a crowd
• Food and drink, with a nod to your own menu and the ales on the hand pulls
• A local round — parish names, old breweries, defunct shops, the history of the building you are standing in

Print answer sheets in advance, one per team, with the round number and a space for the team name. Hand out fresh sheets each round and collect the old ones — it stops arguments later.

Write Questions People Can Actually Answer

The best quiz questions have one clear, unambiguous answer and a bit of a story attached. Avoid anything where two answers could be right; you will spend ten minutes adjudicating while the chips go cold.

Mix the difficulty within each round: two easy, four middling, two genuinely hard. Every team should get something right in the first thirty seconds, or they will start chatting among themselves and never come back.

Read the question twice, slowly. Give the category before each round and the number of answers if there is more than one. If you are writing about current affairs, keep it to the last fortnight, and check your facts the day before rather than the week before. Above all, test the whole quiz on someone who is not you. Ambiguity hides in questions you thought were obvious.

The Host Makes or Breaks the Night

Your quizmaster sets the temperature of the room. They need a voice that carries to the back without shouting, a steady pace, and just enough patter to keep things moving. Two sentences of banter between questions is plenty; a five-minute anecdote about a holiday in Cornwall is not.

Ask for silence before each question, wait a beat, then read it. Do not repeat questions on demand for one team while others are still scribbling. If the room is bigger than about sixty people, borrow a microphone — a cheap one beats a sore throat.

Praise the strugglers, never mock them. The team in last place should leave feeling they had a laugh, not that they were the punchline.

Rules, Marking and Keeping It Fair

Print the rules on the answer sheet so nobody can claim ignorance. Keep them short:

• Maximum six per team, no swapping players mid-quiz
• No phones, no smart watches, no asking the bar staff
• Answers must be written legibly; if it cannot be read, it cannot be marked
• Teams swap sheets with a neighbouring table for marking
• The quizmaster's decision is final, cheerfully so

Mark one point per correct answer, and only award half marks where a full answer was genuinely required. For ties, prepare a tie-breaker — a nearest-the-guess question, such as the number of barrels brewed by a local brewery last year, works better than sudden death because it keeps everyone involved.

Prizes, Food and a Strong Finish

Prizes should feel like a reward you would actually want. A bar tab, a jug of best bitter, a bottle of something decent from the top shelf, or a meal for the winning table all land well. Keep a wooden spoon prize for last place — pork scratchings and a packet of crisps will do — and give it out with genuine warmth.

Food sells itself at a quiz. A ploughman's sharing board, a tray of sausage rolls, bowls of chips and a pie of the night keep tables ordering well past the halfway mark. Time the break so the kitchen gets a burst of orders at once, and let the final round be one that can flip the leaderboard — a picture round or a set of five-point questions.

Then thank everyone, read out the scores from bottom to top, and remind them of the date of the next one. A quiz that ends on time, with a full room and a friendly grumble about question seven, will fill your pub again next week.