How to Host a TV Trivia Night at Home
A trivia night does not need a pub, a quizmaster or a stack of printed sheets. With a few friends, a screen and a quiz on a topic everybody knows, you can run a fun evening in about an hour. Here is a simple way to do it using the quizzes on Trivia Gauntlet.
What You Need
You need a laptop or TV to show the questions, a phone or tablet if players want to check the answer key, and pen and paper for each team. Snacks and drinks are optional, but they make a big difference to the mood.
1. Pick a Show Everyone Knows
The best trivia nights use a show that most of the group has seen. A sitcom such as The Office or Friends works well because nearly everyone can answer a few questions. For a group of bigger fans, try Game of Thrones or Harry Potter, where the harder questions will separate the experts from the casual viewers.
2. Decide How to Play
There are two easy formats. In the first, everyone plays the same quiz on their own phone at the same time and compares scores at the end. In the second, one person reads the questions aloud from a shared screen, and teams write their answers down before anyone reveals the correct one.
The second format is better for groups, because the discussion is half the fun. Every quiz has 20 questions, so a single quiz makes a good round. One warning for the host: the full answer key is printed under each quiz, so avoid scrolling down until the round is over.
3. Plan a Running Order
A three-round night takes about an hour and a quarter. Start with a five-minute welcome and an explanation of the rules. Round one can be a familiar sitcom. Round two can be a different style of show, such as Breaking Bad or Stranger Things. Take a ten-minute break for snacks, then finish with a third round from a different world, for example Naruto, Minecraft or Pokémon. End with a tiebreaker if two teams are level.
4. Use the Difficulty Levels
Every quiz on the site is built from five easy, five medium, five hard and five expert questions, in that order. You can use this to make the scoring fairer. For example, you could give one point for each easy question and two, three and four points for the higher levels. Newcomers can still score well on the early questions, while the experts have the harder ones to look forward to.
5. Keep Score and Settle Ties
Keep a simple scoreboard on paper. If two teams tie, play sudden death with a second quiz on the same topic, or ask a single tiebreaker from the "by the numbers" box on the quiz page, such as how many episodes the show ran for, where the closest answer wins.
6. Read the Explanations
Each quiz shows the correct answer with a few sentences of background and the source it came from. When a question causes an argument, this is the place to settle it, and it often starts a good conversation about the show.
Making It Fair for a Mixed Group
Not everyone will love every show. Rotate the shows between rounds so that nobody always has the advantage, and put a big fan on a team with a newcomer. A player who knows one show very well can carry a team on that round and let the others shine on the next.
Hosting It Online
You can run the same night over a video call. Share your screen with the quiz, read each question aloud, and ask players to type their answers into the chat before you reveal the correct one. Keep everyone's cameras on if you can, because the reactions are half of the entertainment.
7. Try a Themed Evening
To make the night feel special, add snacks or drinks that fit the theme. Anime fans could try One Piece or Demon Slayer, while a gaming night suits Minecraft or The Last of Us. You can browse all the quizzes on the quiz home page.