i'm going to be helping our day care to organise a trivia night as a fundraiser so hoping the collective wisdom that is eb can help me out

if you've been to a trivia night/s -
what made it great?
what made it not so great?

if you've helped organise one -
what are your best tips?
what worked well?
what didn't?

thanks heaps!

Hi
Ideas

music section, where you play some of the song, and then people have to guess the song name/artist.

Movie Section, pick famous quotes from movies (whether said by someone, or played back on tape) and then people guess the movie.

Great prizes!!!

I am happy to contribute a prize

Also would love to attend.

I have been to a few trivia nights and Paul has helped organise a few.

Things like silent auctions are always good if you can get enough prizes together for people to bid on. Fun games through the evening (heads or tails etc).

Questions wise I think it's good to have a really good broad range of topic but people seem to enjoy it more if you concentrate a little more on things like music, tv and movies. A few sport and history questions are always good but try to keep the questions as wide spread as possible so that everyone feels like they know at least something. Name the song from a snippet or name the monotone ringtone...

Also things that went down well were the 'extra points' games where the team has to name the people pictured (use obscure pictures), different types of kitchen utensils, all the simpsons characters pictured sort of thing. Match actors to movies, singers to songs.

Scott and I have organised heaps of them too. Scott has done questions. I'll see if I can dig any samples up for you

Short on time so if I forget to come back and respond properly please remind me!

We used to go to an annual trivia night for a school in a little town not far from here.. they had the rule that whoever won, had to organise the following year's trivia night. So, you'd end up with everyone trying really hard not to win.

I'd advise against having that rule.. it really put a downer on the night for the winners!

Don't have too many questions.

The best trivia nights are not rushed, and don't last for hours and hours.

thanks everyone! keep them coming as we're still planning, but we're hoping to hold it on friday 13th june so keep it free LOL

Oh very subtle...

lol!

cool though, we wanted to do it the weekend before but forgot about the long weekend and you really can't get better than a friday the 13th for a fun evening !

best game I played at a quiz night was a donated bottle of wine on the floor (has to be wood or lino or it won't work) and everyone stands back 10m or so (you don't want it to be too easy) and tries to slide a coin to hit the bottle. Whoever hits it first wins the bottle. Probably have a set 'fee' ie use all $1 coins, and limit the number of coins per person per turn. Good way to get more money, and the winner gets to take home a nice bottle of red or similar. If noone hits it, the closest coin gets it.

If you are going 'high tech' and having a projection screen attached to a computer, you can take quick snaps of each team during the comp, and the winning team & runners up at the end, and project those up in a slideshow format.

This is a winner at our local school trivia nite except I think the bottle is scotch.

We also had the game where you have to make the longest total strip from THREE mintie wrappers which our table won a bottle of dessert wine which was all gone within 20 minutes .

The things that make a trivia nite good are:

- a wide mix of questions (not just movie/music/celebrity ones that can be answered by regular readers of WHO Weekly )
- some fun games in between rounds
- prizes for the best table decorations (some materials provided but lots of people now bring their own)
- significant consumption of alcohol and vast amounts of bribing of answer collectors for "extras" with gold coins (or more)

DH and I have attended the local school trivia nite for the last two years and it's fabulous. Maybe because everyone can walk home ...

Edited to add that the above must make me sound like a total pi$$head which I'm not... honestly... really !

Steph

LOL!
yeah yeah steph